Fate found me malingering in the paint section of my local hardware (hardway?) store.
Now, if there is one colour that I cannot warm to…it is beige. This hue inhabits a ‘No Man’s Land’ between white and brown (or even yellow); it’s a complete non-statement. It is the colour of indecision, convention, without a say…it has none of the delicious chocolate and picturesque beauty of a Switzerland, (a neutral status country). It is the shrinking-violet-in-the-room, the non-blond-bombshell, the ? in no-idea, the blah-blah-blah in a conversation.
It seems to me that the colour beige may be a metaphor for our social-control systems, those that desire their citizens to be beige; compliant tax-payers, who work until they drop and who disappear, without murmur, once their usage is done. Are we not in childhood, encouraged into this ‘factory of life’ to live humdrum, safe, beige lives? Lives that challenge no one, not authority, not our system and more importantly not even ourselves. (Our politicians have long-practiced the art of beige, the art of saying nothing; words full of wind, signifying nothing.) [1]
Conversely, if you look at any nation’s flag, you won’t find it picked out in beige. Why is that? Because most power hierarchies require their emblems to look strong, striking and confident. (Red is very popular, for instance.)
However, as I cogitated o’er the colour charts, I noted that the sheer boredom of beige had been eclipsed by its monikers: Magnolia, Manuscript, Ball-Slipper Satin, Elephant’s Breath, Brighton-Bisque, Pony-tail, Cappuccino, Earth-cloud… Ah! Ha! ha! Our society loves a euphemism. (Beige by any other name is still a beige.)
As these thoughts collected in my cerebrum, I immediately became distracted by the creativity in the red paint section: Carmen Miranda, Sunset Symphony, Pompeian Plum, Crimson Matador… (Entranced, I made a few up of my own: Nose-bleed, Menopausal Massacre, Shower-Scene-From Psycho, Bloodshot-Eyeball, Economy-Class-Red, Flaming Faux-Pas…)
I could have spent all day in there, making up colour names; however, the sales ‘facilitator’ had started to look slightly testy, if not plain irritated. She put her hands to her hips, “are you actually gonna buy any paint?”
“Do you have Jam donut? Chocolate profiterole? Or French Fry?” I inquired. (Actually, they’re just food groups, but I was feeling peckish.)
Colour for thought-eh? Perhaps next time you’re hovering in the beige section of a clothes store, furniture emporium or paint shop, ask yourself why.
[1] Apologies to my friend, The Bard.
© All Rights Reserved, Katharine Summers, 2022.