Pink gender timeline

Book project

PINK CODE

PINK PRODUCT PLOY refers to the practice of coloring a product pink on the assumption that women and girls are more likely to buy them.

Children’s peer cultures have been shaped by consumer goods and practices for over a century. The American toy and advertising first targeted children directly in the 1890s. By the 1930s, children were firmly established as consumers with distinct needs and interests, and the power to influence the spending of family and peers. Marketers invented categories – the teenager (1870s/1944), the tween (early 1990s), the toddler (1910-1930s) – and played up gender differences in order to segment childhood into discrete age and gender groupings, each associated with specific consumer needs, products and increasingly also colors. The particular products and colors allow for the construction of discrete identities. The invention of new age segments, identities, and needs assure the ongoing consumption of goods.

© 2013 by DOMINIQUE GRISARD. All rights reserved.

Power of color