November 4, 2010

BLONDE BY DESIGN

Posted in anthropology, attraction, attractive, beauty, chemistry, Dating, desire, dysfunctional, fertility, health, intelligence, Love, Men, prejudice, psychology, Relationships, romance, Sex, sexy, sociology, Tips, Uncategorized, Women tagged anthropology, Attraction, attractive, beauty, blond, blondes, dating, desire, fertility, hair, health, intelligence, Love, Lover, Men, prejudice, Relationships, romance, Sex, sexy, sociology, stereotypes, Women at 6:38 pm by From Date To Mate

I haven’t always been blonde, nor did I ever harbor a deep desire to be. Truth be told I have always found raven tresses and light eyes to be the most beautiful of all the coloring combinations. When I was growing up women with dark hair seemed to be the sex symbol underdog in a beauty-scape of Malibu Barbie imagery. At 30 I decided it would be aesthetically best for me to go blonde. This was purely a choice premised upon practicality rather than a sudden desire for golden locks. Since going blonde I can’t say that I have found blondes have more fun than brunettes, but I have found blondes get noticed more, a discovery affirmed  by science. Blonde hair first appeared between 10-25 thousand years ago in Northern and Eastern Europe. According to anthropologist Peter Frost women with blonde hair had a competitive edge over their dark tress counterparts when vying for a male partner. Men found the rarity and brightness of blonde hair highly alluring. In a sea of brunettes on the market blondes stand out like shiny eye catching packaging. Given that even the whitest of toe heads find their vibrant blonde locks beginning to fade as they reach into their twenties it is no surprise that being blonde is associated with youthfulness. Youthfulness conveys fertility, which in turn translates into blonde haired lasses being the empress’s of feminine sex appeal. A girl need not go all out Marilyn Monroe blonde to have this polarizing effect on the opposite sex. Researchers have found that blonde highlights evoke the same allure.

Not everything about life in the blonde lane is golden, and soon after having turned I found out about the down side of life on the light side. Sans my hair color I was unchanged, yet I went from being treated as a bright brunette to an assumingly unintelligent piece of blonde eye candy. This was not some peroxide induced perceptual paranoia on my part,  social science researchers have found that people unconsciously alter the way in which they interact with blondes, due to exposure to societally ingrained stereotypical beliefs that blondes are less intelligent. At the University of Paris X-Nanterre men’s ability to complete general knowledge tests after having been exposed to women with different hair colors was examined. Throughout the double trials conducted male participants who were exposed to photos of blondes recorded the lowest scores. Thierry Meyer, joint author of the study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, and professor of social psychology at the university, concludes “This proves that people confronted with stereotypes generally behave in line with them. In this case blondes have the potential to make people act in a dumber way, because they mimic the unconscious stereotype of the dumb blonde.” This validates that my use of peroxide has not eroded my intelligence, but rather incites mimicry of stereotype associated stupidity in others.

I struggled adjusting to this foreign way of being perceived. Of course I could have easily gone back to my former, though less aesthetically suited dark chestnut hair color, or de-sexualized myself by getting a buzz cut and dressing in a sexually ambiguous fashion, but none of these options seemed a suitable solution to me. Never one to cow tow to society’s expectations my frustration lead to an uprising, inspiring my own form of blonde ambition! I decided to use my blonde locks to my advantage. Not in the sex symbol sense, but to glean insight about others through their treatment of me. My own social science study if you will. I decided to have fun with it! And fun in many forms I have had! When blonde bias causes others to perceive you as knowing the least, it presents you with a golden opportunity to learn the most. This approach has helped me separate the ethical from the unethical sales people, the savory from the unsavory suitors, as well as discerning which new people to befriend. At times I like to see the lengths of condescendence those with such prejudice will go to.

For example when I met my neighbor John for the first time it was clear from his spewing of uncensored thoughts that his was a strong personality. It was also instantly clear that he could not see beyond the surface of my blonde waves and ample bosom. I decided rather than jumping in and pointedly letting it be known that there was more to me, in this case it would be far more interesting to play the part of the assumed blonde stereotype in his presence. At gatherings he would dominate the conversation. I’d  just smile, nod and interject little, after all what would a blonde air head like me have to say anyway? I could not pass him on the street or at a social gathering without him blatantly commenting on my physical attractiveness. John had absolutely no qualms about telling the same recycled blonde jokes that have been told at nauseam. On such occasions I’d smile slightly and give a deliberately puzzled stare. All the while I was observing, and learning more about the personality dynamics that prompted his behavior. As time went on John seemed to take more and more of a liking to my persona of the pleasant, dumb, docile non-threatening blonde, and his remarks about my appeal to him became more and more charged. One night while giving my ex and I a tour of an old mansion he bought and was restoring he paused looked at me, then at my ex saying wow you are really one lucky bastard, I hate you. We were both quite startled by this pronouncement. Not too long after this incident John discovered that I was teaching courses at a local college, and asked me about it. I filled him on how one of the administrators had asked me to give a presentation to faculty and local entrepreneurs’ and had enjoyed it so much she asked me if I would teach some courses. I remember thinking to myself the gig is up, obviously the college wouldn’t hire a bumbling blonde idiot to educate their students. However much to my surprise this development did nothing to make him reevaluate his perception of me, a fact which I found astounding. On this note I decided to officially close the file on my experiment with John, and gradually faded him out of my life like the blonde from my roots.

Studies have shown that men around the globe, with the exception of Scandinavia, overwhelmingly find women with blonde tresses more desirable than women with brunette or red tresses. While society crowns blondes as glamorous, sexually alluring, youthful, fertile, more fun, the epitome of feminine sexuality, it simultaneously dethrones them by stereotyping blondes as dumb, naive, easy, air heads, devalued to nothing more than eye candy only offerings. What is the motivating force behind this behavior? One could argue that feeling threatened is what lies behind this dichotomy. Humans seem to have an intrinsic need to dismantle that which bestows power over us through idolization. The potent drive of sexual attraction has a powerful hardwired hold over men, leaving them knowingly at the mercy of their animal instincts. With their brain riding shotgun and their libido in the drivers seat, men become easy prey for manipulation, a disadvantage which creates resentment in some, particularly those most susceptible to being preyed upon. The motivating force behind the role women play in this social dynamic may lie in the fact that the truth is gentlemen really do prefer blondes. Given that the vast population of women around the world are brunettes perhaps explains from a competitive evolutionary stance why non-blonde women would have a vested interest perpetuating negative blonde stereotypes.

Clearly the roots of blonde bias stem from various motivations and thrive through the societally accepted perpetuation of asinine blonde stereotypes. Some of which are promoted in subtle ways. Like a commercial for toning sneakers in which a blonde woman is portrayed as having foolishly bought the wrong brand of inferior toning sneakers. She passes a hot man on a walking path who openly sneers at her choice in footwear, causing her to self consciously walk away. Moments later the man crosses paths with an obviously savvy brunette woman, smugly sporting the manufacturer’s brand of toning sneakers. The man rubber necks it in admiration as the brunette woman smirks and raises her nose in the air as she walks past. Sometimes the societally endorsed prejudice against blondes is not so subtle. While perusing hair care products at a local drug store I came across Bead Head’s “Dumb Blonde”  hair care product line by TIGI. I couldn’t help but wonder how a product line that referred to any other demographic as “Dumb” would go over. I doubt it would be well received. More aptly TIGI should have named their “Dumb Blonde” product line “Dumb Advertisers” for giving it such an inexcusably biased, ignorant name.

The attribute of being dumb is not one uniquely bestowed to blondes, it is equally distributed throughout every shade of hair color on the planet. For proof of this one need not look any further than public figures such as Snookie, Sara Palin, George Bush Jr., Bombshell Mcgee, Christine O’Donell, Sean Penn, Lindsey Lohan, Kayne West, Megan Fox and the list goes on. However blondes are the only ones marred by the prejudice of being unintelligent. Despite the fact that the world is mainly comprised of  non-blondes, meaning it is actually non-blondes who comprise the largest percentage of  the intellectually challenged throughout the world…Which begs the question, who are the dumb ones?

Darlene Turner

Relationship & Communication Expert

(c) 2010

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