Bloganuary #19

What color describes your personality and why?

Now what an interesting question that got me thinking! I’ve never thought of my personality in terms of a colour, but it was an interesting enough question that I actually started to investigate. I’ve always liked the colour purple and so I really wanted that to “describe my personality”. Start of investigations …

Now the colour of that dress – that’s the purple that I like. Apparently, in England, Pre-Raphaelite painters like Author Hughes were particularly enchanted by purple and /or violet. The picture is of a painting called “April Love” by Arthur Hughes (1856) – Admission here: I had never heard of Arthur Hughes. I like art but I realise that my taste is rather more towards surrealism e.g. Salvador Dali or something like Escher.

But that isn’t really looking at personality traits and so the search continued.
Thanks to Wikipedia I discovered that the violet or purple necktie became very popular at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, particularly among political and business leaders. It combined the assertiveness and confidence of a red necktie (both personality traits that I have always had in abundance) with the sense of peace and cooperation of a blue necktie (traits that I aspire to and would like to think that I show in most situations). The links between Kings, Queens and religious leaders is not something I’m particularly interested in so I think that will just skip that bit and move along as quickly as possible.

And now we get right down into it a list of various personality traits that are associated with the colour purple:
1. Vanity, extravagance, individualism – In Europe and America, purple is the colour most associated with vanity, extravagance, and individualism. (I’m certainly not extravagant or over concerned with my appearance, which is quite plain, but I do think I am more of an individualist than someone who just likes to flow with the crowd. Being tall, this seemed to me to be the better choice.) Among the seven deadly sins, it represents pride. (Oh no, no, no that’s not me at all … please!)
2. The artificial, materialism and beauty – Purple is the colour most often associated with the artificial (I don’t agree with that) and the unconventional (but I have always liked being unconventional). It is the major colour that occurs the least frequently in nature, and was the first colour to be synthesized (interesting and I wouldn’t have thought that it was the least frequent to occur in nature, but thinking about it this may be true it’s just that when something natural is purple it really stands out – I like that).
3. Ambiguity and ambivalence – Purple is the colour most associated with ambiguity. Like other colours made by combining two primary colours, it is seen as uncertain and equivocal. This is the one on the list that I don’t think particularly pertains to me, but then it’s really something that can only properly be judged by someone else, so who knows?
4. Mourning – Apparently, in Britain, purple is sometimes associated with mourning (now that’s a new one for me and I am British). In Victorian times, close relatives wore black for the first year following a death (“deep mourning”), and then replaced it with purple or dark green trimmed with black. This is rarely practised today (ah, so that’s the reason! Yes, I would tend to associate the colour black with mourning, but personally that is not really the way I see death and mourning – I think it is much more healthy to focus on the positive aspects of someone’s life and celebrate these rather than focusing on loss, which in a way is quite selfish. I’m sure that last point is going to be hotly disputed by many people, but it is just my opinion and we are all entitled to our own opinions.

So there you have it – I like the colour purple and I also like some if not all the personality traits associated with the colour purple. That was quite a fun investigation!