Choose your answer wisely. Everywhere you look, people seem to be debating an all-important question that has taken over Twitter and the Internet: What color is this dress? Some see white and gold. Others see blue and black. There’s no middle ground. The Great Dress Debate of 2015 began when a woman posted a picture of the polarizing garment to Tumblr and asked for help in identifying its colors. The dispute quickly spread Thursday night to Twitter, where people split into two camps: #teamblueandblack and #teamwhiteandgold. Even Philadelphia police weighed in, tweeting: “WANTED: This dress to stop appearing in our feed (Even though we’d look simply ravishing in it) #BlueAndBlack.” By Friday, everyone seemed to have an opinion on #TheDress. Now, before you get in a fistfight and turn someone’s arm black and blue, let’s settle the crucial question: The dress is black and blue. The company that makes it has confirmed its color scheme. We can blame the Internet for trolling our collective retinas. But science plays a role as well. “It has to do with the tiny cones in the back of our eyeballs that perceive colors in a slightly different way depending upon our genes,” explains CNN’s Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. “The cones in our retinas — the fine layer of nerve tissue that lines the back of our eyes — detect the blue, green, and red in an image. The cones and your brain mix those colors to make other colors.”
