The insidious apartheid of thinking pink

So why isn't the same sensible policy extended to girls?

During my shopping trip experiment, I made another observation. When people thought my baby was a boy they said a variety of things about her - big, chubby, cute, alert, smiley. When they knew she was a girl there was one word that dominated: pretty. I suspect that the pinker, the frillier, the more sequinned her clothes, the more her prettiness would have been praised and emphasised. And perhaps this is exactly what parents are after when they dress their little girls, whether they are conscious of it or not.

Even if you reject these arguments, ask yourself this: isn't there something disquieting about the sheer ubiquity of pinkification? Isn't it odd that we are increasingly dressing our baby girls in a gender uniform when there is no similar uniform for boys?

If a custom becomes near universal there is a danger that we stop noticing it, so we never consider whether there might be an alternative. The colour coding of baby girls and toddlers is becoming such a custom; one that says a great deal about the way we socialise our children and what we teach them about gender.