Though it’s certainly here now, pink didn’t stabilize as a girls-only color until sometime in the 1950s. During that decade, pink was the in-style color for bathrooms in residential homes. Notice that this ad, sent in by Penny R., features a boy in a pink bathroom with no threat of emasculation:
Pam Kueber, at Retro Renovation, estimates that:
…some 5 million pink bathrooms went into the 20 million+ homes built in the United States from 1946-1966… 1 in 4 — at minimum — mid-century homes had a pink bathroom.
She quotes a 1958 Electrical Merchandising that said: “If forced to pick one color as leading this year, most industry men say pink is tops.”
Pink is so strongly associated with women now that it hardly seems appropriate for a family bathroom. Kueber bemoans that home owners are taking sledge hammers to pink tiles and encourages us to preserve the bathrooms because we all look excellent in pink-tinted light.
See men in pink (then, now, and now).
Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
