{"id":44296,"date":"2012-03-08T12:40:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T17:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=44296"},"modified":"2013-10-08T17:42:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T22:42:51","slug":"is-pink-pink-in-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/08\/is-pink-pink-in-saudi-arabia\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Pink “Pink” in Saudi Arabia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blog Blue Abaya<\/a> is an account of the experiences of a women who moved to Saudi Arabia from Finland. \u00a0One of her posts centers around the difference in the color palette<\/a>. \u00a0“Pinkness,” she writes, “seems to be everywhere.” \u00a0The\u00a0\u00a0prevalence of pink in Saudi Arabia is a great example of how the meaning of colors is different from culture to culture. \u00a0Pink simply does not have the same feminine association there that it does in the U.S.<\/p>\n

In addition, she tells this story:<\/em><\/p>\n

[M]y american friend… was in a shopping mall with her [one-and-a-half-year] old son. His hair is a little longer which is unusual in Saudi but many parents in the U.S. find cute.<\/p>\n

A Saudi woman with a baby stroller stopped to talk to her asking, is this your daughter? \u00a0My friend said no it’s a boy. \u00a0So this Saudi lady dramatically threw her hands in the air looking toward the sky and began praying: \u00a0“Oh Allah guide this woman to the straight path!” “Guide her to cut the sons hair!” \u00a0“He\u00a0looks\u00a0like a girl, guide this poor woman!”<\/p>\n

She told my friend she\u00a0MUST\u00a0cut his hair because he looked like a girl.<\/p>\n

My friend was appalled at the woman’s behavior. Nevertheless she tried to be polite and said pointing to the woman’s baby dressed up in an all-pink outfit “What a beautiful girl you have mashallah.”<\/p>\n

The woman replied: \u00a0“It’s a boy.”<\/p>\n

My friend asked why is he dressed up in PINK?<\/p>\n

She replied: “Oh, I don’t believe in colors being gender specific.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, culture.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blog Blue Abaya is an account of the experiences of a women who moved to Saudi Arabia from Finland. \u00a0One of her posts centers around the difference in the color palette. \u00a0“Pinkness,” she writes, “seems to be everywhere.” \u00a0The\u00a0\u00a0prevalence of pink in Saudi Arabia is a great example of how the meaning of colors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[373,55,1980,293],"class_list":["post-44296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-color","tag-gender","tag-nation-saudi-arabia","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44296"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57499,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44296\/revisions\/57499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}