Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Baker-Miller Pink

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

This episode of Sawbones is a little lighter, and what’s lighter than pink? Nothing, especially when we’re talking about Baker-Miller Pink, a hue theorized to calm people down, quell violence, and maybe even influence muscle strength. It wasn’t the first color thought to have an effect on people’s behavior, and it’s EXACTLY as affective.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! Hello everybody and welcome to Sal Bones, a marital tour of Miss

Guy in Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy. And Sid, the timer has to be good. This is like an episode of 24. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Yeah, so it is, this happens a lot when we're recording. Our kid has a lot of half days. Yes, yeah, on Fridays, they have half days a lot. I don't know why, I never know why.

I mean, I'm happy about it. My friends, I'm gonna tell you exactly. I get our home early. I'm gonna tell you exactly how long this episode's gonna be and it is 30 minutes. Because that's when we need to go pick up Charlie from school. So let's not waste any time with the usual like, fall deroll and fiddley day.

Well, this is a little and Fiddly D. Well, this is a little bit of a lighter episode. So maybe there is some Fulverall. I don't know about Fiddly D. Let's not go that far, but last week was heavy. Yes. Thank you for everybody who emailed about that, by the way. Like, I mean, that's, I don't know why that sounded

sarcastic. I meant, truly, thank you. There were a lot of nice emails and responses that we got to that So I don't I don't know it came out. I had a weird into anyway. The point is thank you That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you really meant a lot to me Everybody reached out about that and I appreciate your support and if you were worried, I am okay Yeah, there were some worried people. Let me I am fine So you can't don't worry. Yeah, but I appreciate it this week. We need something lighter. What's lighter than pink? Justin

It pink makes you happy right pink is pretty and soft and Light and fun. Thanks to ladies parties and thanks to lady bird Johnson He sort of got that whole thing started. Oh, are you going to give me the history of the color pink? No, no. I think I heard a 99% of his will about it. Okay. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I don't remember. You know, it's interesting. Look into it. Okay. Well, our kids like the color pink a lot.

Pink's never been one of my faves. I'm more of a purple fan. Mm-hmm. Didn't quite love the pink. Now when I was little, all about the pink. Yes. But there's a specific pink that has medical sort of, like it's connected. It's in the world. It's in the medical world. And so that's the pink I want to talk about. That's what this episode is about. A pink called Baker Miller Pink. It's a specific pink. It's a specific pink. Have you heard of Baker Miller Pink. It's a specific pink. It's a specific pink. Have you heard of Baker Miller pink? No.

If you'd like to do a quick search, if there is a search engine that Justin is invented by now, if you'd like to do a quick search for Baker Miller pink, you can to see what it looks like. Okay, I'll do that right now. It's a very bright pink. I don't know how to describe different pinks. It's a bright pink. It's not a soft pink. I don't know how to describe different pinks. It's a bright pink.

It's not a soft pink. I don't know how you would describe this, it's like pink. I don't know, it's pink. It's pink. Can I say that it's pepto bismol? Yes, a lot of people have compared it pepto bismol. That is a pink that it is.

So why am I talking about this color pink? What does it have to do with anything vaguely medical? Let me tell you, we're going back to the 70s, okay? It's the 70s. Dr. Alexander Shouse awoke from his sleep with a thought. It is a simple thought, perhaps a little bit intuitive, maybe something that, you know, you would think, well, yeah, obviously. But it turned out to be a very important thought. And it was that what if color, which we think can have an impact on our mood or our emotional state, what if that would therefore impact our behavior? What if a color could change us?

Now, this is a concept that is not new to sub-indulceneers. We've talked about color therapy in different forms before. Yes. There's blue light therapy that we talked about, for sure. Yes, and that's not the one, right? I think we've just talked about the general use in the past of colors as medicine. Like looking at colors or wearing colors or being exposed to certain colors could somehow alter your state of being, your health, make things

better or worse. To be fair, even prior to the 70s, Dr. Shouse had been considering this relationship since he studied psychology at the University of New Mexico. He had been thinking about color and personality, color and behavior, like what this kind of relationship is. He'd conducted studies initially where he asked people about their color preferences, and then he would have them do like different personality tests, like a Rorschach test, or like the personality inventory,

one of those big long, you know. The tests we all love to do on the internet that tell us what types we are, give us numbers or letters or whatever, and then we can connect that to Harry Potter characters or something. People love those personality tests, and he was using those and connecting them to colors to see if you ask somebody their favorite color. I've already revealed, I like purple.

What's your current favorite color? It was always red. It's blue now. It's blue because Charlie made a blue navy blue specifically. Okay, navy Maybe blue navy blue is your favorite color. What's wrong with that? I don't know. I just I don't get it. Okay What is the what do you think that reveals about your personality that your spouse would have opinions that I'm attracted to a judgeable women Dr. Shouse would have opinions. That I'm attracted to a judgemental woman. So initially he was doing research on what do you,

what do you do your favorite color reveal about you? What can we insinuate about a person's, or assume about a person's personality based on their favorite color? Not that that's like a fun thing to do. But, but that was the original sort of track of the research. And then he began to consider sort of like the chicken and the egg phenomenon. Okay, well, if your personality influences

what colors you are drawn to, can colors actually change aspects of who you are? Your behavior, the way you think, the way you feel, your emotions, is color reflecting an underlying hormonal and chemical brain composition that makes, you know, your persona, or is color causing those hormonal changes? I don't know. Like, if I like purple, so I surround myself in purple, is purple making me a search

way. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Okay. This is not, as you've already referenced, it's not the first time we've thought about this. That maybe color has an effect on humans. We've done episodes before on color therapy and the idea that color could treat or cure disease, they can't.

But we've done that before. But this particular area that he became interested in was a newer science at the time and is known as behavioral photobiology. Okay. Specifically, the impact of what he referred to as perceptible radiant energy on our behavior. Okay. Got it? Yes. So you're not using color as medicine per se, but you're using it to change people's behaviors and actions.

Okay. Okay. His research was really accelerated. We had this interest. He had these ideas. And then he started working with a Dr. John Ott at City University in Seattle in 1978. And the two of them were setting the impact of different lighting on people who were incarcerated.

Yeah. of different lighting on people who are incarcerated. The idea of like, if we have like fights or outbursts or behaviors that we don't want, you know, inside some sort of facility, if we change the lighting, does that help? I mean, I will speak for myself. I fluorescent light does make me like feel violent. Like it makes me want to punch somebody in the face. I can't stand it. I don't know if that was, I mean, I didn't look into the lighting part of the research because I was really focused on the color,

but I mean, I'm sure that was part of it. What's worse? I mean, what's worse? I mean, bright lights in general are rough for long periods of time, I think. Yeah. I, you know, me, the sitting gets on my case all the time, because I like it.

Dark. Well, I think you go to the other extreme. I'll come in the kitchen, and it's just like, it's just so dark. And it's like where it's daytime, where awake, turn things on. There's sun. There's let the sun be.

There's not enough. I need more. So anyway, Ott said there was some research that he had done where he was looking at not just light, but color specifically the impacts of color on strength Whoa, yes, so the idea is Are you weaker while you're looking at one color than a not like a certain color instead of a different one? Okay, so He would try to repeat these results by the way way, and these studies, I love these studies.

This was so fun to read about. You can look at these studies. They're out there. You can read them. But basically, you get a bunch of people, usually like college students, or the aim of this, like that's who they did these studies on. And he would have them do a hand grip strength kind of test, like how squeeze something that you could measure, how strong, how tightly you're gripping it. And he would do it, like have the people do it while they were looking at a pink square and then at a blue square.

And compare how tightly they could squeeze whether they were looking at the color pink or the color blue. They tried a similar thing with like leg strength, like the thigh muscles, like if you're like extending the legs against weight, like using your thigh muscles to lift weights. What, how well, how much weight can you lift,

how quickly can you do it, how efficient are you if you're looking at a pink square versus a blue square? I got it. Okay, and he even like, he tried to replicate it on himself by looking at two different colors and measuring like his pulse and blood pressure. Yeah. Like do you see changes in these vital signs when you're looking at different colors? The results were interesting, for sure, but not overwhelming in the sense they didn't prove anything. Yeah. There was a slight improvement in strength while looking at the blue square.

Interesting. Not a huge number of people and not a huge difference. So hard to say that this definitively is proof. But if you do need to be strong and you can see something blue, I think it's worth a shot. Right. If you need to be strong and you can see something glow. Need to lift a car off your grandma.

You hope that car's blue. Yeah. But not again, not a huge difference. Is it true that people can get superhuman strength in times of great need? I mean, you can. Saw that on the Hulk. Not like lift a car, perhaps. You're a bixie said, lift a car.

I mean, well, you're still limited by the actual, your own musculature and body and stature and stuff like that. There are limitations, but a rush of adrenaline will push you. I mean, anyway, this is different. Like that one time I saw, there could be a change if you are like, I saw mouse in the pool skimmer and I jumped so far and I don't think I could do it again even if I tried.

Like super sympathetic nervous system activation like human no not super human certainly But like your own peach super I mean like you're like super for you That's a low bar your own peak performance perhaps You may not like it city, but this is what being performed looks like You may not like it, Sidney, but this is what being performed looks like. Anyway, so like I said, he wasn't, you know, it was interesting. He liked some of the results, but they weren't, they weren't enough to say for sure. And then he thought, you know, there wasn't much of a change with my blood pressure and

pulse. That one, he didn't really notice any difference, but instead of just like, at baseline, what he did was he did a bunch of like, vigorous exercise, and then he looked at the two different colors to see how fast he could calm himself back down. Like how fast could his vitals return to normal while looking at pink versus looking at blue?

And that he did notice a little bit more of a difference in, you know, if I look at the pink, my vitals come down faster, it seems like. Okay. It's an N of 1, it's on himself, but he thought it was interesting. So this is when he awakes with this epiphany. It is at this period of time that he wakes up and he thinks, if looking at the pink helped lower his vitals faster after exercise, right? His blood pressure and pulse return a normal faster. Then maybe it could lower blood pressure and pulse return a normal faster. That calls you down. Then maybe it could lower blood pressure and pulse in people who are like, let's say, emotionally agitated, you know, or frustrated or under a lot of stress, right? Not just like they've exercised, but other things that would cause those things to go up,

right? And so, and when you make a person physiologically more at ease, when you bring down their blood pressure and pulse, they're going to feel calmer. So perhaps you can influence their emotional state and therefore their behavior by exposing them to a color. So could pink calm people down to the point that it would quell violent or aggressive behavior? I don't know. Well, that's what he wanted to explore.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that is exactly, that's what he wanted to explore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is exactly like, this is how he got to this question. Because it's sort of a weird question to ask. Like, and you, I mean, in often in science, it's like this, somebody comes up with a study question and you're sitting there thinking, why did you ever, why did you investigate that? Why did you investigate that?

And it's usually a series of things like this that lead you to this sort of core idea that seems bizarre, but when you piece together the breadcrumbs. Anyway, so step one was to was finding the perfect pink. He felt like pink was the thing, but which pink, because there's lots of pinks. So I don't know. I was really want a description of this process. Like, was he mixing pinks? I mean, ultimately, he found it by mixing two cans of paint in the right quantity, like, you know, pink and red and red and red and white and making pink. So that was what it was, but like, how did he,

in my mind, it's like, you know, on Project Runway, when they would send them into mood fabrics and they would like, let them run around mood and they would be like, dashin' around looking fabrics. In my head, he's doing that. He's like them run around mood and they would be like dashing around looking fabrics. In my head he's doing that. He's like wandering around mood and looking at different pinks and he's like, that's the one.

I don't think that's what happened. Is there ever been a more advantageous placement of product in a show? Like, it's so weird that if I was in New York and I needed fabric, I would be able to say, oh, well, we could go to mood fabric. Like, yeah, absolutely. I know what mood is. And I don't know, I've needed fabric, I would be able to say, oh, well, we could go to Moot fabric. Like, yeah, absolutely. I know what Moot is.

And I don't know, I've never sewn. I can't make anything. I don't have any design skills. I have no, I don't want to. Yeah, don't want to. But I know that. Anyway, so somehow, whether he was running around a fabric store or probably just making cans of paint together, honestly, is what he was doing.

He located just the right shade of pink. It was called at the time, P-618. Ooh. Sexy. Um, the name gets better. Okay. But at the time, it was P-618. And now he needed to test it out on real humans, right?

So like he's got his pink, he needs to see, can it calm people down? Can it make them not be violent? And he initially tries to sell the idea to the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission because he already taught a class through them called innovative treatment techniques and correctional research. So basically he has this relationship and he's like, can we try this out by painting one of your isolation rooms pink and just see if it helps an incarcerated person calm down faster if they're in a pink room. This is what he proposes.

And they say, no, you can't paint an isolate. No, no, you can't paint a room pink. And that was a place of business. And that's the end of the episode. Oh, okay, cool. Well, thanks so much for listening to me. No, I'm joking. Obviously something else happens. But first we have to go to the billing department.

Let's go. I'm Madison, I'm Madison, that escalates my car before the mouth. I'm John Moe. My show Depresh Mode is all about mental health. And this week, I talked with Amanda Knox. She spent four years in an Italian prison for a murder she didn't commit. That's a lot of trauma, and she's okay talking about it.

If I touch on something that you'd rather not get into, just say so, we'll cut the whole exchange out, but it also seems like you're pretty open about a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, I am having trouble imagining anything that you could talk to me about. I know. What are we going to throw a man to not do it? Depression mode with John Moe. Only on Maximum Fun. For over a decade, Max Funconn has been an incredible weekend of learning, connecting, and laughing with folks in the Max Fun community.

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and Rocky calendars for Sunday, January 23rd at 5pm Pacific. Okay, Sid, you were saying. Okay, so they wouldn't let you... The drama of this is they weren't allowed to paint a room. Dr. Shouse is not allowed to paint. That's the clip. They won't let him paint a room pink.

I'm putting the stress on. They won't. The man won't. But somebody else sees this research. Somebody else hears these ideas. It's a flamingo. The US Naval Correctional Center in Seattle kind of catches wind of this. He's like writing about it and talking about it and they hear about it.

Did you hear about this guy on the paint room? This sounds good to us, right? Yes, specifically two guys, Commander Miller and CWO Jean Baker are like, I love this idea. They didn't even call him. They just went and painted one of their admission sells pink. Yeah, we didn't. That's great for science. It's kind of a good way to say it.

No, he was excited because I didn't tell them to do it. They were so compelled by this idea that they did it on their own. That's perfect. Your idea is so great that you don't even have to sell them. Oh, Commander Miller and CWO Jean Baker, I just got it. Okay. They did it March 1st, 1979, was when the room was fully painted and ready for use.

And for the next 156 days, they claimed that there were no incidents of, quote, erratic or hostile behavior in that cell. Interest. That is what they claimed. Now that's a small sample size with cell, it's interesting. Yes. And they said out a memo sample size. It's still interesting. Yes.

And they say out a memo about it. And as you can imagine, one Starter Shows heard about all this. Oh, he was excited. So moved, so moved by what these guys had done that he named the pink, Baker Millen Pink. There you go. For these two, for these two guys. It would still be a difficult cell, not impossible now, because like the Navy tried it and they liked it,

which is a little bit easier when it's like, oh, well, well, my bull check it out. Because he needed to reproduce it. I mean, it was being a good scientist. He was like, that's cool. I love this, but that doesn't prove anything. Which is a theme. If you read like what he says about all of this,

he consistently says We haven't proven this yet. Yes. This is interesting. I still think there's something there. We haven't proven it So he's not you know, he's not jumping the gun. He's he knows But anyway, so he's trying to get it to be reproduced in other facilities so he can see if there's actually something to it There were a couple correctional facilities in California that eventually adopted it and we're like yeah We'll paint a room pink pink We'll check it out. He convinced a psychiatric hospital now a Bama to do it in one of their intake rooms a VA in Los Angeles set up like a whole series of different colored rooms so that they could kind of compare

I guess like the pink room the blue room the red room the brown room. I don't know and See it is one better than the other. There was a youth detention facility in California that started using a pink room as like a place to calm, like we need you to calm down, come sit in the pink room. And there's even like one.

That's kind of like the one time I was on shrooms and I got really a fixate on that green room. Yeah, the green room was very safe. Yeah. So there was even like this one incident where during a trial, like in a courtroom, there was a child involved in the case and the judge had the kid go sit in the pink room

to calm down because he was becoming, he was having outbursts in the courtroom and they claim like and he was becoming, he was having outbursts in the courtroom, and they claim like, and he came back and he was very calm. I think, I read about that and I thought, if you're in that situation, which, I mean, we can all agree that I'm just talking about pink rooms. There are problems in all of these things. We're talking about, right?

None of this is like happy and fun and everybody has the best of intentions and everything is done for the well being, you know, the best well being of everybody involved. I think we can all agree on that. But if you're, if you were that minor and they send you the judges, like we're going to have you go sit in a pink room for a little bit, that would seem so weird. I mean, I probably come back, I'm not angry anymore. I'm just sort of like confused. And on settle, like what's your deal, man? What's this Cubrician horror you think that for me?

Exactly, like there's something very dystopian about. To the pink room. To the pink room, right? So I would imagine that there's some, there's gotta be something. And this boy to the laser zone. We're gonna be in prison for a hundred years. There has to be some aspect of that.

Where like you hear whispers. It's sort of like in 1984 when they talk about what is it room 101. Yeah. Tag it. And you don't know what's in room 101. I'm not a big movie guy. It's there's a book.

There's a book. It's a book. You didn't read the book. I mean, I saw it. You know what's in room 101. You have blocked it because of how horrible it was for you. I saw that Apple commercial and figured I got it. You really don't know?

Throw a hammer through the screen, I get it. No, but I've heard enough people in like different protest mention it that I feel like I really understand what it's about. It's mainly about vaccines, right? All right, you're just messing with me now. In all these settings, the officials reported that there were improvements in behavior.

This was subjective to be fair, right? Like, I mean, yes, there are incident reports when things happen, but there's also subjectivity to like what escalates to an incident report and you know, that kind of thing. So there is a perception issue here. They say they had less fights in arguments that people tended to have fewer violent outbursts,

they tended to calm down faster when they were experiencing extreme emotions. Generally, they all liked the pink rooms. Johns Hopkins would take this in a slightly stranger direction. They noticed this other sort of side effect where people claimed that they felt less hungry when they looked at the color pink.

Weird. And so they did a four year study on 1700 people to see if it could suppress appetite and lead to weight loss. Huh. Didn't work. Maybe. I was trying to read like, what were the results of this? And they were like, a third of the people seem to feel less

stress and like decreased appetite, perhaps. I don't know. I don't think we have none of this seems to be particularly like robust in terms of evidence. Let's just say that. And I mean, I don't know if everybody was just sort of thinking, like, are we still just looking at pink? Is that really what this is?

We're just looking at pink. So from all this research, the idea became more refined. It wasn't just pink. Obviously, it's a specific pink. That was very important. It was thought that a smaller room worked better to kind of like engulf you in the color. And similarly, they said like, it works better with one person in a room

to allow them to calm down as opposed to a bunch of people. Like, imagine like like some sort of whole, I don't know anything about jails, but some sort of holding cell where you would have a lot of people, I know that those exist, where you would have a lot of people in there. Jim Pot. Jim Pot. If you paint that room, pink, they don't notice as much of an effect. I would say it's because it's a bunch of people all crammed into a small space, which is very stressful.

They also said they think it breaks up the monochromatic element because you've got people and clothes. And, you know, that introduces a lot of other colors to the world. Too much other things. Other things. Buying for your engineering. Exactly. Because of this, there was increase uptake, though.

Like if you look throughout, like the 80s, especially the early 80s, Baker Millar Pink starts showing up in different places, like specifically quote unquote drunk tanks leading to the name, the alternative name for Baker Millar Pink, which is drunk tank pink. Apparently this became popular in some places to paint your drunk tank, pink, to calm people down. This is different, by the way, when I started thinking about like Jail's painting things pink, I started thinking about that that awful sheriff in Arizona in Maricopa County who like made, made people who were incarcerated wear pink underwear. Do you remember this? Yeah. And you had an outdoor tent city that that awful guy. Anyway, um, this is different than that. This that that I think was like a homophobic punishment was the intention,

whereas this is like some sort of science-based effort to help people calm down. Right. I just I wanted to as I was talking about this, I was like, uh, you can draw this connection and I wanted to make that kind of clarification. Now, here's the rub. So this all sounds really good, right? Like good, you just paint a room thing. Thanks so much for the work. And if you love the color pink, this is awesome.

Because now more things are pink. However, even Dr. Schaus was not entirely certain that this was working. So he started repeating some of these experiments and found that, you know, not only do I think maybe this doesn't work, but he started to fear that it was having the opposite reaction that for like the first 15 minutes,

the pink does calm you down, which again, I don't know if that's just confusion because if somebody threw me in a completely pep-to-biz mall-colored room, I know I'd have a moment where I'm like, okay, okay, what is, what is, I don't know. Wouldn't that confuse you for a minute? Okay, but after that first 15 minutes, some facilities actually reported

that the person would become even more angry than they were before. Okay, so like some sort of- It's already a sort of mile effect to begin with, before. Okay. So like some sort of. It's already a sort of mile effect to begin with, right? Yes. So like some sort of rebound effect. Like they would become very enraged by the pink after the first initial calming period. But even that, there isn't enough to like prove that that effect happens.

The idea is does it does it do anything? Is it anything other than confusing? And to his credit, like I said, Shao's himself has always doubted that, I don't know, I don't know. It was interesting we did these studies. I'm not entirely sure. He noted throughout his papers that there are a lot of variables

that you're not controlling for. There's a lot of different things that could have influenced why somebody calm down or somebody else didn't. And it was not scientifically possible to absolutely conclude that it worked, even if it seemed like it did. And not only that, but he did make this point, which I think is very important, and he said this over and over again, especially when it started to be used in sort of these juvenile

detention facilities, that it's nice if a pink room helps, but this is not a treatment. This is not in place, this is not replaced any sort of therapy. And he said, no color can substitute for the attention that any human asks for while in a state of turmoil. I think that's a really important point to make. It removes some of the dystopian aspects of this, I think. And he also noted that in subsequent experiments on pink versus blue and muscle strength again, trying to see what's stronger, you know, what will make you stronger. This is all predicated on a belief that

blue is the opposite of pink. Oh, yeah. Is blue the opposite of pink? No. It is not. No, some sort of green shade would be the opposite of pink. Yeah, that's true. So if you really wanted to see a difference, you would have to do, I mean, like we pick pink and blue because that's a, that's true. So if you really wanted to see a difference, you would have to do, I mean, like, we pick pink and blue because that's a social choice. Yeah, it's the gender attachments. Yes, but not because that was, that is not the most scientifically sound way to do it. Yeah, yeah, the opposite of pink is green.

Yeah, so you, really if you wanted to do these studies appropriately, you should have done picking green, but we don't have the same societal attachments to green, right? Does green, green doesn't mean like masculine. Yeah, right. Green means science, and red means math. Green means money, and red means blood. I play a lot of it at games, so those are like...

Well, in my notebooks, my folders, and my binders, green means science, red means blood. I play a lot of video games, so this is like. Well, in my notebooks, my folders and my binders, green, green, green, green science, red means math. We have two minutes. Anyway, it was redone. These studies worked. So that was kind of where Dr. Charles left it. He went on to do other things. Like most of his papers published about this

are from the late 70s, early 80s, and then he moved on. He had other work to do. It was redone about 30 years later by a psychologist, Oliver Genshau, and he found absolutely no difference. The pink doesn't, no, there's no effect. It's just, it's pink or it's blue or whatever, it doesn't matter. So is that case closed?

Not quite, because in 2011, there was a Swiss psychologist named Daniela Spath, who wrote about her own experiments, but she used a different shade of pink. She said, the reason it didn't work is because, again, if you look at Baker-Mailer Pink, it's quite bright. It's a very bright, vibrant. I would say, someone's, I don't know if colors are stimulating, but to me, I would call it a more stimulating than calming sort of shade of pink if those things exist she painted Cell walls cool down pink was her pink which is a different pink and you can look at up

It's much softer. It's a much paler pink and this happened in Switzerland. They did it in 10 different prisons They were observed for four years the guard said they noticed a difference. I don't know if it's statistically significant But they thought there was a difference. However, the idea of Baker-Miller Pink has not gone away. Just a few years ago, Kendall Jenner painted a wall in her house, Baker-Miller Pink, to calm her down and suppress her appetite. They did an article about it.

Best of looked at her. Yeah, so it hasn't gone away. I think there was a hoodie that was made in Baker-Miller Pink, too. The idea being like like where this hoodie and it will really calm you down when you're feeling stressed. That sounds like something that would be on many websites. That tracks. Yeah.

And if all of this you're thinking doesn't sound right, I think it is fair to point out as I sort of already alluded to with the jail in Maricopa County that was doing this as like a punishment, you can't erase the kind of like our social connections to these colors, you know, in the time period we're talking about the early 80s in the US, pink is a girl, quote unquote, girl color, blue is a quote unquote boy color. I am not saying I believe this, but these would have been the sort of attachments of the time.

And so there is this sort of like inherent kind of misogyny and homophobia to this idea that pink is weak. Pink makes you weak. Blue makes you strong. You know, and this is, I think it's interesting because this is sort of echoed in, did you know that the university of Iowa football team in the early eighties? No, I can go ahead and say, no, I didn't have a go on. Had their locker room, their visitors, let me clear this, visitors locker room at

Kenic Stadium, painted pink to try to make them weaker. Well, that's not what they said. The coach said it was because pink was a calming color and it would make them calm and they would lose their competitive edge because they were so calm. Just like Baker Miller pay. I mean, we're looking at the same time frame. So he had research to back up these claims. In 2005, they even added pink lockers and pink urinals.

Now this is not Baker Miller. It's a dusty rose. Oh, you used to love that jam. I love dusty rose when I was younger. But the idea is the same. Now I think a lot of people have accused them over the years of like, this is, you get why this is so offensive. Because what you're saying is it's, we're going to paint it girly pink because girls are

bad, they're bad at sports and this is why you're do, you know, I mean like that is the implication here. And I'm not saying the University of Iowa stands by it by saying like, look, it's just a good fun. It's funny. We have a pink locker room, where you don't mean any harm. Everybody's great, regardless of their gender, this is not aimed at anybody. I think there are others who would argue otherwise

and have, but since the early 80s, I thought it was worse mentioning Dr. Shouse. Unlike many of our saw bones featured guests, is alive and well and continues to do research in other areas like nutrition and behavior and that kind of stuff, supplements and stuff. Good for you. Moved away from Baker-Mailer Pink,

but Baker-Mailer Pink lives on forever. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Saw Bodes. I hope you enjoyed yourself. Thanks, taxpayers for using their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thank you to you for listening. We very much appreciate you. That's gonna do it for us until next time. My name is Justin McArroy. I'm Cindy McArroy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfun.org

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