"Apparently, it wasn’t until after World War II when the very powerfully separate color-coding happened, where pink is for girls and blue is for boys.... Now, parents really want to know if it’s a girl or a boy, and they want to use clothing to communicate that. There are a couple different theories about it. One theory actually says that the thing that put the stamp on it was—I don’t know if you’re familiar with the two portrait painters Thomas Lawrence and Thomas Gainsborough. Henry Huntington was a railroad magnate and art collector. He purchased 'Pinkie' and 'Blue Boy' and brought them to his mansion in California. Apparently, one of the historians said that the media publicity surrounding the installation of these two paintings side by side is what cemented the color-coding of blue is for boys and pink is for girls."
Eugenia Williamson in The Boston Globe interviews photographer Lisa Kessler about Kessler's exhibit "Seeing Pink."
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