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Letter: Also time to ditch the pink and blue nonsense

Published 8 January 2025

From Sam Edge, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK

I enjoyed your take on the worthiness of toys and especially agree with the advice to make sure kids have access to all types of toy, not just those traditionally associated with biological sex. My 5-year-old granddaughter is going through a unicorn and Barbie phase, but still enjoys dinosaurs, trucks, diggers, marble runs, farm animals and the rest that she owns. She likes to see motorbikes, cranes and aeroplanes (14/21 December 2024, p 62).

In the same vein, it is unlikely that a preference for pink or blue is genetic in any way. Up until a century or so ago in Western culture, blue was associated with girls and pink and red with boys. How this swapped is an interesting historical tale for another day.

Issue no. 3525 published 11 January 2025

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