Jo Paoletti

The sword on the right-hand child makes it likely it’s a boy. The middle figure leans girl to my eyes and the one on the left leans ever so slightly male. At any rate, there’s nothing in the style of the dresses that is clearly gendered for that time. It’s so hard to take our 2026 lenses off!

Secrets to tell I have the weirdest dreams right before sunrise. #poetry

open.substack.com/pub/jopaolet...

All true, but I took Varley’s reaction as a cheeky commentary on Lady F’s horrible taste. Like my childhood pup who rejected Mom’s meatloaf.

The Revolution will be Litigated - Part 2 Who wears the pants? The horror of women in trousers.

The Revolution will be Litigated - Part 2 open.substack.com/pub/gendermy... #fashionhistory #gender

They do it for me.

Fashion historian here. It’s visual historical fiction/fantasy, like the music and the non-period dances. And I adore every delicious bit of it.

Just a reminder 'twasn’t always so

open.substack.com/pub/gendermy... #fashionhistory #gender

The Knitting Tote Bag Part three of why knitting mattered in my university teaching life.

open.substack.com/pub/susanstr...

An absolutely beautiful read. Knitting knowledge not necessary. But if you knit, you will love it.

Hans Mansson Goes to a Bar Mitzvah A tale with a dash of truth

Hans Mansson Goes to a Bar Mitzvah
open.substack.com/pub/jopaolet...

A little fun thing I wrote.

I think if I had his job, I would be delirious from the smell for hours after getting off work.

I forgot the tag. 😢 #fashionhistory #gender

The Revolution Will Be Litigated, Part 1 Longhairs in American courts

The Revolution Will Be Litigated, Part 1
open.substack.com/pub/gendermy...

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
“A lot of people have long regarded same-sex behaviour as an accident, or rare, or only in zoo animals,” says co-author Vincent Savolainen, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London. But “it’s part of the normal social life of primates”.

Had me at Kirby. I love that little guy.

My word is “slapdash”.

I’ll take it.

Maybe it’s time for me to pull together an FAQ about pink and blue on my Substack. Post or DM me your questions and I’ll get started. Can we set a deadline of January 4?
#FashionHistory

So was I. :)
And there definitely were regional variations. In Disney’s Peter Pan (1952), Michael wears a pink sleeper. They recolored it for the modern release. And there were small German Catholic communities in Nebraska that still used blue for the girl color in the early 1980s.

About as complicated as gender, in fact. And just as fascinating.

And I am talking only about the U.S. A Korean grad student gave my son two pink and white onesies in 1986. It’s much more complicated than most people realize.

Think of it more as swirling symbolism that finally congeals into pink/girl and blue/boy after WW2. Even then, it wasn’t until the 1980s that pink really became off limits for boy babies.

I found pink clothes for boys as late as the 1970s, but that was pretty rare, and regional (southern U.S.) Pinkification of girls’ stuff started to harden in the 1980s.

That’s my understanding, too. I recall reading that a zigzag shaped wound from fencing was also referred to as “pinked”.

And “pink” wasn’t used as a color word until the 18th century. Fun stuff. www.etymonline.com/word/pink

Where to buy pink clothes for boys, 1927 This article appeared in the November 14, 1927 issue of Time magazine.

Finally, a fun bit of evidence from 1927.
open.substack.com/pub/gendermy...

and a more recent post from my Substack. Note the use of “sometimes” in the first sentence. open.substack.com/pub/gendermy...

Here’s an old blog post about the slow transition of pink as a signifier. gender-mystique.weebly.com/blog/when-di... (So old some of the links dont’ work. Sorry…I am retired.) 2/3

Hi there. I wrote “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America”, and am often cited as the source of this misinformation. While it was worn by boys and men, it was never just a masculine color. There was no “reversal” of pink from masculine to feminine. 1/3

Well, sometimes only the website survives…. :(

Balls of yarn. Very nice yarn.

Foster & Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery Collection Browse folders and entries from Foster & Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery

Don’t stop me now…

hub.catalogit.app/mccarl-gallery