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  • In 1927, "TIME Magazine" took a survey of all the major department stores across the country.

  • They wanted to know which colors they associated with girls in their clothing lines.

  • The answers came back pretty mixed.

  • There's also a catalog in 1918 that suggests that little girls should all wear blue because it's a delicate and dainty color.

  • That's Jennifer Wright; she's an author and often writes about history and fashion for "Racked".

  • It was only after the war that pink got the symbolic association that we have today.

  • In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, the general who won World War II, becomes president.

  • And this actually turns out to be a pretty important moment in the history of pink.

  • It was Ike's inauguration and Mamie Eisenhower came out in this enormous rhinestone-studded pink ballgown,

  • the likes of which you never would've seen during the war when women were wearing much simpler styles.

  • Mamie Eisenhower loved the color pink, and she was known for it.

  • She thought that the pink really brought out her complexion; she had really pretty blue eyes, it was a nice contrast.

  • In fact, a quick search of newspaper headlines mentioning Mamie Eisenhower also reference the color pink pretty frequently.

  • And it wasn't just called pink, it was called "Mamie pink".

  • And she went around giving quotes like, "Ike runs the country, I turn the pork chops."

  • But, yeah, it was a very arbitrary decision that she just loved pink, and everybody else decided, okay, this is the color that ladylike women wear.

  • There's a great song in Funny Face called "Think Pink".

  • Here is our theme, here is our answer: pink!

  • Where the lady editor of a magazine, who is very much based off of Diana Vreeland, sings about how women in America today have got to think pink.

  • Think pink, forget...♪

  • And there's a great line in it where she says, "banish the black, burn the blue," which are two colors that women would've been seeing a lot of during the war years.

  • Around this time, pink became a popular color, not only in just women's clothing but also in the home.

  • Pink as a bridal blush, new Camay; loving pink Camay with an exciting new fragrance; sealed in pink pearl foil, new loving pink Camay.

  • This was something a lot of women liked.

  • By the way, it wasn't seen as a terribly oppressive thing.

  • But, there were definitely women, like Diana Vreeland, who didn't really want to revert to those traditional roles.

  • I haven't seen a woman in two weeks in anything but pinkwhat about you?

  • Me? I wouldn't be caught dead.

  • It was at this point where you start to see the color pink representing womenreal and fictionalwho were anything but traditional.

  • The champion racecar driver Donna Mae Mims is a really good example of this.

  • She had a pink uniform and a pink helmet and a pink racecar.

  • There's the Pink Ladies in "Grease" and the Plastics in "Mean Girls".

  • The girls who are incredibly canny and kind of terrifying, brightly explain...

  • On Wednesdays, we wear pink.

  • There's a great cover of Hillary Clinton on the cover of "People" magazine wearing a bright-pink jacket, and the caption next to it is how "we need to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling" as women.

  • So, she's pretty much doing the opposite of what Mamie Eisenhower wanted to do.

  • This isn't just about the color pink; it's about how it's used to define a person's personality and what we think they're capable of.

  • She still wants to show people that, really, I'm just... just a girl, just like you.

In 1927, "TIME Magazine" took a survey of all the major department stores across the country.

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