Photographer JeonMee Yoon is using books, toys, clothing and more to capture the pervasiveness of kids’ color-coded gender roles.
In an illustrative photo series, Yoon, a South Korea-based photographer, conveys the ubiquity of a simple and often unspoken rule: blue for boys and pink for girls.
As reported by Wired, Yoon’s work, titled Pink and Blue Project, which began in 2005, initially inspired by her own daughter, is intended not just as a showcase of pervasive gender roles through kids’ color-coded belongings, but as a dissection of the effectiveness of the marketing, or ‘objectification,’ behind the phenomenon.
‘I ask each model to sustain a blank, neutral expression to underline an ‘objectification’ of each child, and I request various poses to heighten the differences in gender and personal characteristics among my subjects,’ Yoon told Wired.
Yoon’s work aims to highlight the forces behind the color-coding by gender and its ubiquity in kids’ toys. The project began in 2005 and revisited the kids over the years. Pictured: Agnes in 2009 and 2015
Children selected in Yoon’s work — a group from New York, New Jersey, and Seoul whom she was given permission to photograph — were also photographed five and 10 years later in the third iteration of the project.
According to researchers, the power of color-coded marketing which is conveyed vividly through Yoon’s photos is also backed by science and extends beyond western culture and into Asia.
In a a study of 139 pre-school aged children in Hong Kong published in Springer journal Sex Roles, researchers found that the preference for color outshone most other difference between respondents.
‘Our findings support the notion that gender-typed liking for pink versus blue is a particularly salient gender difference,’ said one of the authors, Sui Ping Yeung.
‘Moreover, our findings reveal that gender differences could be created merely by applying gender labels.’
Things weren’t always blue for boys and pink for girls. According to reports in an American newspaper from 1918, it used to be the other way around. Some dramatically changed their preferences with age, as shown above. Pictured: Noelle in 2006 and 2015
In Blue and Pink JeongMee Yoon’s photos focuses on gender-based marketing by documenting kids as in five year intervals. Pictured: Kihun in 2007 and 2018
Outside of merely influencing color-preference, researchers note that gender-based marketing of toys like blue for boys and pink for girls may also influence the behavior and perceptions of children as they age.
If a certain genre of toy is made blue — like a police car or a stethoscope — it could reinforce the career’s associated with those toys as being a profession for men or women.
In some cases, explicit guidance on gender in toys can even influence kids’ performance the research suggest. In the study, puzzles labeled as ‘for boy’ tended to result in males outperforming their female counterparts.
Reticence over gendered toys has centered on how they effect kids’ view the world. In some cases it can even affect performance in certain tasks, says research. Pictured: Michael 2009 and 2015
Color-coding in products can transcend the realm of kids and is present in products we know and buy as adults. In some cases, the same products are adorned in pink to better market to women
Traditionally, while boys were given army helmets and guns, girls were given baby dolls and barbies in what some say reinforces negative gender stereotypes
‘It is possible to create a gender difference in young children by simply labeling, arbitrarily, something as for boys and something else as for girls,’ co-author Wang Ivy Wong told PsyPost in 2018.
‘Gender labelling, by explicit gender terms or by color, not only affects preferences but also performance.’
According to a report in the British Journal of Photography, in America the popularity of blue for boys and pink for girls originally rose after the first World War and prior to that the colors were marketed the other way around.
‘Use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention,’ wrote the Sunday Sentinel, an American newspaper in 1914.