The Color Purple

Origins of a Color Preference

Jayel Aheram as an anthro­po­mor­phic cat. Art by my sis­ter Janan.

A long time ago, I was brows­ing through my blog look­ing for an excuse to make even more redun­dant and unnec­es­sary edits to the tem­plate. I was try­ing to brain­storm ideas of what to write about and was sud­denly struck at the sheer pur­ple­ness of the entire blog (the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the blog used to be all pur­ple and did not include Armanth). Yes, my favorite color is pur­ple. Yes, “Aheram” is pur­ple. And yes, the theme and lay­out is based on my old Purple Hell web­site. There is no sur­prise that the blog’s theme is based on my favorite color. There are plenty of web sites that reflect the webmaster’s favorite col­ors. But I do won­der, how did my favorite color which is reflected in the blog’s theme became pur­ple?

I can remem­ber the time when my favorite color was green, but some­where along the way, my pref­er­ence shifted to pur­ple. Green made a lot more sense. It is the color of trees and grass and the out­side. When I was a child, I was never allowed to go out­side much, so “green” means some­thing spe­cial. I loved grow­ing things, green things. Leaves of all shapes and sizes fas­ci­nated me. In the city that I lived in as a child, no one wasted pre­cious real estate for things like lawns or trees. Except for the occa­sional pots of plants or weed or scrag­gly bushes, I saw very few green things in the end­less con­crete expanse of the city. In my Catholic school, except for the plants sur­round­ing the beau­ti­ful grotto in front of the church, the barest min­i­mum of care was given to the plants that grew in the large con­crete pots that dot­ted the school. Instead of lawns, I saw vacant lots of dirt and brown weeds.

My godmother’s fam­ily lived in the provinces, away from the con­crete jun­gle of cities. During those times, all I ever saw were trees, bushes, farms, and a whole lot of green things. And those times with my godmother’s fam­ily were spe­cial. They were the only times when my sis­ter and I were allowed to get dirty and play with other chil­dren. The only times where we played all day. The only times where a shower and a bath became a wel­come and sought after luxury.

Dinner in the provinces was a fam­ily affair. Everyone ate together in a large table filled with all sorts of food. Steamed rice and plenty of fish meals (my godmother’s fam­ily were fish­er­men) laid out on the table under the mango tree. At night, an incan­des­cent light bulb attached to a long elec­tri­cal cord and then tied to a low-hanging branch serves as illu­mi­na­tion. Candles are some­times used for when extra light was needed. Green anti-mosquito coils were burned to ward off all sorts of insects (includ­ing bee­tles). I remem­ber that at times, I would look at the night sky through the long leaves and branches of the mango tree.

Bath times were fun, too. Since their place lacked plumb­ing, we were required to pump for the water needed in every­thing. The pump is located on a con­crete plat­form just right out­side the walled and roofed toi­let and bathing area. The ground was usu­ally wet (soaked even) and a par­tic­u­lar flow­er­ing plant grew in pro­fu­sion on one side of it. They were tall (at least, to a lit­tle boy) and served as a sin­gle green wall to offer some pri­vacy when bathing. It bloomed fra­grant white flow­ers and always made bath time mem­o­rable. I can remem­ber many more instances of my times in the province and each of them included the color green. Green became asso­ci­ated with free­dom, inde­pen­dence, hap­pi­ness, dis­cov­ery, fun, adven­ture, and all sorts of pos­i­tive and happy things.

So, green makes a lot more sense. Blue would be, too. It is the ulti­mate boy’s color. In a fam­ily with two kids who are nearly the same age (less than a year apart) and some­times see them­selves more like twins than any­thing, when the grownups decide to give gifts or things to my sis­ter and I, they usu­ally have to do it in pairs. I get the blue things and my sis­ter gets the pink things. My Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lunch­boxes came in blue, my sister’s My Little Pony lunch­boxes came in pink. Shirts, caps, watches. It always come in pairs. Except for cer­tain toys and under­wear and the color of the things we did share, our pos­ses­sions were nearly iden­ti­cal. I had a blue teddy bear and she got the red teddy bear. It was one of the few things we did not fought about. We were spoiled and we did not feel cheated. Sure, I got my Super Nintendo (blue), but she had a tape player and access to tapes! Most of the things I owned was blue or a shade of it, so it would make a lot more sense for me to have that color as my favorite color. (It makes me won­der if color pref­er­ences are learned.)

I owned very few pur­ple things when I was a kid. The only thing I can remem­ber that is pur­ple was a laven­der My Little Pony I called “Violet.” It came to me when my sis­ter had two ponies, but I got upset and jeal­ous that I did not get any. I liked horses, too! So, it was decided that I get the smaller pur­ple pony (with short rain­bow hair and tail and sticker!) while my sis­ter gets an ele­gant pink one with long flow­ing pink hair (my sis­ter called her “Lana”). Unlike my sister’s pony, Violet actu­ally stood. Hers was a strug­gle to prop up. My pony was a lot stur­dier, too, and looked stronger. Violet was smaller than my sister’s Lana as I was smaller than my sis­ter. Besides Violet, I can­not remem­ber any­thing else pur­ple that I owned.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that pur­ple was favorite. Maybe it had to do with the cre­ation of Aheram, the Wereneko Omnipotent. Before Aheram, I can­not remem­ber hav­ing par­tic­u­lar obses­sion with any color. Sure, I had col­ors I pre­ferred over oth­ers (no way I would choose any­thing pink), but that had more to do with not lik­ing cer­tain col­ors than with lik­ing any­thing. I can remem­ber the first time I col­ored Aheram. He was brown with yel­low hair. His hair was based on Quatre Raberba Winner, a char­ac­ter from the Gundam Wing series, and ini­tially, his per­son­al­ity was, too! But some­where along the way, Aheram’s hair made a tran­si­tion, from blonde to pur­ple. His per­son­al­ity made a trans­for­ma­tion, too, from a peace­ful scribe to a war­rior, the sword-wielding Avatar of the Earth, Guardian of the Physical Plane, Strength and War Personified! Either Aheram’s hair color changed because I liked pur­ple or my like of pur­ple came to be because of Aheram’s hair.

The time after the cre­ation of Aheram was a whirl­wind of laven­der, pur­ple, and denial of Barney’s pur­ple­ness. I was given a pur­ple GameBoy, my sis­ter gave me a pic­ture of Aheram (pic­tured left), and soon, there was no ques­tion as to what was my favorite color. I became an expert at pur­ple. Too much red, that is beyond vio­let, baby, that is magenta. Too much blue? Indigo. Purple was what the Romans wore to sig­nify their elite sta­tus. Butterflies, I like. Purple but­ter­flies, I really like! Ever heard of Mewtwo? He is the most pow­er­ful and con­tro­ver­sial of all Pokémons. Oh, and he is purple!

There really was no log­i­cal rea­son for me to like the color. Maybe it is the oppo­site of a pho­bia. Instead of an irra­tional fear, I have an irra­tional want of pur­ple. Maybe I was already recep­tive to the color and when I finally felt com­fort­able lik­ing it, I grew to like it. I also latched on to the sym­bol­ism of pur­ple. Purple means courage, elite, inde­pen­dent. When I was in high school, I rel­ished my sta­tus as a “unique” (my class­mates and friends have tagged me with that descrip­tion), and a boy hav­ing pur­ple as his favorite color was uncon­ven­tional. These fac­tors and my alter-ego’s color (Aheram) helped shaped this pref­er­ence for pur­ple. It could have been blue, it was green, but in the end it became purple.