h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm getting pretty sick of people thinking my daughter is a boy, just because she doesn't tend to be dressed in bright Barbie pink frills with 'Little Princess' written across her chest - Who started this whole pink/blue thing and when? is it the same in all cultures?

I've no idea, but I agree that it's silly. In fact, why pastels for babies? They respond soooo much better to bright, bold colours.

My goodness - hello! I've not seen you for ages!

The only benefit I can see to pastel coloured clothes is you can boilwash them without the reults being too catastophic, and if the worst comes to the worst and you have to bleach them, you're not changing them too much...

...it's when they toys and the decor are made to co-ordinate with the clothes that i have a problem! You're quite right - bright colours are much more fun. I'v stripped all the hanging bits off her cot mbile and replaced them with my own creations....

...but I find that when I dress her in 'brights' people still think she's a boy, and I imagine that it will carry on until I can plait her hair (at this rate about the age of 15!)

By the way - didn't mean this to become another Baby Gurglefest - please ignore me and trea this as a serious question about cultural tendencies....

[I've been away, for over a year, so ages would be right. I'm busy thesising at the moment. How are you?]

I can see the pastel benefit, re boiling them, but then light colours show up stains so much more than bold ones, so I am not sure if it's really worth it.

My mother does a great line in multicoloured baby jumpers - made of the ends of balls of wool, mainly brightly coloured ones.

Cloviscat, it's a subject more than one friend of mine has commented on recently - friends/relatives being reluctant to buy something nice for their baby because it's the 'wrong' colour, and random strangers on the bus jumping to conclusions on the basis of some arbitrary binary divide of colour space.

It seems to me if they made things in deliberatly blotchy colours, the whole washing/staining thing might become less of a problem, though I can imagine going into Mothercare and asking 'Do they make this in DPM' might bring a few blank stares.

(PS - Hi there Aendr - I remember you from ages ago, tho I'm not sure from precisely which conversations.)

Babies all used to be dressed in white "long clothes" - long white nightdresses that are still sometimes used for christening gowns. Boys wore dresses until after they could walk, In Victorian times nurses put blue ribbons on boys' clothes (after "Little Boy Blue" who wore blue clothes and (?) the painting of the Blue Boy by (?) Reynolds)
This was taken over by baby clothes manufacturers, but different colours for the whole outfits didn't come in until after the Second World War when washing machines came into wide use.Also, this was about the time that people started to buy new clothes for the second baby. Up till then EVERYTHING was handed down or given to the neighbours if you thought you weren't going to have any more - like the woman who blithely passed on her maternity swimming costume to me and then had to ask for it back sheepishly the following year.

I've heard that before World War I pink was actually considered a very manly color.

'Blue for a boy' has it's origins in superstition. It was believed that the Devil would avoid blue (maybe this is why the Virgin Mary is usually depicted in a blue dress). Boys were considered more important than girls, so boys were dressed in blue to keep the Devil away. Girls got whatever else was going. I guess that the 'pink for a girl' thing is comparatively recent, as the prissy pink colours (not to mention the horrid 'Barbie pink' - yeugh! ) were not available in the old days - you can't get colours like that from vegetable / mineral dyes, AFAIK.

I have to agree that the tendency for people to put females (women as well as girls) in pink really annoys me. A lot of sportswear / trainer manufacturers seem to think that women should be dressed in pastel colours when working out. When I was a kid, Mum put me and my sister in whatever colours we wanted to wear, as far as was possible. If we wanted to wear pink or red (which I didn't after the age of 5), that was fine. If we wanted a different colour (I've loved blue for as long as I can remember), that was fine too. Once a child is old enough to have a preference, they should be allowed to choose for themself.

As a boy I had bright red hair - No really red - not auburn - red. I was so disappointed I couldn't have a red jumper. However my youngest (18months) is constantly called a boy because she has no hair. The only time she is not called a boy is when she wears a dress. Even when wearing pink trousers and a white t-shirt and a pink cardigan, someone called her him.

I know my little angel is beautiful and people want to talk to her, but why not put 2 & 2 together ? Maybe she's such a beautiful boy because she's a girl.

(We don't usually dress her in pink incidently, but it was such a lovely soft cardigan.)

I think that the Devil may have avoided blue *because* it was the colour that the BVM wore!

Blue was a difficult and expensive colour to produce before chemical dyes - my other half wondered if boys got the pricey stuff and girls got the rest... (my memories of dye samples from working with National Trust is that they were all snot green)

Boys had long curls as well as dresses - they stiill have Winston Churchill's 'ponytail' on show at Blenheim Palace - that's bright red too!

...anybody fancy going into business making baby wigs???

I was recently told that belly button fluff is different colours for males and females - blue for blokes, pink for birds. If that is true then my body must be in denial - anything that gets around the ring in my belly is generally quite dark!

What if your belly button is an 'outy'?

There was once a colour called 'Coventry Blue' and an expession "as true as Coventry Blue" because the dye was so fast. The secret of making this dye was held by the Coventry dyers guild in the middle ages.

They were so successful that nobody nowadays knows how to make it or even what shade of blue it was.

(Though this of course has nothing to do with babies - its just me giving in to my sesnseleess desire to bombard people with useless, only marginally related information.)

My son was constantly called a girl up to the age of about five no matter what colour he was wearing - and that included the couple of years before he grew hair properly.

It must be easier in maternity wards if boys and girls are dressed in blue or pink - saves the midwife getting it wrong and upsetting emotional mothers.

Mina, is your son... 'delicately featured'? That might explain it... the only way to vbe certain people will recognise the Cloviskitten as a girl is to put her in a frock, but then she looks like a rugby player in a tutu!

Cue enormously long url to photo:

http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/bc/cloviscatscout/vwp?.dir=/Family&.src=ph&.dnm=Elspeth+aged+5+months.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//uk.photos.yahoo.com/bc/cloviscatscout/lst%3f%26.dir=/Family%26.src=ph%26.view=t

The midwives in my hospital at least were careful about the whole gender thing and tended to keep it neutral "There's a Mummy in ward 3 needs help feeding Baby" but get this for a conversation last week in G*p:

I was wandering aimlessly, with pram, and not in my best clothes, so I think they had me down as a shoplifter. baby was in cute tartan romper suit:

Hovering assistant: Oh, lovely baby!
Me: Her name's Elspeth
HA: Elspecgh? (sounding like a bad case of catarrh)
Me: Elspeth.
HA: That's quite hard to say isn't it? (How rude!)
Me: Well, we liked it. It's a Scottish form of Elizabeth
HA: So if it had been a girl, would you have called it Elizabeth?

...at which point I took my custom elsewhere....

Cloviscat,
it is alas not possible to see your photo, unless you are a member of uk.yahoo.
Do you have an alternate?

Do people with "outy" bellybuttons get bellybutton fluff? Surely the bbfluff faerie is indiscriminate?

Cloviscat,
It is alas not possible to see your photo, even if you are a member of uk.yahoo. I can bring up your Yahoo ID but I can't find anything else.




Alji, of the Red Dragon (Swynwr y Ddraig Goch) (conducting a sun sign poll @ A712595)(Member of The H2G2 Guild of Wizards @ U197895 looking for wiz kids to join, though you don't have to be a wiz kid just know a bit about some subject that you think will be of interest to others or just bore the pants off them. This is an equal opportunities space open to all sexes, ages and abilities)

Ooops, orry guys, I forgot to hit the 'public' button. Try again:

http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/bc/cloviscatscout/vwp?.dir=/Family&.src=ph&.dnm=Elspeth+aged+5+months.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//uk.photos.yahoo.com/bc/cloviscatscout/lst%3f%26.dir=/Family%26.src=ph%26.view=t

or click forwards from:

http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/cloviscatscout