Photo a Day: Purple

As the mother of a 4-1/2 year old girl, it took me approximately 8 seconds to gather this collection of purple items. I didn’t even have to leave the room. At any given time, I would estimate that there is an average of 23 purple items in every room of my house. We have purple stuffed animals of every ilk, purple clothing for every occasion, purple toys and purses and dolls and accessories, purple markers and crayons and stickers and paper and glue and glitter. Purple, purple, purple.

I’m not quite sure what the universal obsession is that seems to attack every girl between the ages of roughly 3 and 14. For some, it lasts a short time; for others it lasts for years, or even into adulthood. But there are very few small girls who do not experience at least a passing obsession with the color purple.

I will admit that it makes wardrobe coordination a snap. Pretty much anything my daughter can pull out of her drawer will match anything else, because they’re all purple, with the occasional splash of pink or white or black, just to shake things up a little. My daughter owns purple jeans, purple leggings, light purple pants, dark purple pants, striped purple pants, solid purple shirts, flowered purple shirts, polka-dotted purple shirts, purple socks, and scads of purple underpants. Not to mention purple hair elastics and purple hair bows. Her favorite dress-up princess dress? Purple. Her favorite stuffed animal? Purple. Her favorite purse? Purple. Her favorite tutu? Purple. Purple, purple, purple.

I’m sure that someday she’ll grow out of it. And by then, I’ll probably be beyond ready. But for now, purple is the color of happy in our house.

Purple.

Photo A Day, Day 1: Something Purple

For some people, “something purple” might be a difficult subject to capture easily on film. It’s not a color that everyone has in their wardrobe; it’s not a common color for interior or exterior paint; there isn’t likely to be a car in that particular shade parked nearby. But for anyone with a daughter under the age of, say, 18, purple is common. And for anyone with a daughter under the age of, say, 8, purple is ubiquitous.

I have a 2-1/2 year old daughter, therefore my life is filled with purple. My daughter has purple pajamas, she has purple dresses, the blanket on her bed is purple, she dresses up in a purple tutu, she has a pair of purple sneakers, she has a purple purse, her favorite toys are a purple My Little Pony and a Matchbox Holley Shiftwell (a car from the movie Cars 2 who just happens to be – you guessed it – purple), a full one-third of her hair bow collection is purple. Her favorite snack is even purple grapes! But the one item that pretty much sums up her love of purpleness is her Purple Princess Cup.

Although I chose to feature Princess Rapunzel in this view (she does, after all, wear a purple gown), you can see glimpses of Princess Belle to the right and Princess Jasmine to the left. Also featured are Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Princess Snow White (no, no one ever seems to call her princess, but I don’t know why and it doesn’t seem fair, so I’m granting her the honorary title), and Princess Cinderella. The plethora of princesses certainly makes it special to her, but her true love for this cup is rooted in the fact that it is purple. The background is purple, the cap is purple, this sucker is PURPLE. This is, unquestionably, the Purple Cup.

I know that the color is what makes it special because she does not refer to it as her “princess cup,” but rather as her “purple cup.” That might not seem notable, except for the fact that all the other cups are consistently referred to as the “Minnie Mouse cup,” the “Buzz and Woody cup,” and the “car cup,” never the “red cup,” the “orange cup,” or the “blue cup.” What makes this cup special to her is that it is so very, very purple.

I don’t know why I’m surprised that she’s so attracted to purple. It is the color of royalty, after all, purple.