Opinion of the Colours 1: Beige

[tik 🪀✨]

Hello! Welcome to the first of my series of polls Opinion of the Colours**, in which we will delve into and explore the approx. 14* colours known to scientists and their properties, uses, and varieties.

Our first colour was only discovered in 1874 by a team of French scientists led by the notorious Jean van Claude. Like many scientific advancements, it wasn't being sought out at the time. No, the Reverend van Claude's team was researching a now cured condition known as Dental Benignness when, as the story goes, one of the researchers happened to glance at the wall. "Is it just me," he remarked (but more in French), "or is the colour of the walls rather sheepish?" The colour of the researcher's pants were later discovered to be Beige.

What we've learned about Beige since then has grown by leaps in bounds. Beige went from an analog colour to a digital one officially in 1987 and is often discussed online the Twitters with the hashtag #F5F5DC.

Colloquially Beige is celebrated for its sassy attitude hiding away beneath a stoic veneer, often alluded to in fashion magazines.

While when consumed raw Beige contains poisonous alkaloids that cause flammability in infants, a simple cold water extraction leaves you with pure Beige that, while lacking in any nutritional value, is said to taste like almonds that have had the flavour removed from them.

Genetically Beige is related to Mother of Pearl, a colour that went extinct you know, like, more or less 4 to 5 million years ago probably. This relationship is obvious when you examine fossilized Mother of Pearl, the joint structure of which is kinda like Beige, maybe.

In 2002 Beige was named of the Official Colour for Walls in Nepal, and laws were put in place demanding that all walls be coloured Beige. Adoption has been controversial, however, and protesters have complained that the law was only put in place because various government officials had ties in Beige mining.

I hope you have enjoyed this post about Beige and I welcome any further facts you know about Beige.

* The true number of colours could be as low as 3 and as high as All the Numbers, but most contemporary scientists have settled on 14 as a compromise.

** The British variant of the word has been chosen out of respect for the now deceased Reverend van Claude, may he RIP in peace.