How Can One Stupid Dress Be So Many Colors?
Thursday night, the internet suddenly erupted in a collective debate about a photo of a dress. Is this garment white and gold? Is it blue and black? If you’re like most people, you probably think it’s exactly ONE of those pairings, and anyone who sees it otherwise needs to see an optometrist.
What Colors Are This Dress? http://t.co/jvesuCBfYe pic.twitter.com/LNPkGjkmSt
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) February 27, 2015
It all began, according to Time.com, when Scottish musician Caitlin McNeill posted a photo of the dress to Tumblr. Debate about its color quickly spilled over to other social networks, where everyone from Taylor Swift to Kanye West had some strong opinions. Boston.com’s Steve Silva tweeted out the reactions of several Red Sox players. David Ortiz had a strong one:
David Ortiz: ‘How the #@%! do you see #whiteandgold ?’ Papi only sees #blackandblue #TheDress #RedSox pic.twitter.com/3Y9aNLNtbr
— Steve Silva (@stevesilva) February 27, 2015
Boston’s media organizations began taking definitive-sounding stances:
The dress is white and gold: http://t.co/9tMAhxjpsc pic.twitter.com/OVyFmeFqAd
— Boston.com (@BostonDotCom) February 27, 2015
The dress everyone is talking about is black & blue, woman confirms http://t.co/qse3iqqNRk pic.twitter.com/UxNWZ3Sec5
— BostInno (@BostInno) February 27, 2015
Celebrities like Mindy Kaling grew irate:
IT’S A BLUE AND BLACK DRESS! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) February 27, 2015
I think I’m getting so mad about the dress because it’s an assault on what I believe is objective truth.
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) February 27, 2015
And if people disagree with my objective truth I get so angry I want to destroy that way of thinking because it is just viscerally SO WRONG
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) February 27, 2015
Which is why I’m running for president of the United States
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) February 27, 2015
Others, like the New Yorker‘s Ian Crouch, began to despair:
the best gift you can give someone is never telling them about this — Ian Crouch (@iancrouch) February 27, 2015
Obviously, something strange was going on. After cooling off, and/or signing divorce papers with a former loved one with whom they disagreed, people began looking for answers. The issue, it seems, is how people are interpreting the photo’s context. Most people either see a white and gold dress in shadowy lighting (in which case, the “white” looks sort of blueish) or a black and gold dress in direct sunlight. Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at Wellesley College, told Wired magazine:
What’s happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you’re trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis. So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black.
The best visualization to help grasp this idea that we’ve seen comes from Somerville’s own Randall Munroe of the webcomic XKCD:
Image Credit: XKCD.com
That dress’s colors are the same in both frames. Only the surrounding colors have changed. So … there you go. Whatever the dress is in real life, a person could reasonably interpret it to be either set of colors. Probably time to reconcile with those loved ones. Now.
