Blue is for Boys and Pink is for Girls

An Easter story

As most of you know, I am a recovering Catholic. As a kid I was drawn to Mary, Jesus’ mother, because for most of the New Testament, she’s the only girl character. There’s another Mary later on in Jesus’ adult years, but now I realize my teachers didn’t talk about her as much.

Mary had big main character energy: she didn’t simply pee on a stick to find out she was pregnant. She was visited by the pregnancy angel and WAS NOT EVEN FREAKED OUT. Apparently.

And at Christmas, she is the star. Like, besides the North Star.

Watching kids play out the nativity every year, I knew that was the role I wanted. This whole story only happened because Mary was brave enough to ride a donkey while nine months pregnant. Kings and shepherds and heavenly hosts (whatever those are) were LINING UP to shake her hand and kiss her baby.

Plus, whoever played Mary got to wear The Mary Outfit.

Kind of like this.

The blue headdress, the blue robes. A vision, a princess, an icon.

A woman giving birth in a friggin’ barn with no access to modern healthcare. But the robes!!

After three decades of idolizing this outfit, it only just occurred to me to wonder: Why is Mary always wearing blue?

According to art historians, blue used to be considered a feminine color while red (and its pastel version, pink) was considered a masculine color. For a long time, particularly during the Renaissance when art became more accessible to the average Josephine, religious art is what sold. It was classy to own a painting of Jesus as a fat little baby or as a full-grown man being tortured to death.

Because so many Christian paintings were made during this time, those images have influenced how we think of Mary and Jesus (and donkeys).

The Adoration of the Magi by Giovanni di Paolo. Look at that donkey chowin’ down!

Somewhere around the 1940’s, magazines encouraged women to dress boys in blue and girls in pink. In the 1980’s, when doctors could start identifying the biological sex of a baby in utero, this random color/gender pairing solidified. People posted giant storks carrying blue sacks on their lawns to announce the arrival of a baby boy, but it was too late to erase centuries of Mary’s azure fashion.

Thus, The Mary Outfit lives on, defying gender norms or whatever.

Thank you for jumping down this rabbit hole with me. Here’s the video that led to this mini investigation/history lesson.

itsthecwolf

A post shared by Christina Wolfgram ™ (@itsthecwolf)

Love,

Christina