Frigid. This winter is relentless with cold temperatures. As if being frozen to the bone is not enough as you walk across the windy tundra to your class or car, the cold is accompanied with a total lack of color outside.  And do not say you see white, black and gray colors. First of all, yuck. Second, technically those are not colors. The Bing Dictionary on-line defines color as: 1. property causing visual sensation: the property of objects that depends on the light that they reflect and is perceived as red, blue, green, or other shades 2. not black or white: a manifestation of color, e.g. red or green, as opposed to black, white, or gray.

There it is. Our winter is frigid and colorless. That is wearisome. Let’s stop and add color back into our lives. Here are a few arbitrary thoughts on color.

When my kindergartener hears the word ‘color,’ he immediately knows it in its verb form. He could sit for hours in a corner of the house with coloring books and be very happy. In fact, if you have not sat down and colored a simple coloring page lately, you are missing out. It is very relaxing and even rewarding. It is so much easier to color inside the lines as grown-ups.

As adults, when we hear the word ‘color,’ most of us will reflect on our favorite hue or an art piece. Throughout the world color has so many denotations and connotations it is almost overpowering.

A recent color definition was brought to my attention by my third grade daughter. It is the debate over boy versus girl colors. She disclosed there was a heated classroom discussion as a couple boys felt strongly there are clear ‘boy colors’ and ‘girl colors’. I have to admit when I was younger I categorized colors by gender. And if we were all pushed, we could easily put the primary colors into boy vs. girl colors. But do you currently apply this in your life? In that case, consider this. According to eHow, before the 20th century ‘most children’s clothes in the past were white. When it came to color, pink was often a “boy’s color” while blue was a “girl’s color.” The idea behind this is that red — and thus pink as a shade of red — is a strong, active color, while blue is a soft, passive color.’

Putting aside the boy vs. girl colors debate, our slang also abuses color to visualize the emotional state of someone: ‘feeling blue’, ‘seeing red’, and ‘green with envy’. Many professors would urge us to stay away from these old clichés. They are tiresome and worn out. Would you really want to read a story beginning, “It was as black as night when she…”?

And what about holidays? We would all agree there are colors when put together scream holidays: ‘red, white and blue’, ‘red and green’ or ‘orange and black’. This has ruined the use of these holiday color sets in other parts of our lives: clothes outfits, decorating and graphic design, to name a few.

But it is not all bad. We are told color is a good thing; a must option when selecting clothing. It seems the textile industry (along with very good detergents) can now deliver on lasting bright, vivid apparel. This along with the observation “any colorful pattern can be worn with any other color or pattern” has made dressing and shopping more interesting. And somewhat easier? Well, maybe for those of you born after 1990 or at least within the last generation!

One of the funniest twisting of ‘color’ is in the cosmetics industry. I do believe in the beginning the cosmetics industry applied standard color names to products. Mainly so customers were assured they were purchasing a true red lipstick or bright pink nail polish. But today, the product color names have become so distorted they are amusing. In five minutes I found these product names in my cosmetics: ‘Thimbleberry’, ‘Rock Star Pink’, ‘Walking on Eggshells’, ‘Lavender Lights’, ‘Silver Mining’, and, my favorite, ‘Unbreakable Heart’. They do retain a little of their color definition, so you at least know what color family the cosmetic is apt to look most like. But do you really know what shade or tint the color is going to be? For example the Rock Star Pink nail polish has not pink color in it all, it is glittery with purples, greens and golds.

But would this not be the coolest job? Naming cosmetic products. The engineer in me wonders if there is a computer program randomly generating the names based on a list of inputs, such as: customer demographics, price range, shimmer factor or tone vibrancy.

Awesome. I just found my future career, Cosmetics Color Naming Technician. I will invent a formula for naming makeup. “Adjective(s) plus a Noun equals an original, unassociated cosmetic color name.”  (The adjectives should provoke emotion and the noun should represent a physical location or activity with strength.)

I could spend my days adding color to the world instead of tromping through the icy slush and dirty snow while looking at a monochrome world. Are you wondering what my first formulated cosmetic color name would be? Well… ‘Endless Tropical Beach’, of course.