Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Scrambled eggs and ketchup

I never wore jeans to work until this year. That’s because a former bureau chief, a woman I was/am also friends with, once said women have to do more to earn respect at work than men do, and while people overlook men dressed in jeans, women in jeans look sloppy. So I never wore jeans until this year, when I finally threw off the shackles.

These kinds of statements can affect you more than you think. Another well-dressed friend once said to me, “What is the thing with black and brown? Black doesn’t GO with brown.” And ever since then I’ve thought, wow, black doesn’t go with brown? And I experience an inner questioning every time I pair black with brown, which I like to do.

I also had a German boyfriend once who said “grün und blau trägt die Sau,” which means the female pig wears green with blue. He said this on a day when I was wearing green and blue. I’d often wear green and blue; I figured they went well together. But now I was told they were ultimate frump. And the more I thought about it, the more I kind of agreed. (That is an actual German saying, by the way.)

But the worst for me is yellow and red. Yellow and red has always reminded me of scrambled eggs with ketchup, which I hate. As a kid I loved the game Risk, but I couldn’t play if red and yellow were on the same team. This is surely one of the reasons I dislike the German flag. Ugh, who thought that up? In any case, I never wear yellow and red together. Hell, I never wear yellow OR red at all.

6 comments:

Kathleen said...

Let's throw off all our shackles and go naked in the garden again! (Still re-reading Genesis. Oops.)

I do love black and brown and green and blue. I've seen all kinds of amazing color combinations work that I never would have imagined.

My mom likes ketchup with scrambled eggs.

rallentanda said...

Colour combinations are complicated.It's often difficult to work out if you are not a colourist. I don't like Red and yellow together.

SarahJane said...

Red and yellow together are a definite no, special training or not! I think blue and green can go together, but in the way I usually did it, not.

Ashley said...

I have seen black and brown work together, but maybe it was on, like, an extremely attracive person, in which case everything will work on them!
I like yellow but not with red!

Jessy Randall said...

The green and blue thing has haunted me since I was a middle-schooler and somebody made fun of me for wearing those colors together. But I haven't stopped wearing them. At some point I read that the amazing writer Shirley Jackson, who went to my high school decades before I did, was made fun of for the very same pairing. So that kinda makes me think blue and green are cool. I also like purple and green. And if we couldn't wear black with brown that would knock out most of my wardrobe. On the other hand, my daughter, who is seven, loves yellow and red together. Why? Because they remind her of McDonalds. So maybe I do want to have a few rules about colors. Oh, not really. She can wear red and yellow all she wants. And if anybody tells her they "clash" she has my permission to say "SHUT UP" (not normally allowed, treated like a swear).

SarahJane said...

I really don't get the green-blue thing. They do go together. Are they bourgeois? Isn't blue spiritual and green lush and natural?
The red-yellow aversion is my personal thing. Celie can light up Colorado all she wants with them!

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