Shades of Grey

We’re coming to the end of winter I hope. The end of the grey months. Overcast, dreary day with stormy grey clouds. Grey is the colour of cold, windy days. Log fires in the hearth to keep the home warm, with chimneys spewing grey smoke and ash into the sky. Grey smog, pollution.

Grey is the colour of penitence – a traditional punishment would involve being forced to walk in barefoot through a town covered in grey ashes. Some churches use grey for Ash Wednesday (the seventh Wednesday before Easter Sunday – the first day of the Season of Lent) and for the entire Lent/fasting period, again to symbolise mourning and repentance.

As well as being a colour of penance grey can also denote an area of the edge of legality, or illegality. A ‘grey area’ in the law. A loop hole.

“There are three basic types of [arms] deal. White being legal, black being illegal, and my personal favourite colour, grey.” – Lord of War

The grey market is the practice in business of buying or selling items that are priced below what has been regulated, or through channels which while legal, are unauthorised and probably unintended by the original manufacturer. The grey economy refers to paying workers “cash in hand” avoiding relevant taxes or social contributions.

A grey suit is a safe, conservative (and boring) choice for the office. Grey was also one of the colours the lower classes were allowed wear in during the Tudor Era in England – according to English Sumptuary Laws of the time (also called the Statutes of Apparel – which was meant to regulate consumption, and prevent people from living beyond their means and wasting money on expensive items) the lower classes were only allowed to wear sheepskin, wool or linen in brown, beige, yellow, orange, green, grey or blue. Although these items were allowed to be trimmed with more expensive materials.

Something being considered a grey area can also demonstrate indecision, or being caught between two different (maybe opposing) viewpoints.

Grey as a colour denotes depression and sadness. The winter is often hell for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder, who are affected by the lack of sunlight in the winter months. And apparently the world does literally become more grey when one is depressed. 

The Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) is either grey or light brown in colour. Grey is the colour of a corpse and ghosts are traditionally transparent and grey in colour – a common apparition (and incidently the Ravenclaw ghost from the Happy Potter Series) is that of a grey lady.

Black items absorb all wavelengths of light, while white objects reflect all wavelengths equally. When an object absorbs most of the visible light spectrum, but reflects light of all wavelength roughly equally you see an object as grey. Effectively the colour grey is the reflection of white light at a lower intensity. If you shine a dim white light at a wall it will appear grey. Grey is the colour of old age. As we age our hair greys (this bit in particularly relevant, *stamps feet*, if you want to know why, keep reading). The intensity of the white light fades in the later years, greyer and dimmer, towards the end of life.

But, in Christianity, grey is also the colour often associated with the resurrection of the dead and Jesus if often depicted wearing a great cloak.

On another positive note, because grey is considered an intermediate colour - consisting of both black and white – grey can represent compromise, mediation, neutrality, balance and justice.

Grey is a colour of intelligence. With age comes wisdom and knowledge. The brain is often referred to as the “old grey matter”.

The colour grey is often associated with power and great institutions. The Grey Lady is another name for The New York Times or the B-52 Stratofortresses. The Grey Ghosts were a nickname for a military unit in WWII and Vietnam.

So there you have it - multiple different shades of grey.

“But why,” I hear you ask, “is North of Normal going on and on and on about the colour grey???” Well, I was styling my hair this morning and I haven’t dyed my roots for quite a while (I’ve been dying my hair since I was about 14). I found numerous grey hairs – as you can tell by the topic of today’s post I’m not obsessed with this AT ALL, and I’m perfectly happy to be going grey at not even 30 </sarcasm>. And they weren’t there in December as I had my hair restyled then and hadn’t dyed it for a while. Oh well, at least I’m obsessing about something other than eating today. Although I did find out during my "grey hair" Google marathon that malnutrition can cause premature greying so I went out on my lunch break and stocked up multivitamins (and hair dye) as I’m completely failing at stopping eating disordered behaviour so I’ll try and counteract malnutrition in other ways as well. (That being said I haven’t lost any more weight for about a week and even though I’m still purging a lot I’m probably eating more on the whole).