Mosaica: A New Column by Jodi Werner

Grey, It's the New Black
By Jodi Werner

The other day, while shopping at an over-priced retail store, I thought I had discovered a true find--a silky grey cardigan for $20. But when I took it over to my boyfriend and proudly held the hanger up to my chin with one hand and pulled a sleeve out to the side with the other, he scrunched up his face.

"Grey," he said. "It's not your color, Sweetie. It washes you out."

And with a kiss on my cheek to let me know that grey is one of the few, if not the only, colors to do this, my bargain purchase dreams went up in a cloud of smoke as grey as the cardigan itself.

I didn't wish to be washed out.

Which got me thinking, What is it about grey that washes a girl out anyway?

As a concept, I think grey is divine. It defies classification: Is it a color? A shade? How the heck to do you spell it, anyway--with an a or an e? It should be the perfect color for women: Complex, and yet simple.

GenJ artist Joshua Meyer, who spends his days wrist deep in paint, told me he sees grey as "the way we visualize the magnitude of possibility."

"Within the range of grey there are more subtle variations than within any other color, because it is the one that contains all others," he said.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites grey as having been used by writers such as Shakespeare and Browning to describe "sea, sky, and cloud when not illuminated by the sun."

And Allison Elliott, a color and well being specialist for a Sephora store in NYC, told me that "Grey enhances natural beauty and brings out the colors that work best for women." "Many people think of brown for a neutral color," she said. "But brown isn't good for everyone. Grey is."

I wonder then, why does the media tell women to "radiate" this and "illuminate" that, instead of telling us to "just go grey!" Grey should be the way to fewer wrinkles, the color therapy for calm, and the key to inner and outer beauty.

Two generations removed from the original and radical feminists, most women today (at least the ones I know) possess a jumble of opinions and attitudes. Think Ally McBeal, Lindsay Dole, or Carrie Bradshaw. Though perhaps not the best illustrations of my point, these characters show how one minute we're independent leaders, and the next we're hungry for shelter and pampering. Our complex beliefs and roles equal each other out to the point of greyness.

This complexity, I would argue, is a true mark of greatness. Did not Walt Whitman say, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes"? Women today are multitudinous. (I'll refrain from calling us large, though in a metaphorical way, that's true as well.) Our mental, political, and emotional girth prevents us from siding in just one way, and it necessitates us being grey.

Which, according to the Jewish creation story, may be exactly what we were always meant to be. As Joshua Meyer points out, grey is foreshadowed (pun intended) right in the second line of Torah: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void.

"Tohu vavohu contains within it infinite possibility," he said. "Creation becomes the process of separating out and distinguishing between the different greys, transforming the infinite into finite relationships."

Grey is in itself, he stresses, "an inevitable destination."

As partners in the bible's first finite relationship, Adam and Eve appear to have been directly birthed from this inevitable destination. In The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, Ellen Frankel and Betsy Platkin Teutsch write, "according to legend, God created Adam from red, black, white, and green dust gathered from the four corners of the world." According to this interpretation, God essentially formed Adam from a combination of colors--from grey matter. Therefore Eve, as an extraction from Adam's rib, (or side, depending on how you read the text), can likewise be said to have grey roots. (Yes, another pun.)

Elliott adds that when she's pressed for time or a new client comes in without specific color preferences, she starts with grey. "People wouldn't think to use it," she said. "But grey adapts to whatever colors that person's face has. Its variance compliments everyone. It makes everyone look good."

Which leads me to admit right here that it could feasibly have been the cardigan's specific hue of grey that didn't do my complexion justice, and not the color grey in general. But the point is that grey needs a public relations makeover. It needs to become more widely recognized as a color with great potential. A color that brings out women's beauty and greatness, not one that washes us out.

In fact, I think it's time to proclaim grey the new black.

For grey is more than the T-shirt color of choice. It's a way of life. A color rich in Jewish historical symbolism. And a damn good symbolic color for today's women.

While my proclamation may not catch on to the extent of women walking around wearing "It's Great to be Grey" on their backpacks, it will hopefully bring us to acknowledge grey as a natural and spiritual state of being.

So that the next time someone is told that grey washes her out, maybe, just maybe, she will say "Thank you!" and take it as a compliment.

As GenJ's cultural ambassador, Jodi Werner brings new artists and writers to the site and writes this column.