It's funny how even then conservative Christians were pushing hard to enforce gender-normative dress. At the private Evangelical Christian elementary school I attended, girls were barred from wearing pants even at functions (like attending a school sports game) that did not mandate a school uniform.

That was a pretty hot social issue at the time among conservative Christians. Pastors even preached from the pulpit that women who wore pants were sinning.

The women and girls in the churches I attended mostly took a quite superior attitude about obeying strict gender dress norms, even when those norms interfered with normal daily activities, sports, recreation, etc.

I don't know what it is about conservative Christianity and dress codes, but it's always been a pretty big deal as far back as I can remember.

By the way, speaking of pink and blue, blue has been the traditional marker for femininity in Russian culture for a long time. I speak Russian, and it’s interesting to note that a shade of light blue (Russian has a distinct word for light blue as opposed to navy blue) is still commonly used as an anti-gay slur.