Stressed and depressed about the dress

March 12, 2015 — by Sherrilyn Ling

One dress, an unflattering one at that, has made hundreds of thousands of people all over the world question their own sanity because the confusion over the blue/black or white/gold dress waits for no man.

 

It all happened one fateful Thursday afternoon. Such terror has not gripped the Internet populus since the downfall of the destined 2012 Mayan apocalypse theory. One dress, an unflattering one at that, has made hundreds of thousands of people all over the world question their own sanity because the confusion over the blue/black or white/gold dress waits for no man.

There was a strange peacefulness lingering in the air as my friend senior Jane Park and I were on our way to Michael’s to buy supplies for an upcoming AP Gov/Econ project. That serenity was abruptly interrupted when Jane’s phone buzzed with a message notification from her sister. Upon looking at the godforsaken picture of the dress, Jane turned to me, puzzled, and asked why her sister would think that it was blue and black. I laughed, thinking that she was just kidding with me; the dress was definitely blue and black. She retorted that it was truly white and gold, and thus, the first domino fell.

After 10 minutes of driving with heated arguments and hurt feelings, Jane and I were livid as we stormed into Michael’s. The simple dress debacle had escalated into a mini Cold War, and I ditched Jane somewhere in between the felt aisle and the paint brushes. We awkwardly crossed paths in the poster section, and Jane was hellbent on making me admit the dress was white and gold.

Convinced that I was actually colorblind, Jane mockingly asked me to identify the colors of random art supplies as if I were a 2-year-old.

Other customers eyed us awkwardly as Jane pointed to a piece of construction paper and I screamed, “RED” at her in reply. They didn’t seem to understand the very serious and very stressful situation we were in. Jane was becoming increasingly persistent at trying to prove me wrong, and I was becoming increasingly annoyed at her testing my eyesight.

It was almost reassuring to go home and see that the dress debate had almost everyone on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Tumblr raving. Friendships collapsed. Couples broke up. The dress was coming for us all.

As the dress threatened to reduce my 10-year friendship with Jane to the point of utter extinction, we decided to solve our eight hour fight with a poll. We asked roughly 30 people whether the dress was blue/black or white/gold. Of course the results would come out to be an even half and half.

Thankfully, the science side of social platforms quickly offered answers for the one question that was haunting the Internet: WHAT COLOR IS THE DRESS?!

As it turns out, the dress varies in color because of the way our eyes work. There are two types of photoreceptors that help our brains translate light into vision: rods and cones. Rods are sensitive to light and can see shapes, but it’s up to the cones to register colors. Different people have different levels of rods and cones, and this combined with the washed out lighting in the photo explains why the dress looks either blue/black, white/gold or other combinations between the four colors. But the white and gold dress myth was debunked, as multiple online users posted pictures of the same dress in different lightings and from various angles; the dress was most definitely blue and black.

However, it does not explain why Jane vehemently attacked my pride in Michael’s to prove a point, as the original dress is, in fact, BLUE AND BLACK.  Jane, if you’re reading this, I still can’t believe you would humiliate me like that.  

I expect a five-paragraph apology essay in my inbox by the end of the month. I also suggest you get your eyes —  and attitude  — checked.

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