Pink is for Battleships

In class on Tuesday, we discussed the social norms present in fairy tales and the effect they have on us. The feminist criticisms pointed to the stereotypical portrayal of women throughout popular fairy tales. During the discussion in class, we talked about girls wanting to be pretty princesses and such. I'm not entirely sure if anyone other than me mentioned the color pink used to identify girls from the moment they are born. I found an article/slideshow about the evolution of the color pink as a "feminine" color, and it fit almost perfectly within the impact of culture we were discussing.
Practical children’s clothing is often white or pale because of the frequent washings it is subjected to (children have always been messy little things). When color was used, pink used to be for boys, as it was a watered down version of red, a masculine color that invokes rage and passion. Girls would be dressed in blue to invoke the image of the Virgin Mary and because it was thought to be a calming color. The slideshows points out that the color pink was deemed an entirely female color after World War II, and this process was aided by feminists who instituted an antipink backlash. This backlash has now come full circle, as pink is the defining color of the breast cancer awareness movement.
The slideshow ends with a reference to "princess pink." But if we look back to fairy tales and even Disney movies, there is little to no mention of color or the use of pink as a purely feminine color. In fact, the only Disney princess with a pink dress is Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), and her dress is alternating between blue and pink at the end of the movie as the two fairies argue with one another. It did not become completely pink until the recent(ish) rash of Disney princess merchandise. I suspect even this was mostly out of convenience because Cinderella has a blue dress already. The color pink and the association with femininity (and princesses) is a cultural phenomenon, not something found in the female psyche. I believe this is the argument of Zipes in his introduction. Fairy tales, like the color pink, are a cultural phenomenon that forms our perception of the world around us. The feminist problem with the popular fairy tales of recent history is the "unfortunate" impact they have on the perception of women and their proper roles within a society.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245052/slideshow/2245085/fs/0//entry/2245067/

*I could not figure out how to embed the slideshow*