Get Off That ATV...It's Pink and You're a Boy

“You don’t want a pink quad do you?”

This is the sentence that got me all worked up last Friday. Let me provide some context here - I work in an ATV store and we sell a lot of little quads to a lot of little kids. Our smallest quads come in a variety of colours including metallic blue, green camo, red, burgundy, black spider, red spider…and pink camo. I know I sound like I’m launching into a sales pitch but I’m really about to launch into a rant about gender stereotypes. Although by the time I’m done you might wish I’d given the sales pitch instead. So anyway, kids come into the store all the time, they sit on the quads and they beg their parents to buy one. This was exactly the situation that was taking place on Friday and it was fairly ordinary except for one little detail. It was a boy on a pink quad. This is obviously a terrible, terrible thing and must be stopped immediately. I was doing paperwork at my desk when I hear one of the sales guys repeatedly said to this little boy “You don’t want a pink quad do you?” “Why would you want a pink quad?”  I spun around in my chair (I have one of those really big chairs that spins which allows me to do dramatic things like whirl around suddenly) and said loudly “Why not?” My co-worker (what do you call someone who is higher up than you but not your boss? Can you say co-worker?)  didn’t pay any attention, I don’t know if he didn’t hear or was just ignoring me. The little boy seemed oblivious altogether, he continued to pretend to ride the quad and ask his dad if he could have it. The father also ignored the comments about the pink quad. But the sister (who looked about 7) responded. She said to her brother “They don’t want you to be a girl”. The sales guy just kept on going, telling this kid that he didn’t want that quad. I walked by and told him to “stop gender stereotyping!” Once again I am ignored. At this point I decide that it’s probably a bad idea to go on a feminist rant and make a scene in front of a customer.

If I had been braver/didn’t care about keeping my job I would have told him that pink being a “girl’s colour” is a fairly recent concept that has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with society. I would have told them that kids should be able to like whatever colours they choose. And I would have told them that the fact that girl’s colours are so embarrassing and so bad is gender stratification and teaches girls that their gender is a negative thing.

The “pink is for girls” stuff obviously doesn’t begin at an ATV store. It begins with balloons and cards announcing that “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” and little onesies in either blue or pink. So where did these binaries come from? For something that seems so natural in our culture it’s not as old as you think. I’m talking like not even a century old. In fact, all Western babies used to be dressed in white dresses until the age of six, regardless of sex. And when pastel pink and pastel blue were first introduced as baby colours, pink was for boys and blue for girls. A 1918 article from Earshaw’s Infants’ Department said “the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl”. Various department stores across the U.S. echoed this sentiment. Somehow things changed in the 1940s to the gender-specific colours we’re used to today. Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and the author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America says that “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted”. Given the historical context of gender-specific colours, my co-worker’s comments about a boy on a pink quad seem ridiculously overdramatic.

What’s also important to note is that while this boy being on a pink quad was something to deter, I am certain that if his older sister had gotten on a blue quad, or a black spider quad, or any other colour for that matter, it would have been completely fine. Dressing a little boy in pink is treated like an awful thing to do, but dressing a little girl in blue isn’t a big deal. His sister was exactly right when she said “they don’t want you to be a girl”. Because it’s true. Your daughter is a tomboy? Not a big deal (for most families at least). Your son wants to play with dolls and play fairy princess? Oh my goodness, the apocalypse is coming. Being a girl is seen as a negative thing, and masculinity is valued over femininity. This is known as gender stratification (heteropatriarchy, gender stratification…aren’t you glad feminists came up with words for all the terrible things society came up with?).

I’m not completely clueless. I realize that even though colours shouldn’t matter, they do matter. I am aware that we sell our pink quads and our pink helmets exclusively to females, primarily because our male customers don’t want pink and our female customers do. But if a six year old boy comes into our store and hasn’t been taught to stay away from pink, then we should be celebrating. We shouldn’t be teaching dumb rules that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

* By the way our 110cc ATVs also come with remote kill, a foot brake, six months warranty and are available for the low price of $895. I would tell you where but I don’t like to give out personal information on the internet. My innermost thoughts –yes, my place of employment – no.