As most people know, the color of our clothes sends other people signals giving them a hint of whom and how we are. Most certainly this is what leads parents to buy blue clothes to small boys and pink clothes to little girls. But what would really happen if we decided to ignore these unwritten laws of color and went on to buy clothes of all colors to both boys and girls? Would it mean anything at all?
Although the distinction is most obvious with children’s clothing, there is a similar difference in clothes for adults as well. One rarely sees men dressed in pink, purple or any color usually worn by women. The opposite is not uncommon though, women can dress in any color they wish without facing the potential problem of becoming a man.
So why is it men make such a big deal about this? Is it actually because they think they will turn into women if they dress in pink? Of course this is not the case, but the truth isn’t very far from it.
In a small Swedish study men and women where asked to make some quick guesses about people in various pictures. The test persons was given no instructions but to blurt out what first came to them, no matter what they associated the picture with. What they noticed was that clothing – and what it signals – varies greatly between men and women. When faced with pictures of women dressed in different outfits in various colors, most of the test persons made guesses about their job, family situation and nationality. Similarly the test panel was inclined to make guesses about such things when looking at pictures of men in manly colors, but as soon as they saw a man in pink most people made guesses about their sexual preferences. Although not really proving anything, this study indicates that people tend to judge men and women differently when looking at their clothes accessories.
This might not come as a surprise to many, but it is a sad story for straight men who like pink. Even though many don’t give a damn if people think they like men, few of them are happy to be judged by the color of their clothes.
It is not only pink or purple that make people expect odd things about someone, other colors had their own prejudices. In the study mentioned above, people dressed in black or very dark clothes more often than others was believed to be; unemployed, unhappy, uneducated and even divorced. At the other end of the spectrum, women dressed in dark blue were expected to be well educated, married career women with few kids.
As mentioned above, this study was too small to actually prove something but it does indicate a whole bunch of prejudices regarding clothes in general and the color of them in particular. What you wear as well as the color will lead others to think you are in a certain way, or at the very least have a specific type of tendencies.
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