What is that thing called “beige”? Is it even a thing? Is it an entity? It’s not a color, that’s for sure.
Have you ever seen a child painting with beige? Have you even seen a beige crayon? No, you have not. Because beige is not a color. It doesn’t even appear on Goethe’s color wheel. If the scientist poet wouldn't acknowledge beige, why should we? You won’t find beige in a watercolor set, nor can you buy beige as a color pencil. And no one in their right mind would make a beige marker, unless to highlight extinction. In painting, beige happens when you mix too much water or oil with too many colors while trying to create something pretty, like a rainbow. Beige kills rainbows, it kills art, beige is a joy killer. Beige is when your imagination fails you.
Granted, not everything can be red, blue, or yellow. There are some colors that are not superstar colors. The supporting hues. The humble stalwarts. They make other colors stand out. Brown is such a color. Or grey. Grey is magnificent in all of its shades. It is the most altruistic of colors. You put any other color next to grey, and it sparkles. The browns and greys of this world sacrifice their identity for others. All true colors, light or dark, bright or subdued, work together to make you happy. They make visual music. They make the world dance.
There are no beige flowers, no beige skies, no beige trees. The big, beautiful blue skies turn beige when they are polluted – when they’re sick with smog. So beige, for one, is a disease of the skies, beige is sickness, it is death, it’s evil.
Beige, when it comes, devastates everything in its path. It’s a party killer. It usurps all energy – it sucks it in and gives nothing in return except misery. There is no color on this earth that works when you put it next to anything beige. True colors refuse to be associated with beige. They run away. Or get ambushed and sucked in by beige, and die. You could say that beige is the Black Hole of life, but that would be an insult to black.
Have you seen any nation in the world that would proudly wave a beige flag? I think not. That’s because beige doesn’t stand for anything. It doesn’t inspire action or thought. It serves no purpose. It doesn’t signify anything except blandness. It doesn’t elicit a single emotion, except hate. Beige was Hitler’s “color” of choice. But even the Nazis opted out of the actual word “beige.” Can you blame them? ‘Beigeshirts’ didn’t hit that sweet spot, so they called their outfits ‘brownshirts’ instead. And, in the process, they tarnished the name of a wonderful color. Poor brown. So, why does beige still exist despite our better judgement?
Because beige does exist. Oh, yes, it does. And it prospers.
The world is saturated by beige. Beige attaches itself to us like a parasite. It spreads like a virus. It thrives in shopping malls, suburban plastic siding, and fast-food chains – except for the logos. There are no beige logos because, like flags, they need to attract devotion, not loathing. They say beige is neutral – it doesn’t call out attention. It’s safe. It’s everywhere and nowhere – we don’t notice it because it’s like air. But if it’s neutral, why does it promote negativity? Why does it kill passion?
School cafeterias, classrooms, train stations, waiting rooms, banks… All infested with beige. Spreading disease of drabness, imposing its dreary worldview on unsuspecting civilians. The only thing neutral about beige is that it neutralizes our senses. It makes everything around us insipid, colorless, arid. Beige doesn’t arouse humans. It makes us complacent. It kills affection.
Beige is also treacherous. It insinuates itself into your home under perfidious aliases. It appropriates the names of pleasant experiences – "cappuccino"-hued cupboards in your kitchen, for instance, are nothing but beige. So is your “camel” carpeting, “cream” tiles in the bathroom, or “tan” bedroom curtains. For the more discerning customer, beige reinvented itself as “taupe.” I bet when your interior decorator suggested “ecru,” you thought of a truly refined hue. Yet you ended up with a pallid beige wallpaper all over the living room. Well, it’s the dying room now, friend. Nobody is safe from beige. Nobody.
Beige is unnatural. It’s dehumanizing. It’s wrong. It’s sneaky. It kills everything in its way. So how do you take a stand against it, you ask? It’s simple.
Go vivid, not vapid. Go color. Go true blue. Go pink. Bask in sunshine yellow. Be on red alert. Be green with jealousy. Feel blue. Use white-out. Turn purple with rage. Incite an orange revolution. Receive a black eye. Smell a violet. Brown-nose, if you must. Whatever you do, for the sake of humanity, put some color in your cheeks and scream, “F**k you, beige! I’ve had enough of your dreariness!”
If that doesn’t work, resort to science. Apply the savage law of reflections. Put a mirror to any beige surface. Let it stare at its lethal self for a while. Make beige face its inner Narcissus. Unable to defy its fatal drabness, beige will have no choice but to self-destruct. It will spontaneously combust. Beige suicide is our last hope for survival.
