When my parents had to break the news to my starry-eyed seven-year-old self that they had decided to move, they did so by proposing a fresh start. For many children, the idea of moving may be frightening; so my mom sat me down and explained it in the most “Sommer” way possible. She had told me we were going shopping in order to decorate my new room, and those who know me are well aware of the fact that the easiest way to win me over is through some old-fashioned retail therapy. I was sold. Our first stop was a paint store. Like most small children, I was completely elated by the prospect of painting my room. I was like a kid in a candy store let loose among the bright feathers of color which coated the walls.

I was quickly scanning the walls and all of a sudden, there it was: the perfect shade of Barbie pink. It was as if heaven itself opened up to shine a light down on this very specific paint swatch. I quickly snatched it up and ran over to my mother cradling the swatch like the most precious gem in the world. “Mom! Mom! Mom! I found the color I want to paint my room!” Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was met with a stern look of disapproval and in that moment my dreams were crushed. “There is no way that color is going on my walls.” Now, my mother was the type of minimalist who preferred to be encased in pure white. Every surface in my house looked as though it had just been coated in a fresh layer of White Out. Why was white was considered a more appropriate color over some more vibrant options?


Upon further investigation, my mother revealed that she found white “relaxing”. She said pink was “too busy of a color”, especially for a bedroom which should serve as one’s personal sanctuary where they could escape the pressures of the mundane world. I already had what my parents referred to as “quite the overactive imagination” so they opted for a less visually stimulating color for my room hoping it would help quell my anxious behavior. I had later come to find out that my mother was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder when she was younger which could explain why she tended to prefer white which gives off a very clean look and tends to be bland.

My younger self was deeply saddened by my mother’s abhorrence of my preferred color palette. White was just so … boring. White was emptiness, a blank canvas waiting to be filled. White was too pristine, too clean, too clinical. I was the type of child who would use every single crayon in the large 94-count box, and still think my pictures lacked a very specific shade of ocean blue. The world was filled with so many beautiful shades like “Robin Egg Blue” and “Razzle Dazzle Rose” so why settle for just “White”?1 Eventually, we were able to come to a compromise and settle on a dusty rose which was reminiscent of the white my mom so desperately craved but had just enough pigment to ensure my room didn’t look like the halls of a hospital.

Just when I thought our color wars were over, I was introduced to the wall. The majority of the walls in my new house were freshly coated with stark white paint, representing a new slate for us to begin writing our story on. All except The Wall. One wall in our dining room was painted a bright crimson red by the previous owners, which made it stand out amongst the dark wood floors and furniture. I thought it was different, my mom said it gave her rashes. My dad liked the idea of having some color in our otherwise monochrome abode, so the wall stayed…. for the time being. Every time my mom walked past it, she would avert her eyes as if it were some grotesque monster, rather than a plain wall. It made her so uncomfortable that she began refusing to even eat in the room. We would often hear her murmur something along the lines of “red is such an angry color, why have that in a family area” under her breath when making the journey from the kitchen to our dining room table. And so the wall was stripped of its color and turned into another lifeless expanse of nothingness.

What was it about the fiery red wall that made my mother’s skin crawl? Why did she describe it as an angry color when red tinted so many beautiful things? So I consulted my handy-dandy box of Crayola crayons to try and see what “angry red” would look like. There was “Wild Watermelon”, “Red”, “Jazzberry Jam”, “Radical Red”, “Scarlett”, “Maroon”, and even “Orange Red”, but there was not a single connotation of anger.2 And if Crayola didn’t have it, then it must simply not exist. Crayola seemed to see red as a positive color while my mom absolutely despised it, and at this point I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, you’re not supposed to question your parents because after all “Mother knows best!” (and who am I to question a catchy Disney song), but the cold, hard facts just didn’t seem to match up.3 Was the preference for the mundane something that came with age? Was it a symptom of her diagnosis? Was it something that I would eventually embrace? For a young child the idea of living in a world devoid of color was terrifying.

Desperate to try and understand her reasoning, later in life I turned to the dictionary like any other confused individual. Miriam-Webster defines color as “a phenomenon of light or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects.”4 So, theoretically speaking, if color is just light, why is some light angry and some happy and some sad? This direct correlation between color and emotion is something that has been continuously apparent throughout my life. Red seems to be associated with very strong emotions, namely love and hate (or anger). Come February you will see aisles in stores lined with large, red, cellophane covered hearts stuffed with chocolates and advertisements for red roses. The angry emoji on our keyboards is often depicted with a bright red face.5 Just imagine sending a text to your friend who you’ve been fighting with all day and punctuating your very prudent point with a bright pink emoji. I doubt you’d be taken very seriously. You might get a chuckle though. On the other side of the spectrum, when one is sad they often say they are “feeling blue.” The English language is filled with problematic phrases like that: “green with envy,” “yellow-bellied,” “tickled pink,” etc.6 Emotions are constantly explained through color.

This idea of color being tied to specific emotions is further underscored in modern culture, most recently in the Disney movie Inside Out.7 The movie revolves around Riley, an 11-year old girl, and her feelings (which of course are personified by cute animations in true Disney style) regarding moving to a new city. Anger is a small, red, square figure with the occasional flame erupting from his skull. Joy is a spirited elfin character with bright yellow skin and a sunny disposition. Sadness is a small, blue, blob like creature that could give Eeyore a run for his money any day. Jealousy is a small feminine figure who is characteristically bright green and Fear takes on a nerdier appearance and is depicted as purple.8 I can personally (and somewhat regretfully) attest that opening night, the movie theater was packed with young children. Now, if you’re wondering what I was doing at such an event, I was coerced to go by my younger cousin who has the most convincing puppy dog eyes on the east coast. While she was fully immersed in the film, I was somewhat shocked that the cultural cliche of relating color and emotion was so vividly reinforced through a film targeting an audience who is too naive to notice. Some may argue that the creators are simply trying to make things “colorful” and “child-like” but how is one to get to the bottom of this issue if the population is being immersed in such ideology before they are old enough to tie their own shoes? It is nearly impossible to distinguish whether our emotions are innately impacted by color, or if they are impacted through the social stigmas surrounding them which we grow up with. And that, to me at least, was extremely troubling.

I was never one to put too much emphasis on such norms growing up, despising yellow while beaming in my favorite blue dress. However, Ava, my younger cousin, vehemently opposed blue and swore up and down that it was “yucky.”. Could it be that we all perceive color differently? Is my sunshine your waves crashing on the shore? That could explain why my mother and I have differing views. Maybe when it comes to color, like so many other things, we just don’t see things the same. So, now faced with quite the dilemma, I had to figure out what it is that we actually “see.” Clinics in Dermatology published an article exploring the perception of color, starting with its most basic aspects. Scientifically speaking, color is nothing more than varying wavelengths of visible light which together make up the rainbows we are all familiar with9. Our eyes perceive that light reflected off a particular object through a series of cones, rods, and ganglion cells.10 Rods detect grayscale colors while cones detect color through three hues: green, red, and blue11. If you have ever seen paint being mixed, it’s quite a similar process where the three hues are combined in infinite variations to create any color imaginable. Pretty cool, right? Ganglion cells deal with light intensity or how bright something looks. Once the eye receives the reflected wavelengths and processes them through the cones/rods/cells, a signal is sent to the brain where a visual is created.12 But, realistically, what do all these scientific words mean in terms of my issue? The process seems straight forward enough, so why do we not all see the same color when we look at a fire engine? A lack or mutation in a type of cone would lead to what we know as colorblindness and depending on what cones are affected, patients will have a warped sense of certain colors.13 Deutans, for example, struggle visually with shades of purple and any color with shades of both red and green present takes on a muddy brown shade.14 What might appear as a bright fiery red to us, would resemble the less appealing color of peanut butter.

Frank Swain, a scientist who happens to suffer from red-green colorblindness, has never been able to truly see a red shade in the way we typically think of it. In order to see ”what he was missing out on,” he decided to try using a pair of Enchroma glasses, lenses specifically designed to correct colorblindness. His first description of color was “Shades of red are lustrous. A red towel hung out to dry on a balcony flares angrily.”15 There we go again, immediately ruling red as “angry.” Nella Braddy was an employee at the Perkins School for the Blind and worked with Helen Keller during her time there.16 For those of you not familiar with her story, Helen Keller was a woman who lost her hearing and eyesight but went on to accomplish miraculous things.17 Braddy wrote a poem entitled “How Helen Keller Sees Color,” which speaks of how Keller learned through association. Pink is ‘like a baby’s cheek or a soft Southern breeze.’ Gray is ‘like a soft shawl around the shoulders.’ Yellow is ‘like the sun. It means life and is rich in promise.‘”18 It seems for those visually challenged, making such associations helps facilitate an understanding of what color is and represents. But either way, they seem to make similar associations. Eventually, we will all learn that red is angry, yellow happy and blue sad and depressing. This was truly devastating news because it meant that one day, certain colors would be … bad. How could one love a color which is supposed to be sadness? Not satisfied with the information I found, I kept looking, hoping to find some evidence that we all won’t be brainwashed by the media. And that I wouldn’t spend the rest of my days living in a house with as much personality as a wet mop.

Early color theorists suggested that the ties between emotion and color are tied to subjective experiences.19 While this may seem logical enough, I still didn’t know why. Universally, blue is synonymous with sadness, although it’s unlikely that we all went through a truly depressing episode while wearing a blue shirt or in a blue room. Later theories, like that of Robert Gerard, a doctoral candidate at UCLA, suggested that “some of the specific connections between colors and emotions by referring to common physiological reaction patterns.”20 While this seems a little more plausible, it still does next to nothing in terms of providing an explanation into why we have such visceral reactions to certain hues. Some have gone on to say that our ties between emotion and color are a work synesthesia.21 “Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight,” and one sign is relating color to another sense.22 The word is derived from the Greek word meaning “to perceive together” and many of those diagnosed see a visual component for feeling or other experiences.23 Those diagnosed have described experiences such as “The taste of beef, such as a steak, produces a rich blue,” says Day, a linguistics professor at National Central University in Taiwan.24 While tasting colors sounds like quite the experience, statistically speaking 1 in 2,000 people have this condition.25 So, yet again my research has left me with nothing other than wanting to know what color corresponds to the taste of cookie dough ice cream. Well, if the philosophers couldn’t answer my question, maybe it was time to turn to a different perspective.

More scientific explanations take personal preference into account saying that if one prefers red to green and happiness to fear, there is a higher chance of said person correlating red with happiness and green with fear. The Journal of General Psychology published an article exploring this relationship in 1995. Basically, the correlation between color and emotion is based on their respective “rankings”26. These rankings change with age, social and environmental factors, and individual experiences27. This to me, seems a more practical explanation since it accounts for the fact that people have opinions (and lots of them). It also gave me a shred of hope because maybe my mom was just boring. Maybe I wouldn’t grow up wanting to live in a world which resembled a blank coloring book. Research in the field has shown that younger children (8 and under) have a strong correlation between preference and emotion when it comes to color. Meanwhile, in adults, preference plays less of a role. The adult group pair colors with more stereotypical counterparts (yellow and happiness) which shows the influence of society and popular belief.28

As I grew up, I started to pick up on certain characteristics I saw reflected in my mother’s behavior earlier in life. It started off as small things like double or triple checking the door to make sure it was locked. But with age, the ticks and worries intensified. I was easily overwhelmed and often moments away from what felt like imploding. Anxiety was a constant battle for me, and I slowly saw myself morphing into what I grew up hating. I was easily overwhelmed and the slightest changes in my surroundings could send me reeling. Growing up with someone who suffered with a similar issue ensured that I had a whole arsenal of coping mechanisms and tricks to try. My mother’s first piece of advice, you guessed it, change my color palette. I was still quite young and didn’t completely understand the implications or intentions behind most “cures”, but I did know that I wasn’t ready to sacrifice color. A world devoid of color lacks meaning. It’s boring, it’s depressing, and it’s just not me. And so I didn’t. I found other ways to help keep my feelings in check without having to dull any aspect of my life.


I spent so much of my life worrying how to avoid becoming my mother, I failed to realize that could never happen. We are different people. She prefers cleanliness while I tend to thrive on chaos. Color is extremely individual. Some prefer to fill their wardrobe in black and white while others insist on pairing a green shirt with blue pants and an orange belt to pull everything together. While society plays a role, at the end of the day, we are each our own person with individual thoughts and feelings. Color, much like mental illness will never be “one size fits all”. We are all aware of the basic mantras repeating in books, magazines and movies. Whether it be “get plenty of exercise and meditate” or “blue makes you sad”, at the end of the day those are more suggestions than rules. Generally speaking, we can see how they are true, but that doesn’t mean no one feels joy when putting on their favorite blue shirt. Figuring out who you are is never an easy task, but you can’t let society dictate who you should be. You are you.

Bibliography

Notes

1.Crayola, “Explore Colors”, Crayola.com, 2020, 4/6/2020 https://www.crayola.com/explore-colors/

2. Crayola, “Explore Colors”

3. Tangled, directed by Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, (2010, Walt Disney Animation Studios), film.

4. Merriam Webster, s.v. “color,” accessed April, 07, 2020 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/color

5. Shutterstock “Angry Emoji Images.” Shutterstock. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.shutterstock.com/search/angry emoji

6. Duvnjak, Ivana. “Colour Idioms Frequently Used In English Language,” pdf. Berlin University of the Arts, 127-136.

7. Inside Out. Directed by Doctor, Pete (2016 Walt Disney studios home entertainment), film.

8. Inside Out. Directed by Doctor, Pete (2016 Walt Disney studios home entertainment), film.

9. Andrzej Grzybowski, and Konrad Kupidura-Majewski. 2019. “What Is Color and How It Is Perceived?” Clinics in Dermatology 37 (5): 392–401

10. Grzybowski and Kupidura-Majewski. “What Is Color and How It Is Perceived.”

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Frank Swain. “True Colors.” The New Scientist, March 1, 2018.

15. Swain, “True Colors.”

16. “Nella Braddy Henney.” Perkins School for the Blind. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.perkins.org/history/archives/collections/finding-aids/nella-braddy-henney.

17. “Helen Keller.” Perkins School for the Blind. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.perkins.org/history/people/helen-keller.

18. Turner, Kenda. 2012. “On Helen Keller and ‘Seeing’ Color.” Words and Such(blog). August 26, 2012. http://kendaturner.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-helen-keller-and-seeing-color.html.

19. Mark Meerum Terwogt and Jan B. Hoeksma. 1995. “Colors and Emotions: Preferences and Combinations.” The Journal of General Psychology122 (1): page 5.

20.Terwogt and Hoeksma. “Colors and Emotions: Preferences and Combinations.” page 6

21. Ibid., page 6.

22. Ibid., page 6.

23. Siri Carpenter. “Everyday Fantasia: The World of Synesthesia.” American Psychological Association 32, no. 3 (March 1, 2001). https://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia.

24. Carpenter, Siri. “Everyday Fantasia: The World of Synesthesia.”

25. Ibid.

26. Terwogt, Mark Meerum, and Jan B. Hoeksma. 1995. “Colors and Emotions: Preferences and Combinations.” The Journal of General Psychology122 (1): 5–17..

27. Terwogt and Hoeksma. “Colors and Emotions: Preferences and Combinations.”

28. Ibid.