Hey,

Before a child is even born, the world has picked a color for them.
And, that is, usually, wrapped in love.
But somewhere between the nursery and the toy aisle, colours begin carrying more than the colour. They start carrying instructions about emotional availability and strength, beauty and bravery, what girls are expected to enjoy and what boys learn to stay away from.

#Edition77 is about how two colours became shorthand for two different childhoods, and what happens when children begin mistaking those instructions for themselves.

Inside this Edition:
👉 We Colour-Coded Them Before We Knew Who They Were
🥗 What she’s watching, reading, doing
📰 5 headlines worth her time
✨ Her Spotlight
🤍 Note to Her

We never just colour-coded childhood. We colour-coded their possibilities.

Pink means girl. Blue means boy.
Easy, right?
Except history was never that tidy.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was no consistent agreement over which colour belonged to whom. A 1927 Time survey found some major American department stores recommending pink for boys and blue for girls, while others advised exactly the opposite. The convention we recognise today did not become dominant in much of the U.S. until around the 1950s.

The colours did not change.
The meanings we attached to them did.

By the 1950s, pink had become increasingly intertwined with a particular image of femininity. Plus, in 1953, our ✨Spotlight✨ for today started a wave around pink. Then feminism pushed back. Gender-neutral children’s clothing became more common in the 1960s and 70s. But by the 1980s, prenatal testing gave parents the ability to know a baby’s sex before meeting them – and therefore to shop accordingly.

Today, the colour arrives before the child does.

A cake turns pink. Confetti turns blue. The nursery follows.
And children notice.

Neuroscientist Gina Rippon cites research finding no pink preference among boys or girls before about age two. Afterwards, as children become increasingly aware of gender categories, girls begin showing greater enthusiasm for pink while boys increasingly reject it.

“Liking something and learning that something is not for you are very different lessons.”

None of this requires pretending boys and girls are biologically identical. Research into play, activity and temperament remains complicated, and average differences can exist through some combination of biology and environment. But an average is not an instruction manual.

A boy being more physically adventurous on average does not explain why nail polish should threaten his masculinity. A girl liking cooking does not mean domesticity is her destiny.

We spent decades telling girls they could cross over. But reverse the direction and our confidence gets shakier. A girl wearing a suit is damn empowering… but a boy, even, thinking about a tutu still requires explanation.

Rippon points to research suggesting children themselves detect this inequality. These rules can become far more consequential for queer, trans and gender-nonconforming children, for whom crossing the “pink line” may affect not only self-expression, but safety, recognition and belonging. 

Parents may describe themselves as open-minded, yet young boys still anticipate less approval for choosing feminine-coded things. Which raises a harder question: 

Did we expand girls’ access to masculinity faster than we increased the value of femininity itself?

Because freedom cannot mean teaching girls to escape everything feminine.
And it cannot mean forcing boys into it either.

A girl should be allowed to adore pink without being dismissed as shallow. A boy should be allowed to hate it without being called stereotypical. Another boy should be able to paint every fingernail a different colour, then race outside with a bow and arrow, without adults needing those two things to cancel each other out.

Equality is never about making children less different.
It is about making differences less limiting.

Freedom is never taking pink away from girls or handing it to boys.
It is making sure no colour comes with instructions.

💬 Ideas for the week when life starts sounding like a deadline.

🎬 WATCH: Why Was Pink for Boys and Blue for Girls? — PBS Origins
A nine-minute primer on how children once wore largely gender-neutral clothing, how marketing eventually made today’s colour code feel natural, in betweens and more…
📖 READ: Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue by Christia Spears Brown
This is a research-led guide to seeing children through their individual interests and strengths rather than presumed gender: covers play, school, sport, emotions and the subtle expectations adults pass on without intending to.
🔍 DO: Take a One-Day Gender Audit
For one day, notice how children are praised, corrected, dressed, gifted or described. Which words are used for girls? Which behaviours are encouraged in boys? Then ask: Are we recognising the child or rehearsing a role for them?

🌍 5 stories shaping the week for women everywhere.

🧠 Girls With ADHD Are Diagnosed Years Late: Girls with ADHD are often overlooked because their symptoms can appear as daydreaming, perfectionism or quiet burnout rather than disruption, leaving many unsupported until anxiety and exhaustion have already taken hold.
🩺 Preeclampsia Research Finds New Treatment Targets: A small UCL-led study found that stressed placental cells, impaired blood vessels and an overactive immune response may combine in severe preeclampsia, offering possible targets for future treatment.
🧙‍♀️ Independence Once Made Women “Witches”: Historical research shows that widows, property owners, healers and women earning from traditionally female skills were especially vulnerable to witchcraft accusations when their independence challenged male-controlled wealth and authority.
🏆 Honda Cup Celebrates 50 Years: Past champions including Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Ann Meyers Drysdale reunited in New York as the Honda Cup marked five decades of recognising women college athletes for performance, leadership, academics and community service.
🌿 Grief Walks Give Women Space to Heal: A Barnsley walking group is bringing bereaved women together to share memories, talk honestly about loss or simply walk beside others who understand how isolating grief can become.

Found her. Loved her. Needed you to see her.

When Mamie Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953, she helped give ‘pink’ one of its most recognisable faces.

For Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration, Mamie wore a pale pink gown covered in pink rhinestones, complete with matching gloves, shoes and handbag. Her devotion extended into the rooms around her, where pink appeared across furnishings, bathrooms and décor. Newspapers soon gave the shade a name: “Mamie Pink.”

At a moment when postwar America was selling women a carefully polished vision of domestic femininity, Mamie made pink feel aspirational, fashionable and unmistakably feminine. Homes, clothing and appliances followed.

Her Weekly Download has two drops every week, Tuesdays and Fridays – plus a Sunday news special for the women-first stories worth knowing.

✨P.S.  Send this to her who needs to know this because the best kind of wisdom goes from women to women 💚