I.
I did not wear color with any sort of intention until I was twenty years old. As a teenager, I dressed myself each day in blacks and navy blues because I did not want to be seen. This changed when, by chance, I picked up a purple jacket at a thrift store one October and wore it all day around campus. The response was instantaneous and unmistakable––people smiled at me more, told me I looked beautiful. Even more surprising than my peer’s sudden kindness was my own reaction; I suddenly didn’t mind their eyes. Over the years, my appreciation of the color purple only grew deeper. I began to pick up new items in every shade imaginable: my phone case, a sweet lilac; my water bottle, a deep magenta. I repainted the walls of my childhood bedroom so that lavender became the first thing I viewed when I opened my eyes and the last thing I saw before I drifted to sleep.
I know I am not the only person to love a color with such passion. My friend Maimuna also has a deep love for purple; they call it their “safe color” and even made a playlist commemorating it. In her 2009 book, “Bluets,” poet Maggie Nelson documents her intense relationship with the color blue. “Suppose I were to begin by saying I had fallen in love with a color,” she writes. “It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then it became somehow personal.” Nelson’s words capture my sentiments exactly; though I know having a “favorite color” is a common experience, something about purple, the subtle power of its many hues, the quiet intensity brimming in every shade, makes me feel like the color is mine alone. Incredibly, loving one color opened my eyes to the beauty of the shades surrounding me each day; I now find myself staring lovingly at my bookshelf, enamored by the pinks and whites and yellows of the many spines, and I appreciate my morning coffee even more now as I pour cream into black to create a soothing caramel.
I view my love of purple as something natural, almost spiritual, but I know some might have another word for it––an “aesthetic.” Though the term dates back to the early 19th century, the word “aesthetic” had a huge resurgence in the 2010s and is now used among young people with almost nauseating frequency. Merriam Webster defines “aesthetic” as something that is “pleasing in appearance,” but the contemporary take seems to move beyond this. When we talk about the aesthetic of someone’s fashion, home decor, or even their Instagram, we are not only praising what colors they choose or how they arrange them, but evaluating the way they succeed in making a specific combination of color, texture, and style their own. In this way, though I never intended for my favorite color to define me, it seems my preference for purple would fall squarely in that category. I can’t count all the ways that loving purple changed my life. Like Maimuna, I consider it my safe color. But until recently, I never stopped to wonder what it’s keeping me safe from.
II.
Despite “aesthetics” becoming somewhat of a meme, there is a long recorded history of people or cultures using certain colors to evoke a specific feeling. Red has long symbolized good fortune in Chinese history, while the color blue represented death in ancient Egypt, where people used indigo dye to paint their loved one’s tombs. Many color theorists believe that something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different reaction. I have certainly found this to be the case: a rich violet makes me feel powerful, majestic even, while periwinkle puts me instantly at ease. I often think of purple as my gateway drug, an entryway into the world of color where I now live, completely transfixed, and never intend to leave. Famous philosopher Plato would tend to agree: he famously called painters “mixers and grinders of multicolored drugs,” and deemed color itself a form of pharmakon, or poison. So why do we drink this poison so gladly, allow drugs into our system with rapturous glee? Because there are great rewards for such an addiction.
In 2012, Daniel Hamermesh, an economist concerned with the “economic study of beauty,” conducted an investigation into the financial benefits of being attractive. His findings, laid out in his book Beauty Pays, were substantial: “Hot” economics professors—designated by the number of chili peppers awarded on Ratemyprofessors.com—earn 6 percent more than members of their departments who fail to garner accolades along these lines. Hamermesh further found that a “handsome” man is poised to make 13 percent more during his career than a “looks-challenged” peer and that beautiful women also make considerably more than those who are not conventionally attractive, though he does not outline how he determined beauty for that particular statistic. Other studies prove how beauty can pay off in different ways: conventionally attractive people are more likely to be hired for a job or elected into a political position, and unattractive people are more likely to be sentenced by a jury and spend on average 22 months longer in prison, according to data from Cornell University.
There is certainly a difference between one’s physical appearance and the colors they choose to wear. However, these statistics do help to explain why we are all so desperate to develop an aesthetic, a loud and outward expression of beauty. The desire is so common we now have language for it: during puberty we begin to grow up, but a little bit later, we excitedly glow up. The term, which came about in 2013, refers to a period during late adolescence or early adulthood when we refine our tastes, discover a fashion sense, and grow into our looks, effectively becoming the shiny, glowing versions of ourselves we always dreamed we could be. It’s a momentous occasion. When the transition is complete, we celebrate by posting “throw back Thursday” photos of our awkward pre-teen years or participating in social media games like the “10 year challenge” that celebrate our evolving beauty. We cringe at old pictures and in turn, at old versions of ourselves. This is not to say that growing into your looks or refining your tastes is automatically nefarious––it’s a fairly inevitable part of life. But the celebration of this newness––new body, new face, new clothes, new me––often walks a fine line between self growth and self hatred. In what way is developing an aesthetic letting go of our old selves, a way of proclaiming, the old me is dead, please spare me for I am beautiful now?
III.
In developing an aesthetic, we are aspiring towards beauty and seeking it’s many elusive rewards. But beauty is determined in a number of ways, and it means different things to different people. Cross culturally, it is fairly agreed upon that physical attributes such as facial symmetry and clear, smooth skin are considered attractive. Many cultures also have a preference for Eurocentric features such as fair skin, thinner noses and lips, and straight hair, which has caused many people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to bleach their skin or get plastic surgery to fit into these beauty standards. Among Black people and Black women especially, the rewards of colorism, featurism, and texturism are rampant: dark skinned Black people fifteen percent more likely to be sent to jail in America than their light skinned peers. It is easy to look at these statistics and deduce that becoming beautiful requires an adherence to the dominantly accepted culture: in this case, whiteness. But beauty can also be tactical. As of late, traditionally Afrocentric features such as thick lips, curly hair, and brown skin have become all the rage––for everyone except Black people. This trend, also known as Blackfishing, has taken over social media in recent years, and every week it seems we encounter a new white Instagram model who has painted herself brown for clout. For these women, Blackness is an aesthetic: something they perform for social or professional advantage, or in order to feel beautiful.
Blackfishing illustrates how aesthetics are often about more than just beauty; it can be advantageous to look a certain way in order to spread a specific message or have a particular job. Often, the way a message is portrayed is just as important if not more important than the actual words being said. For example, studies show that there are several human emotions that can only be deciphered through facial expression and not language, indicating the importance of appearance in communication and human relation. But the value of aesthetics prevails even without in-person contact: on social media today, highly sensitive political information about the current uprisings in America is dispersed to millions of people through beautiful, highly stylised graphics, or sometimes even memes. This trend continues a centuries long tradition of art and graphics boosting a political message, such as anti-cop graffiti utilized in the 1960s. We can’t necessarily say that people wouldn’t care about a given political issue if it weren’t accompanied by vibrant colors and beautiful imagery. However, it’s certainly clear that a message’s aesthetic greatly determines how widespread and impactful it can be, and that attaching beauty to political theory can give it mainstream acceptance and even legitimacy. This perhaps explains why, in 2019, famous Black Twitter personality EmoBlackThot, who was performing for years as a young Black woman, was outed to actually be a 23-year-old cisgender Black man named Isaih Hickland. In creating his internet aesthetic, Hickland shrewdly determined that his account, which focused on fostering community through condemning racism and encouraging daily self-care rituals, would be better received by the public if they believed that a Black woman was behind it. Hickland’s logic, though deeply problematic, proved at least partially sound: EmoBlackThot was a trusted Twitter personality for years, and garnered over 180,000 followers before the account was exposed for catfishing.
Aesthetics are often a forced performance, a way to gatekeep beauty from certain populations and at times, even weaponize it. This tactic is used not only on an individual level, but is also systemic. Many major cities utilize a form of architecture aptly called “unpleasant design.” It is named this for two reasons: it is not pleasing to look at it, and even worse to experience. The style, which is characterized by a few key traits such as raised grates on vents, spikes laid on concrete, and armrests on benches, is used as a form of social control in public spaces to prevent vulnerable populations such as homeless people from seeking shelter or safety. In San Francisco, benches were removed from several public parks to deter the homeless population from resting, while in Philadelphia, a famous mid-city building has spikes on the wall to prevent the homeless population from loitering. In order to enforce a general aesthetic, marginalized populations must endure ugliness––spikes, grates, bars, or worse––so that a select few can take the beauty in their world for granted. It happens more often than we like to think. When I wake up in the morning embraced by purple walls, when I go to the kitchen and mix black coffee and pale cream, I get to feel soothed by beauty and marvel in it’s excess––but not everybody has that luxury.
IV.
Today, in a manic attempt to know myself, I googled, what does it mean to love the color purple, and spent some time pouring over the results. According to one source, “purple helps align oneself with the whole of the universe.” Another told me, “too much purple brings out qualities of irritability, impatience, and arrogance,” yet “too little purple brings out feelings of powerlessness, negativity, and apathy,” causing me to meditate briefly on how I could achieve the optimal amount of the color in my life. I also learned that bright colors, such as red and yellow, tend to appeal to young children whose eyes are still developing, and so a love for cool tones normally happens later in life. Perhaps my love of purple is a sign of maturity, I mused. Something good has come of this obsession after all. I rarely go looking for purple these days, it tends to find me instead––in the form of amethyst earrings gifted by my mother or a lavender bandana that my friend Megan lent me and never made me return. This afternoon, one passage nearly leapt at me off the page of a book* I was reading: “Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn’t have to live on one side or the other?” I do.
My love for purple and any aesthetic markings that it may have brought upon me were not forced or even an active choice. However, I still feel the preference merits some scrutiny. In the last few years, I’ve spent more time curating fashion and interior design concepts on Pinterest than I can remember and developed a deep appreciation for Instagram accounts like @pearly_interiors that display beautiful, pastel home decor and scenery. It’s a fun pastime, I’d argue, and harmless––who doesn’t like looking at pretty things? But sometimes I wonder if my fascination with these curated spaces is also my acceptance that my life needs to be beautiful in order to have value. I think Maimuna was right in calling purple a “safe color,” because that is the ultimate value of an aesthetic: in a world where we can control so little, where our feelings change from moment to moment and our lives can upturn in the blink of an eye, it’s comforting to know that at the very least, we have the power to control what we look like, to choose the colors of our day, to feel that deep purple feeling, to live inside it if we so choose.
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xoxo
mary <3
*The book was “On Earth We Were Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong and I would recommend!