Marshchild
12-15-2008, 07:10 AM
I've just been reading a couple of threads dealing with the colour pink, and the somewhat contentious issue of whether this has become an "acceptable" colour for boys and men to wear (or if there's still a taboo against it), and have reflected that, while I certainly love this colour myself, it's not my favourite "femme" one. Instead, that honour goes to silver, a colour that arguably got me into CDing in the first place. How my nigh-on lifelong love of it started, I do not know, although a great deal of childhood exposure to science-fiction probably played a significant part. In particular, I blame Doctor Who - one of my favourite stories on that show remains a Colin Baker one called The Two Doctors that first screened (and which I first saw) during the mid-1980s. One of the reasons I liked that story so much was that its cast included one of my favourite Doctor Who villains: a woman called Chessene. Not only was she beautiful, smart and dangerous, she also spent the story in a silver dress I would've committed the most heinous of crimes for. Being still somewhat in denial about my CDing back then, I'd imagine myself in a "male" version of that dress, although my denial would last only another couple of years. I remember the day it actually died: I was walking past a boutique in my neighbourhood when I saw in its windows a positively gorgeous silver dress to which had been attached a bunch of strips of some translucent fabric dotted with white polka dots. If I saw it again now, I might think it was all very tacky (this is '80s fashion we're talking about, after all!), but at the time, I'd never seen anything more beautiful, and I thought, "Screw wearing only guys' clothing in silver [not that there was terribly much of that to be found anyway], I want the freedom to wear something like that!"
As is often the case when a boy shows an interest in pink, my love of silver did not go down that well with my parents: well, not my father at least. The year before, my mother had actually offered to make me a silver shirt for my birthday (my 14th), only to have my father torpedo the plan at the last minute with a claim of "No son of mine's going to be going about dressed like a poofter!" (or words to that effect)*. As a (very crappy) form of compensation, those presents I did end up getting were wrapped in silver paper: a gesture that mollified me sufficiently at the time to have me keeping that paper after I'd removed it. A few months later, however, I realized what a patronizing - nay, insulting - gesture it had been, so burnt the paper in a delightful fit of rage and temporary madness one night (a fit that also had me destroying half the other presents I'd received - God, that felt good!).
Of course, my father's attempts to rid me of my love of silver failed abysmally (as did my mother's later efforts to persuade me that the colour really was for girls only), for, after black, it's probably the predominant colour in my wardrobe. I've got silver shirts, blouses, smocks, T-shirts, skirts, pants, jackets, pyjamas, gloves and dresses, as well as a silver raincoat, pair of silver knickers, and even a silver hairdressers' cape! And it's not going to stop there either. There're a couple of other garments I'm going to have made in the colour in the New Year, and I went to buy the fabric for them today. As the sales girl was measuring it out, I was reminded yet again why I love the colour so much - spread out on the counter, shimmering under the lights, the material I was getting looked like so much mercury. Beautiful!
Is silver anyone else's favourite colour here (and if so, are you quite as dotty about it as I am)? Also, does anyone have any idea why it's regarded so widely as a "girl's colour"? Given its long association with the Space Age, futuristic technology, and the like, you'd think it'd be more of a "boy's colour", wouldn't you? After all, there's no denying that, even if they'd never wear it, many guys love their hi-tech toys to be that colour.
*In all fairness to my father, his attitude’s changed a lot since then. (His work used to have him living apart from us for most of the year back then, which may have been responsible in large part for his hostility towards the idea of me wearing silver clothes - maybe he was worried his absence from my life was making me turn "effeminate".) I received a particularly striking demonstration of this nearly a decade after the "birthday incident", when I was about to head off on a long bike ride that'd probably have me returning home after dark. At the time, I had a silver jacket (and a ladies' one at that) that I often used to wear while riding, and he asked me if I was taking it with me. I said I wasn't, only to have him respond that I'd better; it'd help me be seen better in the dark.
As is often the case when a boy shows an interest in pink, my love of silver did not go down that well with my parents: well, not my father at least. The year before, my mother had actually offered to make me a silver shirt for my birthday (my 14th), only to have my father torpedo the plan at the last minute with a claim of "No son of mine's going to be going about dressed like a poofter!" (or words to that effect)*. As a (very crappy) form of compensation, those presents I did end up getting were wrapped in silver paper: a gesture that mollified me sufficiently at the time to have me keeping that paper after I'd removed it. A few months later, however, I realized what a patronizing - nay, insulting - gesture it had been, so burnt the paper in a delightful fit of rage and temporary madness one night (a fit that also had me destroying half the other presents I'd received - God, that felt good!).
Of course, my father's attempts to rid me of my love of silver failed abysmally (as did my mother's later efforts to persuade me that the colour really was for girls only), for, after black, it's probably the predominant colour in my wardrobe. I've got silver shirts, blouses, smocks, T-shirts, skirts, pants, jackets, pyjamas, gloves and dresses, as well as a silver raincoat, pair of silver knickers, and even a silver hairdressers' cape! And it's not going to stop there either. There're a couple of other garments I'm going to have made in the colour in the New Year, and I went to buy the fabric for them today. As the sales girl was measuring it out, I was reminded yet again why I love the colour so much - spread out on the counter, shimmering under the lights, the material I was getting looked like so much mercury. Beautiful!
Is silver anyone else's favourite colour here (and if so, are you quite as dotty about it as I am)? Also, does anyone have any idea why it's regarded so widely as a "girl's colour"? Given its long association with the Space Age, futuristic technology, and the like, you'd think it'd be more of a "boy's colour", wouldn't you? After all, there's no denying that, even if they'd never wear it, many guys love their hi-tech toys to be that colour.
*In all fairness to my father, his attitude’s changed a lot since then. (His work used to have him living apart from us for most of the year back then, which may have been responsible in large part for his hostility towards the idea of me wearing silver clothes - maybe he was worried his absence from my life was making me turn "effeminate".) I received a particularly striking demonstration of this nearly a decade after the "birthday incident", when I was about to head off on a long bike ride that'd probably have me returning home after dark. At the time, I had a silver jacket (and a ladies' one at that) that I often used to wear while riding, and he asked me if I was taking it with me. I said I wasn't, only to have him respond that I'd better; it'd help me be seen better in the dark.