"What a handsome boy." "Isn't he beautiful." "He's so cute." These are just some of the reactions Astrid has garnered from assorted shopkeepers, pedestrians and passers-by in her first few months. Her features are not particularly masculine. Her face is not very boyish. Rather, the assumption is made for one reason: no pink. Strolling the aisles of a children's clothing shop, the gender division is clear. One side blushes with fuchsia, coral and rose, while the other is tinged with blue and green. No doubt pink is the dominant colour for young girls but so far, Astrid has not been part of this trend.
We did not know during my wife's pregnancy whether Astrid would be a boy or a girl. Life has so few true surprises. Why spoil this one, we thought. As a result, her initial dress code was what could be described as gender neutral: whites, greens and yellows. Over the months, this scheme has hardened into habit. She has only one pink item of clothing: a sleep suit. Curled up in her cot, she resembles a prawn. Her wardrobe contains a smattering of dresses, but none of them are pink.
Different eras and cultures tend to see colours differently. While red often denotes danger in the West, it carries positive connotations in China. Yet there are also surprising continuities. Take the blues, for example, whose essence of meaning crossed over oceans and centuries. While it only became the name of a musical form around 1912 in America, the association of blues with low spirits dates back beyond 1798 with a play called Blue Devils by George Coleman.
The history of colours is rich and varied. Often they are linked to their production processes. Indian yellow, for example, was made by feeding cows a diet of mango leaves, which turned their urine bright yellow. Tyrian purple - otherwise known as royal purple or imperial dye - was esteemed by the Romans and came from a particular type of mollusc, which was first produced near the city of Tyre in present-day Lebanon.
In the midst of such legacies, the phenomenon of blue for boys and pink for girls is quite recent. Before the 20th century, boys and girls were all dressed in white. When colours for children's clothing did emerge, the initial demarcations are interesting. Contemporary journals describe how convention dictated boys should wear pink ("the stronger colour") and girls should wear blue ("more delicate and dainty").
Nevertheless, scientists at Newcastle University discovered a biological basis for the associations of blue with boys and pink with girls. The study in 2007 found that women preferred reddish tones and men preferred blues. From these results, the study went on to speculate that this preference could be traced back to our hunter-gatherer days. As the gatherers, women needed to be good at identifying fruits and berries, so the hypothesis went. Men were the hunters and so blue - the colour of water and sky - became their preference.
There is something attractive about this idea, but I am not sure it withstands scrutiny. By not dressing Astrid in pink are we somehow subverting her instincts? I think not. The association of pink with girls seems to be more cultural than innate. Gender roles are formed swiftly and the process is less than subtle. Now that Astrid has teeth, people are forever trying to feed her. One person suggests giving her a cracker, while another speaks up about the benefits of mashed banana. Weaning is a surprisingly divisive issue.
The UK Department of Health advises breast feeding until six months. Apparently it used to say four months, but evidence emerged that waiting longer minimises the risk of developing allergies to certain types of food. It might not be true, but there seems little point in risking it. "But she looks hungry," is what people say about Astrid. At the dinner table, she watches intently as someone forks food from plate to mouth. "She looks like she could eat that," somebody says. I point out that, in the past week, she has tried to eat a magazine, a table and a rug. Putting things in her mouth is just what she does at the moment.
So we fend off suggestions of solids and stick with milk. There is plenty of time for food in another month or two.
