i always notice colours of things (hello? special interest), so it was the thing i was first drawn to, that i could comment on. i don’t think most photos do justice to textile, much less sculpture-like textiles, so for me, these projects are just a pleasant mass of colours. trust me, it’s a compliment.

ok, since we’re now on the topic, my purple anecdotes:

i saw the colour purple when i was fifteen, an unusual movie for most fifteen year old boys. on the way home, i made my dad stop at the local grocery store, and picked up a copy of the book. it was a school night, i stayed up until i was finished the book, and it had a remarkable effect on my development.

the periwinkle colour of the sky sometimes, as the sun goes down, and the sky turns kind of pearlescent. one of my favourite experience-colours.

but my favourite colour has always been, and maybe always will be, orange. though i can’t wear it.

I don’t know about pink+green being a preppy colour. I do remember hearing about one of the colleges in London (England) where there was a campaign to make the school mascot an 8 foot tall, dayglo green and pink hermaphrodite woodlouse, and the faculty having to intervene when the motion was passed by due democratic process in the student union… A possibly apocryphal tale from the early 80s.
OK, now we have really hijacked the thread. Sorry, Rachel!

Now I’m off to make a nuisance of myself quizzing friends with white hairs about the (mis)behaviour of same…

The Color Purple-it’s a movie with Whoopi & Oprah, book written by Alice Walker, directed by Steven Spielberg.

Purple as a color, give it a different name: Eggplant. That calls to mind vegetables.
Pale purples: Lavender is also an essential fragrant oil, Lilac is also a delightful flower.

There’s the novelty ditty (from a few decades back) about “the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple-people-eater”, though I don’t actually understand what it means.

There’s the rhyme (for kids) about “I’ve never seen a purple cow…” which ends with “I’d rather see than be one”.

Purple is considered a sign of royalty, it’s also the color many people who are into “magic” (however you wish to define that) wear & choose for their special objects.

Purple, green, and orange are the secondary spots on the color wheel (between the primaries red, yellow, and blue).

Suppose I could go on listing such things, but I just figured you knew all these tidbits already, and they wouldn’t matter (be useful for your situation) anyway…
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Please pardon my tangents.

Re: Purple & Pink, well, pink + green were a big “preppy” combo. back then-I suppose that was modified to purple + pink for some people ?

Re: Color associations for particular individuals: When I’ve known folks who only wore a very narrow range of colors, then those are bound in my head as connected with them. My father stuck with black, shades of tan/khaki/beige, and the spectrum from pale to dark blue-that was all (never saw him in any other colors).

Re: Aging hair behavior: My info. is purely anecdotal, merely my experience & interpretation (maybe I’m an exception ?). White hairs don’t lay flat (with the rest of my hair which still has color), it’s wiry-”scraggly” & “flyaway”-poking up & out at the most peculiar angles. This incorrigibility (snarls & messy appearance) defeats my attempts to have long hair (and wasn’t something I had anticipated/expected).

So there’s a new association for purple right there: all those fun times reading that book!

Plus, you and Misfit like purple, and Belfast used to like pink and purple, and Stat Mama’s daughter likes pink and purple now. So suddenly, my mother is not the only person who ever walked the earth with a preference for purple! All you really nice people like the color, too.

I think I may be finding a way through this impasse…

The purple issue and the parental issue are separate ones for me. However, there are plenty of things I find remind me of my mother-in ways I don’t necessarily wish to be. There are also oodles of objects or features that trigger strongly negative reactions in me (not just with reference to her, but a variety of painful experiences incl. with my “peers”).

What I have to do is take the thing itself, apart from her, and evaluate whether I actually like or dislike something. No, I’m not very good at having emotional equanimity that matches my intellectual big talk-so I’m not claiming to have this all figured out.

For instance, hairstyle: I always wondered why my mother had short hair. I wished it were longer, but now that I’m older I find myself cutting my hair a lot. Visually, I prefer the look of long hair-but it’s only now that I realize how hair changes with age, and (in my case) becomes unkempt/unmanageable, partly due to the increasing proportion of white hair (which behaves differently than hair that retains its pigmentation).

So I keep trimming it shorter & shorter, while having the unhappy thought of how much my hairstyle resembles that of my mother.
She had bangs, too-as do I. Yet, I try to hold onto the idea that this is my decision, I like how it looks on me, even though it gives me the creeps because of how similar this is to how she did her own hair (during my childhood).

From another perspective, one might say it’s about “re-purposing” or shifting the context of something, keeping what works and not tossing it all out solely because it has associations with a disfavored person. Y’know, the whole “if I go along with-or out of hand reject-this, then so & so wins by manipulating my choices”. Either way, one’s following another-or reacting in opposition to-when one would much rather arrive at a “freely selected” option (along whichever continuum).

“Baggage” is unavoidable, and some things are best discarded if they cannot be resurrected with new, better, connective material. Though there’s something to be said for having the difficult thing right out there in the open, if that might help make the thing less sensitive.

If I had something against purple, and I refrained from using it in my home decor or outfits, then I might become even more sensitized to it solely by the obviousness of its absence. My brain might (involuntarily) fill in the blank (of what’s missing), whereas if I used purple to some degree, it’s power might be diminished by its ordinariness.

It’s a judgment call for each person to make (how to deal with the feared thing/property/quality), depending on his/her personal particulars.

Rescuing purple from the grips of outdated connections could be useful for you, if you consider that possibility might work in your case/situation. I’m familiar with the problem of “X relates/leads to Y” (in my memory banks), and I want/need “X without Y”.

I don’t think there’s a way to eradicate/erase the “Y” (in isolation), so I try finding more other things I can attach to “X”, to take up that mental space (and create/develop a new pairing of items in my mind). I’m not saying it is definitely doable, merely that it may (or may not) be applicable/valid.

A trivial example is that I take print ads, cut out pieces of them & turn those into collages which then say what I want & how I want (instead of the ad remaining a “tool of oppressive forces” putting messages in my head that I don’t wish to receive).

And I recognize I’m probably just restating your post in my comment.