Monday, June 16, 2008

Pink and Blue

Scientists are theorizing about why the gender gap between colors.

"The explanation might date back to humans” hunter-gatherer days, when women were the primary gatherers and would have benefited from an ability to home in on ripe, red fruits," Dr. Anya Hurlbert, who led the team of researchers, said. "Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference."

While blue was liked universally, this preference stood out among men as it was not balanced by a parallel liking for pink, the study found. This, too, could have deep-seated natural roots: water that appears blue is more likely to be clean, and the colour is also an indicator of fine weather.

Uh-huh. This isn't the least bit persuasive. If we were going to use the evolutionary model to explain color preferences, wouldn't hunting men prefer tans and browns and other natural colors for animals and prey? Seriously, they liked blue because of the sky? Why didn't they like green which showed good rainfall?
I wonder what Kipling would have thought?

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