Färgsamling

Nu är jag igenom Maja Jacobsons 'Färgen gör människan' och har under tiden hunnit tänka igenom vad rosa, lila och blått betyder för mig och många andra. Kläder speglar alltid det aktuella samhället och det blir lika mycket en historiebok som en bok om färger. Det är ju det som är så roligt med mode... tycker jag. Jag samlar här flera artiklar kring färg.

"De där svarta kläderna är verkligen jag"
Du får bara en chans att göra ett första intryck. Under den parollen blir vi slavar under våra ytor. Men även om vi har ett aldrig så avslappnat förhållande till innehållet i våra garderober, så sänder kläderna meddelanden om vilka vi är - eller vill vara. I kostym blir man behandlad på ett annat sätt än i munkjacka. Genom att välja sexiga kläder stärker man sin könsidentitet inför festen. Men den som är alltför stajlad på universitetet får det svårt att bli tagen på allvar.

Kampen om färgernas betydelse går vidare
Färger reser över tid och rum och byter betydelse genom grupptryck, teknikutveckling, kommers, revolutioner och ren slump. Vi har läst boken "Färgen gör människan", pratat med författaren Maja Jacobson och ger sju kulturhistoriskt färgstarka svar.

Färgernas alfabet
Med färgsymbolik menar vi användningen av färger för att beskriva sinnestillstånd, egenskaper och kulturella uppfattningar. "Färgska" är det första språket vi lär oss och ett användbart sätt att kommunicera utan ord.

Svart sätter färg på trafiken
Den vita hajpen har lagt sig. Silver börjar bli hopplöst ute. Nu kommer svart på bred front. Men den som vill synas i trafiken ska välja starkt gulgrönt. Bilfärger är både mode och vetenskap.

Den problematiska färgen
För flickor är rosa bekymmersamt, för pojkar i det ­närmaste tabu. Men hur kan en färg väcka så många – och i vissa fall kluvna – känslor?
– Rosa är en kulturell nyckelsymbol för sam­hällets föreställningar om kön, sexualitet och makt i samhället, säger genusforskaren Fanny Ambjörnsson.

Color Symbolism
The world we see is filled with color. Color is important in art and in various cultures around the world. People of the world see colour differently. This is because tradition, religion, and symbolism affects how people feel about color.

Lace and Purple - Women's only

Lace is something of the most feminine you can wear. You see a ruffled shirt sometimes on some guy trying out the leather rokoko rock style, but a sheer layer of white lace is very rare to spot.

Also the colors of purple and purpur are often reserved for women. Especially in soft materials. As well as the overall - in soft materials, and knickers or bloomers.

Until 200 years ago the fashion was different. Men posed in lace and purpur to show off their financial grandeur. Purpur was the most expensive color to produce, gathered en masse from small shells and lace the most expensive fabrics. The men were just as much as the women porters of these signals of wealth.

With the industrial revolution wealth came with work and men started to wear more practical and dull suits, while their women got the one and single task to still represent the status of the couple with expensive and fantastic outfits. The women became the beautyful, the jewellery great to look at.


At the same time Darwinists concluded that men and women had different purposes, they were different and it got important to show those differencies by all powers. So the purple, still worn by women became the color of the weak, of fragility close associated with trembeling flowers. The lace became as female as can be, and the blommers are only seen as women's underwear ever since.

There was an attempt in the 70s to brake these associations, but I believe it only made them stronger. Will we ever see them on men again? Do we want to?

Sad, not scared, of what we are becoming

Strong images from Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida touch me as visualizing the human disapproval of and unhappiness in what and who we are becoming.

Female Role Models needed

I need women showing me their achievements. They inspire me. They show me how much courage, effort and patience I need. They tell me what I can expect so that I don't get disappointed but is armoured and prepared for the struggle I need to put up, but also that it is worth it.

The current image of who is born to do what is slowly changing in all different part of the world and women and ethnic minorities are gaining more and more equal value to the white and to the man. Many people don't know this - how big the small difference still are, but they effect me and my life every day.

Women have put their marks in the history writing, and sometimes they should have, but someone else was rewarded in their place, or they were ignored as unimportant in a male context.

Please, let me know any woman you feel has her rightful place in history, or any woman you think is missing!

You are never alone
How did Lady Lovelace talk?
Be the Cook for the Best Product
Barbie is fake, Pink is not
Alice ännu mer i underlandet
A good start of 100 most important women through times, by Shelby Ellery

Alice ännu mer i Underlandet

Var just och såg Alice i Underlandet med några små söta tjejer som sällskap. Visst var det en vacker film med figurer och scener man inte vill sluta titta på, men karaktärerna är ganska själslösa och försöket att ge den gamla helgalna sagan någon sorts förklaring och vett är faktiskt lite tråkig. Det som alltid har varit så galet med Alice i Underlandet, allt man inte fattar och som förblir utan förklaring, blir inte så kul när det anas lite förstånd någonstans.

Hattmakaren och den Röda drottningen är så klart estetiskt intressanta att se på, men det är bara Alice själv som ger filmen någonting av eget värde i form av historieberättande. Sällan har en så tunn och blek flicka så trovärdigt förvandlats till bästa drakdräparmaterialet - en ståtlig kvinnlig riddare i rustning som tidigare bara setts i Jean d'Arcs skepnad.


För mig som vuxen blev istället Tim Burtons nydanande feministiska affärskvinna Alice för långt från verkligheten för att kännas trovärdig (hur ofta på 1800-talet tror ni en just nekad svärfar erbjuder en flicka tjänst i handelsföretaget), men små tjejer som ännu är helt ovetande om denna verklighet får äntligen en varierad bild av vad som kan hända en söt tjej som ramlar ner i ett hål i marken. Välbehövt!

Recensioner av filmen på Rotten Tomatoes är hälften positiva, hälften negativa. Filmen är en egentligen en renodlad barnfilm, helt utan spänning, känslor eller komplexitet och har hittills dragit in 319M $. Hoppas det är riktigt många unga tjejer och killar som har fått vidga sin bild av vem som räddar riket och hur man lever lycklig i alla sina dagar.

Barbie is a fake, pink is not

Some seem to say that Barbie and pink is pretty much the same, and it striked me that what if it is Barbie who so completely degraded the color of pink in so many minds. Barbie is known to be a toy for little silly girls only and maybe the color has gone the same way in their affinity?

The color of pink was first recorded in the late 17th century and is the color of the dawn, of rosy flowers and of blossom cheeks. These nouns associate further to youth, freshness and naivety. With this in mind it feels even strange that pink not long ago was a masculine color.

I just learned that less than 100 years ago pink was assigned to gender for the first time, and by then to men as deriving from the red. The blue had been a female color for a long time, associating to melancholy and dreams. It was first in the 40s that it turned the other way around and little girls started to get dressed all in pink.

Well, Barbie was launched in 1959, and the early dolls were not packaged in all hysteric pink plastic boxes, so at least it wasn't her making pink to a girly color. The overwhelming pink color must have been added by time according to sales successes and today Barbie is more pink than ever. The more Barbie presents an unattainable dream of perfect girlyness, the more parents seem to think that the doll is appropriate for their daughters. Of course they are right, only that it’s not preparing the girls for the upcoming future where they will have to learn that everything girly is worth, if not nothing, so not so much. Barbie has been criticized for many more ideals, but I stay with the color and the fake here.

Pink has gained status the past 5 years or so. The romantic fresh pink has maybe never left the upper class cleaned look, but the stinging version was considered vulgar and tacky for a couple of decades.

The first gender revolution was in the 70s with an attempt to not let the colors determine who you are. I guess women felt denied and the following 80s was ruled by power women using the pink color to state that there is nothing wrong being a tough girl.

Again there was a contra revolution in the 90s where the grunge fashion was extremely gender neutral, followed by another contra revolution of very strict black. Again girls grew a new believe in their interests of femininity resulting in expressing their desire for pink. This time the commercial forces are strong and enhances all group selected attributes for mass sales.

What’s next? Up til now the need of pink seems to reappear everytime it disappears. Women want to express that they are women and that it's just as much worth as being man. As for right now more parents than me want their girls to know that they are aloud to be the girls they are with the interests they have. We don’t want to prepossess them to just want to be a specific kind of girl with a specific set of interests, and that’s what we are worried about when it comes to the pink color.

I love pink, and I think we can use it to attract girls to do things they wouldn't dare to try if they weren't safe to be welcome, but I don’t want it to be loaded with values as naivety, youth, stupidity or tackyness as Barbie has made it to be with help of a fake smile, a fake body and fake future. To me it is actually Barbie who adds the dilemma to the color.

I am strength, what is you?

My 8 year old daughter came to me the other day with a bunch of cards. Each card presented a word - the words were

materialism, greed, tyrant, strength, anarchy, loyalty, wealth, earth, envy, wisdom, old woman, experience, woman, joy, enemy, changable, development, friend, achieved goals, herd, danger, safety, curage, coldness, rest, stubborn, carefulness, the young, late, a new idea, a newbie, a new start, bewilderness, old man, based, hurry, unsure, thought, man, boy, woman, girl

If you are one of these words, which is it? she asked me.

Strength I could answer after a few seconds. This confirmation from myself has given me even more of the same value all day. It empowered me to be reminded of what I am and how I feel.

Achieved goals is me, she replied.

This exersize was not so bad.

Which word is you?