Flora Unveiled

The Quandary Over Plant Sex j 5

5 5

in the trade journal Infant’s Department (later renamed Earnshaw’s) provided the following

rationale for the colors:

There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted

rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more

decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more

delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl.^8

Between 1900 and 1940, pink and blue gradually switched sexes, but even as late as 1939

the editors of Parent’s Magazine were still arguing in favor of the original color coding:

There seems to be more reasons for choosing blue for girls, than the customary pink ...

red symbolizes zeal and courage, while blue is symbolic of faith and constancy ... all

these points lead to blue for girls.^9

By the end of World War II, the matter was no longer being debated, and the baby boom-

ers became the first generation to regard the association of pink for girls and blue for boys

as the norm.

The practice of sex- typing by color illustrates that no matter how arbitrary gender associ-

ations may be, they can quickly become accepted as common sense. Note that the character

traits associated with blue versus pink— “zeal and courage” for pink (male), “faith and con-

stancy” for blue (female)— reflect even more ancient gender biases. Such deeply ingrained

prejudices, like those applied to race, potentially can provide the rationale and create the

conditions for social and economic inequality.

Gender stereotypes have also had an impact on the fields of biology and medicine.

Aristotle has the dubious distinction of being regarded as the first to argue on quasi-

scientific grounds that women are physiologically inferior to men. The argument was ini-

tially based on the concepts, inherited from Empedocles, of the four elements (earth, air,

fire, and water) and the four primary qualities (heat, cold, wetness, and dryness) that char-

acterize them. In ranking the sexes, heat seems to have been the decisive factor. According

to Aristotle, “in man the male is much superior to the female in natural heat ... females

are weaker and colder in nature, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort

of natural deficiency.”^10 This “deficiency” is evident during procreation:

The male and the female differ from each other in the possession of an ability and

in the lack of an ability. The male is able to concoct, formulate and to ejaculate the

sperm which contains the origin of the form [of the newborn]— I do not mean here

the material element out of which it is born resembling its parent but the initiat-

ing formative principle whether it acts within itself or within another. The female,

on the other hand, is that which receives the seed but is unable to formulate or to

ejaculate it.^11

Unable to produce and ejaculate seed herself, the female is relegated to a passive role as

a mere incubator of the man’s seed. Although in other passages Aristotle allows that the