What's your favorite color? Do you have a color you don't like at all? Do have certain colors that you think you look better in? For the first half of my life, I had one color that I didn't like and thought I didn't look good in, Red.
I was one of those little girls who had the long, dark red curls that everyone said were beautiful. However, after every comment that someone made about how much they loved my curls, it was followed with a comment about how redheads couldn't wear red. I heard it so much that I grew up to dislike red in all situations, not just in clothes. As time went on, I also heard that redheads shouldn't wear pink either. Pink was just behind red in my dislikes.
Advance to several years when my oldest sister went to a Color Me Beautiful party. This was a home party where they determined what season you were according to your hair and skin tone and what colors looked best on you. My sister learned that she was an Autumn at this party and looked good in earth tones or Autumn colors. The rest of us, sisters, had similar coloration to her and followed her lead in what colors we should be wearing. Years later, I even got a Color Me Beautiful book as a reference for my colors. One of the first things I learned from this was there are two basic colors of red, a blue based one and an orange based one. The orange based one was okay for Autumns to wear. Wow! Red was okay to wear.
However, now not only did I know a whole set of colors that supposedly looked good on me, I had whole set of ones that supposedly didn't look good on me, not just red and pink. I'm not sure this was progress. As time went on, I did gravitate to the colors that were recommended for Autumns. And they probably did look better with my skin tone.
But I don't really care any more. If I like the color whether or not it is supposed to look good on me, I wear it. If it makes me happy, it will show on my face and that will make me look better than anything else. And these days, I like red. I wear it, I decorate with it, and I paint with it. I am happy for this progress and sad for all those years, I missed out on the fun things that were red.
