A $230 Color Analysis didn’t save me.

Or: our accelerating need to categorize aesthetics.

I first learned about seasonal Color Analysis as a kid. I don’t remember the details—it could have been via a Mary Kay salesperson (brand of my first, cool toned, baby pink lipstick, appropriate for a child) or maybe it was on a TV show (7th Heaven? Step By Step?).

I think I immediately thought it was hack in the same way as I thought astrology was hack—there’s no way you can typify an entire world of people with such few categories. Well, joke’s on me because I am deeply aware of the intricacies of astrology now and, whether I “believe” in it or not, I’ve learned it’s more fun to buy in. Nobody wants to be the guy at the party pretending he doesn’t know his sign.

Different ways to typify

The Quest for Knowing Oneself is my key motivator in life, as confirmed by my Enneagram type (a fascinating personality analysis that I have found quite helpful to understanding myself and others, despite its quizzical evolution from Pythagoras to contemporary Christianity).

In The Sims, you pick a lifetime aspiration for your characters before you get to play—love, money, family. You achieve fulfillment through mini-tasks and if you neglect your dreams, you die. I like to imagine this trajectory among people—we spend our lives moving toward predetermined goals. They make us happy. Or, a lack of fulfillment makes us sad and we die.

Good luck w that gf

I’ve taken Myers-Briggs (I test differently every time; apparently it’s worthless), the Enneagram, some workplace assessment where you’re assigned a color that corresponds to your potential for achievement (though I can find no evidence that this exists). A wizard (my husband’s best friend) plotted my birth chart (by the Wizard’s insistence) in conjunction with my husband’s (one week into dating), which luckily revealed that we were, in fact, soulmates.

I’ve examined endo/exo/endo-morph body types; I’ve looked through Kibbe Types (disgustingly sexist bodily classifications that suggests I have shoulders like a linebacker), all in the search of Knowing Myself.

A bunch of thin people that a man named Kibbe is trying to tell you are [un]desirable

And, as the title of this piece indicates, I paid a lot of money for seasonal Color Analysis in L.A.’s K-Town.

So I would like to take this moment to dunk on the neighborhood bully who, at the bus stop, knowing how I loved blue, sneered: “I think you’re warm-toned and I’m cool.” Because guess what: a professional color analyst laughed when I said I thought I was an autumn. Autumn is my worst palette, actually. I am a soft summer.

Good luck with all this <3

The harm in knowing

And here we are in Late Capitalism, functioning in an economy that preys on insecurity (in Amanda Hess’ Second Life, she mentions a period app that sells data to Meta, so, in theory, Meta knows exactly when, hormonally speaking, a user is feeling their worst. What a time for targeted ads!).

And here we are after year(s) indoors, staring at our screens, ourselves, being told who and what we are, what we lack. Body types going in and out of trend while Those Of Influence possess unlimited access to free (or sponsored!) [a]esthetic procedures and surgeries as weight loss drugs are exploited for a look over health.

And we gawk and we follow, we make the moral/ethical choice to adapt or reject, or we tread water between the two and hope for future clarity.

The solace in (not) knowing

My Seasonal Color Analysis has helped me choose both hair colors and nail colors—things that I often just pick via a small survey of loved ones. Color Analysis helps with shopping—in choosing items with the same undertone, everything kinda matches.

My Kibbe type made me wear more boat necks and I’m like is this even doing anything. My birth chart gives me something to blame when I’m sad (my sun sign) and something to credit when I’m productive (my moon, my rising). My Enneagram aligns with my astrology, each somehow validating the other. Maybe I’m projecting.

Am I just repackaging narcissism? Augmenting it? I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much, Jemima Kirke once posted, and I know she’s absolutely correct. I want to think about myself so much less, I want to think about Things more (books-movies-music-my dog-my friends). When do we know ourselves too much?

Invoking T.S. Eliot, for some reason

Another quote I think about constantly—I think it was my senior quote? Drag me:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Sound like nihilism? Could be.
Okay damn I didn’t mean to post more poetry but it is, in fact, what my brain was built on.

What we call the beginning is often the end 
And to make an end is to make a beginning.  

Self-knowing, self-exploration isn’t futile.

My Very Noble reason for Color Analysis was to confirm that my wedding dress was the Right Shade of White.

I wore an heirloom gown—my mother wore it, her mother wore it—and, as it had aged to a vintage, yellow-tinged ivory, I was able to have the satin bleached (lightly, gingerly) back to the cooler-toned shade it was in the 80’s, the 50’s.

The tailor I worked with altered it some, keeping the high neck like Grace Kelly (yes, a fellow summer), opening up the back so I, a 30-something bride, could fit in the same dress as my mother and grandmother, who married much younger. It cascaded in pleats with a long train.

Grandmother, Grandfather

To take something classic, historic, beloved and to make it my own aligns with all the dumb little tests I’ve taken. So there.