Real Men Don't Plant Pastels - Do They??

The message is clear from the day we are born. Girls wear pink, boys wear blue - and woe betide any mother who paints her little son and heir's room in rosy hues - a faux pas that is perceived as being tantamount to early child abuse. Parents who take the middle line and use safe colors like yellow or green are considered to be cowardly. 'Make a statement about that bald little thing's gender,' people urge them. 'Otherwise, how will we know what sex it is?'

And so, from infancy, the color lines are drawn. As children age, the girl's room may be done in lilac, pale green, maybe more pink - colors that are soft and feminine in our minds. Boys' rooms are more apt to turn up in primary colors, predominantly reds and blues with a good dash of gold or brown.

Since kids very rarely foot the bill for the redecorating, they also rarely get any say in what color their environment is going to be. And so, in childhood we become conditioned to a certain gender bias that our culture assigns to colors. But gender doesn't seem to have much to do with our individual and innate color preferences.

Age seems to - although this, too, is culturally determined to some extent. Young children are attracted to bright, primary colors. But a study by color authority Faber Birren showed that as children got older and their lives grew more complex, they were more likely to be attracted to more complex colors.

The media also has an influence on color that attracts different age groups. They, too, use primaries for children, bright pastels and almost fluorescent colors to signal 'Hey - this is for teens!' and, as we age, they target us with colors that get more and more subdued. Check any record store if you don't believe me. Go to the bin that carries Lawrence Welk and his contemporaries - all browns and navy blues! Because we feel that certain colors are therefore more suited to different age groups, we often leave the lights and brights behind as we grow older. They are no longer colors we 'should' use.

Our perception of color is influenced by many things. Some colors have a universal, almost archetypal meaning; red is almost universally associated with power, anger and heat; blue with serenity - unless it is the dark blue of a policeman's uniform, in which case it, too, becomes a power color. Other colors have different meanings in different cultures. Witness Japan, where the bad guy always wears white.

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