The History of the Color Pink

By Amber Lin

From buying pink balloons for gender reveals to decorating college dorm rooms in pink ruffles and glitter, pink has long been associated with femininity and womanhood. In fact, the two are barely distinguishable, with girls being shackled into pink—a color labeled as exclusively feminine—from birth.

This raises important questions about how we arrived at this cultural phenomenon and what it means for women today. In this article, I'll discuss two things: the history of pink, specifically how it came to be so closely associated with femininity, and what the implications of that are.

The History: How Pink Became "For Girls"

Pink only began appearing in Western fashion around the mid-1700s; before then, the delicate shade of red wasn't really worn or used. Surprisingly, pink was actually associated with boys. A CNN article explains that the tint was deemed more appropriate for young men as it was seen as a paler shade of red, which was a military color. The shift towards pink being so heavily associated with women occurred in the 1900s, where fashion trends for men shifted towards dark, muted colors, leaving lighter colors for women.

Pink soon became a symbol of delicacy and luxury. Yet, in just a few years, the meaning behind pink shifted again. CNN states that "By the turn of the century, pink had entered the mainstream – and its status shifted in the process. The advent of industrialization and mass-production led to the growing use of cheap dyes like magenta, which resulted in bright, garish versions of the color. Pink went from luxury to working-class and, as a color often worn by prostitutes at the time, from sophisticated to vulgar." These trends weren't limited to just the US. In Japan, women were adopting pink as a part of "Lolita" culture, while in post-war America, marketers began deliberately coding pink as feminine to sell products to increasingly gender-segregated consumer markets.

The Implications of a Gendered Color

What this history supports, and what is more important than ever to understand, is that society determines what pink means—not biology, not nature, but cultural forces and commercial interests. In India, pink has long been a hue for both sexes. In LGBTQ+ movements, pink is a sign of resistance and protest. Even today, in the US, pink is a symbol of reproductive rights. Pink went from being a symbol of status, to a symbol of sensuality, and now, a symbol for women across the world.

But what does it mean when we push pink onto girls from birth? The implications are more significant than they might initially appear. When we gender colors, we're doing more than choosing between blue and pink onesies, we're beginning a lifelong process of sorting children into rigid categories based on arbitrary aesthetic choices. This color-coding teaches girls from infancy that their world should look different, that their preferences should align with socially prescribed femininity, and that deviation from these norms is noteworthy or even unacceptable.

Perhaps most troublingly, the relentless association of pink with femininity can limit how girls see themselves and their possibilities. When "girl things" are consistently coded in one color palette, soft, pastel, decorative, while "neutral" or "boy" things embrace the full spectrum, we're sending a message about who gets to take up space in the world and how.

Yet there's reason for optimism. The fact that pink's meaning has shifted so dramatically throughout history proves that these associations aren't fixed. Just as pink transformed from a masculine color to a feminine one, from high-class to working-class and back again, its meaning can continue to evolve.

When women reclaim pink for movements like reproductive rights, or when anyone wears it as an act of self-expression rather than conformity, they're participating in that evolution. The goal isn't to reject pink entirely, rather, it's to free it (and girls) from the narrow box of prescribed femininity, allowing it to be just another color in the spectrum, available to anyone who genuinely loves it rather than feels obligated to embrace it.