Pretty in pink: adult women do not remember being so obsessed with the colour, yet it is pervasive in our young girls’ lives. It is not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls' identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among two-year-olds, between girls as not only innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls' lives and interests.
穿粉色好看:成年女性不记得自己曾如此痴迷这种颜色，然而它却充斥着我们年轻女孩的生活。并不是粉色本身不好，而是它只是七色彩虹中那么一丝而已。虽说粉色在某种程度上能为少女时代添色，但它也一而再地，强有力地将女孩特质与其外表相熔合。此后，粉色就呈现出女孩间，甚至两岁女孩间的共性:纯真，而且粉色也被当成了女孩纯真的证明。环顾四周，我绝望地发现，人们对女孩生活和兴趣的想象是如此地贫乏。
Girls’ attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoltti, an associate professor of American Studies, it is not. Children were not colour-coded at all until the early 20th century: in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What's more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colours were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolised femininity. It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children 's marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem inherently attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.
女孩对粉色的青睐看起来似乎是无法避免的，似乎在某种程度上被编码进了她们的DNA。不过，根据美国研究副教授乔.帕雷提的说法，情况不是这样的。20世纪初以前，儿童根本没有颜色编码:在家用洗衣机问世之前的年代里，出于实用角度，所有婴儿都穿白色衣服，因为将衣服洗干净的唯一方法是将衣服煮沸。而且，男孩、女孩都穿着被认为是中性的衣服。当育儿颜色引入之时，粉色实际上被认为是更具男性特征的颜色，是红色的清淡柔和版，与力量相关。而蓝色象征着女性特征，令人联想到圣母玛利亚，代表着坚贞与忠诚。直到20世纪80年代中期，随着强化年龄和性别差异成为儿童市场主要营销策略时，粉色才盛行起来，开始对女孩产生一种看似固有的吸引力，这让粉色成为定义女性特质的一部分，至少在最初关键的几年里是如此。
I had not realised how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children's behaviour: wrong. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularised as a marketing trick by clothing manufacturers inthe 1930s.
我之前并没有意识到，我们对儿童天性的看法深受市场营销趋势的支配，包括我们对他们心理发展的核心观念。以学步的儿童为例，我曾以为这个阶段只是专家对儿童行为的多年研究之后界定的结果:但是我错了。根据研究儿童消费主义的历史学家丹尼尔。库克的说法，它实际上是20世纪30年代被服装制造商作为一种营销技巧而得以普及。
Trade publications counselled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a "third stepping stone”between infant wear and older kids' clothes. It was only after "toddler”became a common shoppers’term that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. Splitting kids, or adults, into ever-tinier categories has proved a sure-fire way to boost profits. And one of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences- or invent them where they did not previously exist.
贸易出版物建议百货商店:要增加销量就应该在婴儿服装和稍大一些孩子的服装之间创建“第三跳板”。直到“蹒跚学步儿童”变成一个常见购物者用语之后，这一第三跳板”才演变为人们普遍认可的儿童发展阶段。将儿童或者成年人细分为更小的类别已经被证实一定能使商家增加利润。而对市场进行细分的一个最简单办法就是放大性别差异或者当性别差异并非明显存在时创造出性别差异。
26. By saying“it is..the rainbow" (Line 3, Para. 1)， the author means pink
[A] cannot explain girls' lack of imagination
[B] should not be associated with girls' innocence
[C] should not be the sole representation of girlhood
[D] cannot influence girls' lives and interests
27. According to Paragraph 2, which of the following is true of colours?
[A] Colours are encoded in girls' DNA.
[B] Blue used to be regarded as the colour for girls.
[C] White is preferred by babies.
[D] Pink used to be a neutral colour in symbolising genders.
28. The author suggests that our perception of childrens psychological development was much influenced by
[A] the observation of children's nature
[B] the marketing of products for children
[C] researches into children's behaviour
[D] studies of childhood consumption
29. We may learn from Paragraph 4 that department stores were advised to
[A] classify consumers into smaller groups
[B] attach equal importance to different genders
[C] focus on infant wear and older kids,clothes
[D] create some common shoppers'terms
30. It can be concluded that girls' attraction to pink seems to be
[A] fully understood by clothing manufacturers
[B] clearly explained by their inborn tendency
[C] mainly imposed by profit-driven businessmen
[D] well interpreted by psychological experts
