It’s not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow, and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among two-year-olds, not only as innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls’ lives and interests, at the rows and rows of make-your-own jewelry/lip gloss/nail polish/fashion show craft kits at the drumbeat of the consumer feminine.
“Is all this pink really necessary?” I asked a bored-looking sales rep hawking something called Cast and Paint Princess Party.
“Only if you want to make money,” he said, chuckling. Then he shrugged. “I guess girls are born loving pink.”
Are they? Judging by today’s girls, that would seem to be true—the color draws them like heat-seeking missiles. Yet adult women I have asked do not remember being so obsessed with pink as children, nor do they recall it being so pervasively pimped to them. I remember thinking my fuchsia-and-white-striped Danskin shirt with its matching stirrup pants was totally bitchin’, but I also loved the same outfit in purple, navy, green, and red (yes, I had them all—there must have been a sale at Sears). My toys spanned the color spectrum, as did my hair ribbons, school notebooks, and lunchboxes. The original Easy-Bake oven, which I begged for (and, dang it, never got), was turquoise, and the Suzy Homemaker line—I had the iron, which really worked!—was teal. I can’t imagine you would see that today. What happened? Why has girlhood become so monochromatic?
Girls’ attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it’s not. Children weren’t color-coded at all until the early twentieth century: in the era before Maytag, all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What’s more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colors were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy, and faithfulness, symbolized femininity. (That may explain a portrait that has always befuddled me, of my father as an infant in 1926 wearing a pink dress.) Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s, in a poll of its customers conducted by the New York City department store Lord & Taylor, a solid quarter of adults still held to that split. I doubt anyone would get it “wrong” today. Perhaps that is why so many of the early Disney heroines—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins’s Jane Banks—were dressed in various shades of azure. (When the company introduced the Princess line, it deliberately changed Sleeping Beauty’s gown to pink, supposedly to distinguish her from Cinderella.) It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children’s marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem innately attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.
I hadn’t realized how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts—people with PhDs at the very least—developed after years of research into children’s behavior: wrong-o. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularized as a marketing gimmick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s. Trade publications counseled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a “third stepping-stone” between infant wear and older kids’ clothes. They also advised segregating girls’ and boys’ clothing no later than age two: parents whose sons were “treated like a little man” were thought to be looser with their purse strings. It was only after “toddler” became common shoppers’ parlance that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. If that seems impossible to believe, consider the trajectory of “tween,” which was also coined, in the mid-1980s, as a marketing contrivance (originally describing children aged eight to fifteen). Within ten years, it was considered a full-blown psychological, physical, and emotional phase, abetted, in no small part, by the classic marketing bible What Kids Buy and Why. Its author confidently embedded “tween” in biology and evolution, marked by a child’s “shift from right brain focus to left brain focus” and ending with a “neural ‘housecleaning’ ” in which “millions of unmyelinated neurons are literally swept out of existence.” Whatever that means. Scientifically proven or not, as phases go, “tween” is a conveniently elastic one: depending on who is talking, it now stretches from children as young as seven (when, according to the cosmetic company Bonne Bell, girls become “adept at using a lip gloss wand”) to as old as twelve. That is hardly a span that has much common ground—nor, I would argue as a parent, should it have.
Splitting kids, or adults, or for that matter penguins, into ever-tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits. So, where there was once a big group that was simply called “kids,” we now have toddlers, preschoolers, tweens, young adolescents, and older adolescents, each with their own developmental/marketing profile. For instance, because of their new “perceptual filters,” What Kids Buy and Why counsels, thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds may still appreciate the wisecracks of Bugs Bunny, but a new passion for “realism” draws them to sports figures such as Michael Jordan; no accident, then, that those two were teamed up to shill for Nike in the mid-1990s. Even children one year old and under are being hailed as “a more informed, influential and compelling audience than ever before.” Informed? An article published by the Advertising Educational Foundation stated, “Computer interaction and television viewing make this kid segment very savvy, and has led to dramatic changes in today’s American families.” Children as young as twelve to eighteen months can recognize brands, it went on, and are “strongly influenced” by advertising and marketing. Yikes! Meanwhile, I have seen the improbable term “pre-tween” (“pre”-between what, exactly?) floated to describe—and target—the five-year-old girl who has a discerning fashion sense and her own Lip Smackers collection.
One of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences—or invent them where they did not previously exist. That explained the token pink or lavender building sets, skateboards, tool belts, and science kits scattered throughout the Toy Fair. (The exception was Tonka, which had given up on girls altogether with its slogan “Boys: They’re Just Built Different.”) That pinkification could, I suppose, be read as a good-faith attempt at progress. The advent of pink TinkerToys, “designed especially for girls” (who can construct “a flower garden, a butterfly, a microphone and more”), might encourage preschool girls to use mechanical and spatial skills that might otherwise lie fallow. Or it might reinforce the idea that the “real” toy is for boys while that one measly pink Lego kit in the whole darned store is girls’ consolation prize. It could even remind girls to shun anything that isn’t pink and pretty as not for them, a mind-set that could eventually prove limiting. And what about the girl who chooses something else? I recalled taking Daisy to the park one day with a friend who had a pink Hello Kitty scooter and matching helmet. Daisy’s scooter was silver; her helmet sported a green fire-breathing dragon.
“How come your helmet’s not pink?” her friend asked. “It’s not a girls’ one.”
Daisy furrowed her brow, considering, then said, “It’s for girls or boys.” Her friend looked skeptical. Even though I was relieved by Daisy’s answer, I found the question itself disturbing. Would other girls view her with suspicion—even exclude her—if she did not display the proper colors? I hoped her friend would get the message and broaden her repertoire. I hoped Daisy would resist the pressure to narrow hers.
I took a break from the Toy Fair and strolled uptown to Times Square, home of the international f
lagship Toys “R” Us store. Part emporium, part amusement park, the post–FAO Schwarz monolith (Toys “R” Us swallowed up that venerable vendor in 2009) features a three-story neon-lit Ferris wheel at the entrance. Each car has a different theme: Toy Story, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Monopoly, a fire truck. There are also a five-ton animatronics T. rex (which scared the bejeezus out of several toddlers during my brief visit), the New York skyline constructed entirely from Legos, and a two-story “Barbie Mansion” painted the iconic Pantone 219, often referred to as “Barbie Pink.”
I paused in front of a display of plush Abby Cadabby dolls: throughout the store, I had noted Abby bath sets, costumes, books, party packs, sing-along CDs, backpacks—the typical array of licensed gimcracks. A resident of Sesame Street, Abby is a three-year-old “fairy in training” with cotton-candy-colored skin, a button nose, sparkly purple pigtails, pink wings, and a wand. She was launched in 2006; her presence in the neighborhood brought the grand total of female Muppets, after thirty-seven seasons, to five (Miss Piggy was on The Muppet Show, not Sesame Street, and, by the way, was voiced by Frank Oz, a man). That in itself is astonishing—Sesame Street, which has skillfully tackled differences involving race, language, disability, and culture, can’t figure out gender?
Not that it hasn’t tried. The show has introduced a new female Muppet nearly every year, only to see them fizzle. Just as with real women, audiences seem to judge them by different standards than the males. “If Cookie Monster was a female character, she’d be accused of being anorexic or bulimic,” the show’s executive producer, Carol-Lynn Parente, has quipped. And, she added, were he a girl, Elmo’s “whimsy” might be misread as “ditziness.” But the real fur ceiling has to do with appearance. Lulu, a shy, scruffy-looking monster introduced in 2000, was a flat-out flop—mainly because “she wasn’t that attractive” (unlike that dreamboat Grover?). The most successful female Muppet has been Zoe, who was the first character entirely conceived of by Sesame Workshop executives rather than the creative team, as well as the first one intentionally designed to be good-looking. Apparently, though, they did not go far enough. While Zoe is cute, in a radioactive orange kind of way, her release fell short of expectations, the—ka-ching!—hope of creating a female Elmo. Even slapping a tutu on her did not help. Perhaps, one of her creators later mused, the problem was that she wasn’t pink. The Workshop was not going to make that mistake again. With Abby, every detail was researched, scrutinized, and tested. Designers labored over the size of her nose (large may be funny, but it’s not pretty) as well as its shape (too snoutlike in one version). Her eyelids were an issue, too—how much should show? In the end, they cover only the outermost part of her exaggerated, circular whites, giving the character a vulnerable, slightly cross-eyed appearance. Her lashes are long and dreamy. Her voice is sibilant, babyish in its pitch, and her catchphrase is “That’s so magic!” She practically begs to be hugged.
Workshop executives have denied they created Abby with a licensing bonanza in mind; the fact that she is so infinitely marketable, that she dovetailed precisely with the pink-fairy-princess megatrend among girls, was apparently a mere happy coincidence. Besides, as Liz Nealon, the executive vice president and creative director of Sesame Workshop, has explained, the company was simply following the logic of dramatic convention. “If you think about The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she said. “Some girls relate to Rhoda, who’s our Zoe, and some girls really relate to Mary, who’s a girly girl.” I don’t know which reruns she’s been watching, but the last I checked, that description fit not Mary but the airheaded Georgette—and who wants their daughters “relating” to her? No matter. Workshop execs claimed that Abby’s character was ideal for exploring the challenges children face when they are new at school or different from other kids. That makes all kinds of sense—because everyone knows it’s easy to fit in when you are snaggle-toothed and fat and have bad fur. What is really, really hard for a girl is being cute, sparkly, and magical.
I hate to sound like Peggy the Grouch, but it seemed disingenuous to spin the same old sweet-and-cute, pink-and-sparkly version of girlhood as an attempt at diversity or redress for some perceived historical slight. I was annoyed that the show I admired—and had loved as a child—for celebrating differences and stomping stereotypes so blithely upheld, even defended, this one. Yet it wasn’t the first time I had heard that argument. At every geographic outpost from Disneyland to Sesame Street, executives described the same “taboo-breaking” vision, with an identical self-righteous justification about “honoring the range of play patterns girls have.” All this pink-and-pretty, they claimed, was about giving girls more choices, not fewer. Like Disney’s Andy Mooney, marketers would tell me, “We’re only giving girls what they want,” as if magnifying kids’ desires is less coercive than instigating them. Even Dora the Explorer, who, according to Brown Johnson, the president of animation for Nickelodeon, was consciously developed as an alternative to the “Barbie image of girlhood,” morphs into something else in the toy store. During a phone conversation, Johnson told me that Dora was drawn to resemble a real child, “not tall or elongated.” She was envisioned as powerful, brave, indifferent to beauty. Her clothes were loose and functional, her hair cut in a simple bob. “Part of the DNA of Nickelodeon when it comes to gender portrayal,” Johnson said, “is to not have everyone be perfect-looking.”
But how did that square with what fans find on the shelves of Target and Claire’s: the Dora Star Catcher Lip Gloss Bracelets; Dora’s Let’s Get Ready Vanity; Dora hair care kit; Dora Style Your Own Cellphone; Dress and Style Dora? The “adorable” boogie board? Wow! Way to counteract Barbie! I could almost hear Johnson purse her lips through the phone as she prepped the corporate damage control. “There’s a delicate tension between the consumer products group and the production group,” she said crisply. Followed by the familiar phrase “One of the important aspects of Dora’s success is to not deny certain play patterns kids have.”
In 2009, Nick introduced a “new” Dora aimed at five- to eight-year-olds, whom the company referred to as tweens. This Dora was, um, tall and elongated with long, luscious hair and round doe eyes. Her backpack and map had disappeared. Rather than shorts and sneaks, she sported a fashionable pink baby-doll tunic with purple leggings and ballet flats. The character’s makeover set the Momosphere angrily abuzz: was Dora becoming a “Whora”? That was not, I imagine, the response Nick and Mattel were hoping for. But to my mind, sluttiness was not the issue. New Dora wasn’t sexy, not at all—she was pretty, and that prettiness was now inextricable from her other traits. No longer did she turn “gender portrayal” on its head by “not looking perfect.” New Dora stands as a reminder to her rugged little sister that she better get with the program, apparently by age five.
There’s no question that new Dora is appealing. Of course she is, just as Abby Cadabby is the quintessence of adorable. Girls love them. In a vacuum, I might love them, too. And perhaps the problem is not so much that they exist as what still does not. Abby would trouble me far less if there could be a female Muppet as surly as Oscar or as id-driven as Cookie or as goofy as Grover: if there were more “play patterns” to “honor” than just this one.
I get why manufacturers play to pink—it makes good business sense. A marketing executive I spoke with at LeapFrog, which is based in Emeryville, California, told me that her company even had a name for it: “the pink factor.” “If you make a pink baseball bat, parents will buy one for their daughter,” she explained. “Then, if they subsequently have a son, they’ll have to buy a second bat in a different color. Or, if they have a boy first and then a daughter, they’ll want to buy a pink one for their precious little girl. Either way, you double your sales.” But as a parent, I wonder what all that pinkness—the color, the dominance of the play pattern it signals—is teaching girls about who they are, what they should value, what it means to be female?
A family portrait hangs near the front door of the home of a friend of mine. It is a brigh
t, playful, almost cartoonlike painting in which they are surrounded by their worldly belongings. There is my friend, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, pressing a cell phone to her ear with one hand, her computer perched on a table close by. She and her husband are both writers; their books stand at their feet like additional family members. Their younger daughter sits cross-legged on a couch wearing a frothy tutu; their older daughter carries their son piggyback-style. The windows implausibly reflect the facade of their two-story home, as well as the kids’ wooden play structure in the backyard. You have never met them, you don’t know who they are, but those clues are enough for you to deduce their class, education, lifestyle. You can imagine them now, put them into context, can’t you?
I thought about that portrait as I wandered back to the Javits Center. It’s so tempting to say these are just toys. Some scholars would indeed argue that I’m projecting my own adult apprehension onto Fashion Angels or My Bling Bling Barbie that has nothing to do with a child’s experience of the dolls or how she plays with them. And to a point I agree: just because little girls wear the tulle does not mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of them shoot baskets in ball gowns or cast themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. Yet even if girls stray from the prescribed script, doesn’t it exert its influence? Don’t our possessions reflect who we are; shape, even define, our experience? The belongings surrounding my friends in their portrait form a shorthand statement about their identities—and, I might add, a pretty accurate one. So what do the toys we give our girls, the pinkness in which they are steeped, tell us about what we are telling them? What do they say about who we think they are and ought to be?
Cinderella Ate My Daughter Page 4
