Why do elderly have to be grey and brown?

Pages:502-504
Aparna Bhattacharya and Archana Shukla (Department of Psychology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, U.P.)

Our internalized ‘world’ gets often reflected through our exteriors appearances, reactions, spoken words, postures, facial expressions, the way we walk and the colors that we wear, or else, avoid. Colors have a multitude of meanings and are an important aspect of our everyday experiences. The common observation of finding an elderly person dressed in white, brown and grey arouses a curiosity about the extent to which the processes of aging can render an elderly person as well as an elderly person’s life achromatic or monochromatic. To understand the utility of colors in our healthy daily living achromatic or black and white photographs can be contrasted with photographs with life like colors, black dress of mourning with multihued flowery dresses, white hospital wards and dormitories with pastel colored rooms in our homes, achromatic times of the day dark cold nights or cloudy days- with warm, bright, sunny colorful days and a warm smiley face with another ‘pale’ face from which all colors seem to have drained. Nature is multihued. Nothing on earth is achromatic. Color characterizes a natural state of being. Colorlessness therefore brings to mind boredom, melancholy and lifelessness. This paper tries to explore the extent to which colors are or are not used in most elderly people’s lives, personal choice or the societal expectations as the basic reason for a relative colorlessness, and the possible association of colorlessness with social isolation, hopelessness, reduced opportunities for useful productive work and also leisure activities, monotony in daily schedules, inability for humor and laughter and, most important of all, a substantial lowering of self esteem and life satisfaction. The paper also explores stereo typically negative ageist connotations of ‘color’ in the context of elderly.