Pink shoes no grip, blue shoes no glitter; its time we talk about sexism and perception of color.

Hi! Readers, I want to share a small incident today. 

I was invited to a celebration of the baby shower, I went there with full excitement and joy. Then, I am in a baby shower, the room filled with a crowd, children are waiting to hang the balloons, relatives are waiting for the announcement of the gender of the imminent baby, some guests are arriving, and family is ready to take precious photos of this entire moment. The family members are serving their guests. Everything over here seems quite normal yet joyful. 

What more does a simple human being want in an event? Everything seemed quite peaceful and happy. It relates to an attractive event. This event includes all the features for a pretty evening. Every family wants to have one, doesn’t it? What else does a family need? The period of waiting is over, now is the time to reveal the gender of the baby.  With drum rolls, the announcement declared that the baby was a boy, and everyone started to hang on blue balloons. 

Then, there I spot a ten-year-old kid confused and suspicious, I can see that the kid had a lot of questions going on in her mind. I approached her and asked what the problem is. Then she suddenly started bombarding all the questions on me such as: What is up with these blue balloons? Why is everyone having the theme of blue? Why is everyone changing their clothes to blue? Why does a boy reflect only blue color? Why cannot a boy like any other distinctive colors? The moment the room started getting blue, she had thousands of colors literally regarding this. 

I, being an adult, couldn’t answer any questions from this kid. I never thought like this, it never triggered me to ask myself such questions. I was the one who always enjoyed such events, but I never questioned why was the boy who has just been born declared that his color would be blue, and why was he made to choose his color as blue only. These small queries started to eat my mind, so I immediately left the room and went home. 

After the event, when I reached my home. I immediately begin to search for all the questions which went through my mind. I couldn’t find any credible source that suggests that boys are reflected by blue color, no theory suggests anything as such, no renowned person supports the such belief and, it isn’t something that science has proved. Then I came across the article and it clarified my confusion which gave all my confusion the term “color sexism”. Color sexism refers to the declaration of the “so-called” blue color for boys and pink for girls. This is something that we all heard while growing up. But why is it so? Who decided this? What impact does this have on society? On a 10-year-old kid? And why have we been agreeing to this rule so strictly?

After some research, I found out girls were assigned pink colors because pink is close to red, a romantic color, and women were more emotional. Pink and blue have been the two dominant colors that people use to show the sex of their babies. 

I believe, by declaring the colors to the babies, it enforces a role that they are supposed to grow and fit into. And as we have just declared two colors, this also ensures that there are only two genders you are allowed to claim. This simply means that if you are a girl, you have to choose the e pink color which represents that you are more girly. And if you are a boy, you cannot like pink or else you are not manly enough. If you are a girl and you like blue then you are a tomboy and you do not have feminity in you and you are not a strong girl. 

I do not see anything relevant to this belief. This all seems really useless and it should not be applied to society now. I know that everyone sticks to this rule and everyone believes in such differentiation of colors to babies, but as time passed, there are families who do not agree to such a rule and provided the freedom to their babies to choose their own color.  I know many of us are with a narrow mindset, but we should try to enhance the way we think. We are trying to believe that a specific color cannot identify the gender of an individual.

Colors are used to make our life colorful and beautiful. They are not used to specify the

character of a living being. You cannot label anyone with colors. We must respect everyone, let’s go in one correct path of fulfilling our duty.