Gender Color Coding

It used to be common for girls and for boys
To wear dresses in white until maybe age six.
The chemical dyes that would last were expensive,
And bleach found the stains on white easy to fix.

Why dresses? At first, they’re convenient for diapers,
And then they stay good as the kids grow real fast.
The 20th century saw the beginning
Of making kids’ genders more blatant at last.

The difference in colors appears to have started
In part as a retailer marketing ploy:
A fam’ly with two kids would purchase more clothing
If one were a girl and the other a boy.

By June of ‘18, publications were saying
That boys should wear pink and that girls should wear blue.
The rationale: Pink was much bolder, like red,
Only lighter, and blue was a delicate hue.

The opposite dictate arrived in the ‘40s,
For reasons historians couldn’t explain.
Did kids get their preference? Studies find just
That for most people, pink is a relative pain.

The second-wave feminists brought back the unisex
Clothing for kids till around ’85.
Prenatally testing made gendering simple,
Thus helping the color dichotomy thrive.