Stupid in Pink

It's 35 years since the last outbreak of feminism, when someone mentioned, I believe, that what little girls were made of might depend to a large degree on what was made of them.  And much longer since it began to be understood that human beings are cultural creatures. Yet today, on The Today Programme we are told that there is an evolutionary reason why women prefer pink.  A study in China has discovered that more women than men choose red colours over any others and the woman who conducted the study explained in all seriousness that the reason was 'millions of years old'.  Women at the dawn of time (I love the dawn of time - not 6 in the morning when the alarm goes off, but so long ago that we don't have to say when it is or if we actually know anything about it) - I say, women at the dawn of time were gatherers of roots and berries while men hunted meat.  Weren't they?  We're absolutely sure about that, are we?  Men brought home the meat for the pot, women poked about in the soil with sticks and things and picked berries so that the kids could have their five veg portions a day, and thereon hangs the tale of human culture. 

Well, berries, says our scientific lady, are red, and therefore that is why women prefer pink.  It gave them an evolutionary advantage.  She means that women who preferred blue or yellow back in the dawnoftime failed to find as many berries as those with leanings towards pink, and so failed to reproduce and therefore died out.  'Nah, I'm not gonna pick that raspberry, I'll wait until I find a gooseberry, or - wait for it, a blueberry.  Nothing will make me pull that white turnip from the ground.  I'll keep looking till I find a cherry.'  What man worth his weight in roast beef would want to mate with such a hopeless gatherer?  It makes losing your cherry an even more serious business.  Even if they did find some low life hunter, the children of such a union would fail to thrive on the wrong coloured berries as well as having the blue preference (which, for some reason has now become genetic)themselves which they passed on to their girl offspring, and so their pink loving sisters' children's children would prevail.  Which is why us modern girls can't help but take the pink lavatory roll from the supermarket shelves.

Actually, there is at the very least doubt that the simple division of labour of men into hunters and women into gatherers was actually so simple a split. And it was taken as read way back in the 80's, when I was studying anthropology, that human cultural behaviour exponentially overwhelmed 'natural behaviour'  if such a thing actually exists.  Still, here we are in the 21st century and women the world over still feel pretty in pink, and that proves it.  The girl can't help it.  And god knows what the man can't help.  Evolutionary psychology holds out no hope for the human race.  It offers no expectation that we can learn, or develop beyond pre-determined survival advantages and disadvantages.  Worse than that, it tells half-truths about the past and then uses them to determine the present.  Even if it were true it would be so dull, so intellectually bereft, that we might as well all curl up and go to sleep until the dusk of time. All of which doesn't matter much in the larger picture, but the incorrigibility of it all it pisses me off.  And maybe the larger picture does actually depend on being about to think well or poorly about the way and the why people are.

Comments

[aineliva]

Well I hate pink, I always have, and I am a woman. Does that count for nothing?

[Overpowered]

Thank you for articulating this so brilliantly.

I too was appalled by both this 'scientific' research and by the media reporting of it. Everything about it was flawed from beginning to end, including the fact that they included some Chinese immigrants to Britain in order to 'eliminate any cultural factors'. Because little girls in China don't have Barbie, apparently. I hate the antipathy between feminism and science in general, but it's not surprising when you see this sort of stuff being presented as 'truth'.

Slightly off-topic, but you have been one of my favourite authors for many years, and I can't believe I have only just discovered that you have a blog. I'll be coming back to read through your entire archive whenever I have time!

[avi]

And here I am trying to get my students (90% girls student body in my school) to reflect on the reasons why feminism is still worth fighting for. And I am biologically male (so what, don't I have a HUMAN brain ?) and already most of my students don't find me credible. And school starts again tomorrow. I'm depressed already. And they call it science !

[Lara]

You ought to read this. In fact, we prefer blue...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/25/genderissues

[Special K]

well said! That "study" was so ridiculous - what *might* have been more interesting would have been if they asked why men and women felt drawn to certain colors. Obviously these things are dictated by cultural influences, and time. A stroll through a museum will show anyone that not long ago boys were dressed in pink (it was considered a "masculine" color, so closely related to red) and girls in blue.

[JB]

This pink baiting 'news' item isn't even new. Here's the less frilly genetic version from way, way back (only 2004 actually). It appeared on Australia's ABC but without the fluffy packaging of the story from yesterday -
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1168851.htm
Much more interesting without the bling bling.

[mindlessmunkey]

It was my understanding that pink was actually considered a unisex colour until the 1940s, and that the shift to its perception as a "girls' colour" only came about because the Nazis (somewhat randomly) chose pink fabric for the armbands of homosexuals in concentration camps.

I suppose that could be an urban myth, but frankly it makes more sense than this latest "study".

[Jenny Davidson]

Good rant! Evolutionary psychology makes me foam at the mouth...

[Steven Augustine]

Oh, it gets better and better, doesn't it? They've already "explained," in evolutionary terms, why men prefer blondes (because blondes send a signal of youth, you see...ideal for mating), why Jews are smarter (generations and generations of brainy jobs), and why blacks are not (all those centuries of entry-level employment). They've "proven", scientifically, that genetic Europeans pre-date native Americans on the North American continent, that Homo Sapiens evolved *after* their ancestors migrated from Africa...and they're even working on the grand theory that the races don't radiate from a central evolutionary starting point at all, paving the way for the solemn announcement, in the not-too-distant future, that Aryans are a species apart. Science can be a powerful tool, no?