Do girls like pink because primitive women needed to find ripe fruit?

A new study out of Newcastle University in England says that females really do have a stronger preference for pink than males do. Apparently everyone likes blue, but women tested in the study showed a preference for the "pinker end of the spectrum." No surprise there for the parents of small girls, but I still want to blame the marketeers for giving the girls no choices but pink! Have you seen the back-to-school stuff filling the stores? Pink, pink, pink.

The study involved 208 people age 20-26, with a mixture of British caucasians and recent immigrants to Britain from mainland China. The researchers speculate that female preference for reddish hues may have arisen from sex-specific specialization in the evolutionary division of labour - specifically that women, as the gatherers, needed to develop a way to identify ripe fruits or edible red leaves. Interesting that the researchers do not consider for a moment that women might have been hunters. The old dichotomy of Man-the-Hunter and Woman-the-Cave Keeper lives!

Of course, the study does not control for the impact of all those years of being dressed in pink, sold pink toys, shown pinkly dressed TV heroines, etc etc. Barbie is big on pink. Is the study really just showing how effective all that pink marketing has been? I'd also like to see what the results would be for a group of 70 year olds. Do people outgrow pink? (And, yes of course I am writing this while wearing a pink shirt!)

To read more about the study, take a look at www.sciencedirect.com and search for the article "Biological components of sex differences in color preference" by Anya C. Hurlberta and Yazhu Linga.