Q: Why did the blonde put lipstick on her forehead?
A: So she could make up her mind.
Two blondes were in a parking lot trying to unlock their car door with a coat hanger. The first blonde said “I can’t get the door unlocked!” The second replied, “You’d better. It’s starting to rain and the top is down!”
Q: Why did the blonde look confused when the brunette told her the time?
A: Because she’d been getting different answers all day.
Women have been dying their hair blonde since the time of the Ancient Romans, and yet Urban Dictionary defines “blonde” as “a person, usually female, who is slow to learn or understand.”
I’m not crazy, right? The definition of a hair color is paralleled to level of intelligence. Other people see the issue there, don’t they?
The idea of a “dumb blonde” has been around for a while. Over time, these spectacles have led to a stereotype that is conducive to the idea that, due to their hair color, blonde women magically have an intelligence level that is below average.
Regardless of where the stereotype originated, the fact remains that blonde women and girls today have to face blonde jokes and the cringe-worthy representations of blonde women that are seen in today’s popular culture. Between Broadway shows like Legally Blonde and television characters like Glee’s Brittany, the stereotype for dumb blondes is everywhere. Songs like P!nk’s “Stupid Girls,” an anthem that encourages girls to stop hating themselves, can’t help but take a stab at blondes.
Even in the hit musical, Wicked, which happens to be one of my favorite shows of all time, Glinda takes several verses to describe her roommate Elphaba in the song “Loathing,”while Elphaba can sum up Glinda’s girly, ditzy, and downright funny personality in one word: blonde.
As a student of The Columbus Academy, I have encountered very few “dumb blondes,” and I certainly do not consider myself to be one. To make myself clear, I personally have no issues with dumb blondes in the media or with blonde jokes. In fact, I find them incredibly amusing and have been known to say things like ‘blonde moment’ whenever I do something not particularly intelligent.
Whether I am labeled a hypocrite because of this is irrelevant. It truly does bother me is that what people often do not realize is that those jokes have the ability to upset people more than they let on. It is also hard to see so many women and girls labeled as dumb because of their hair color when they are anything but.
Hair color does not make one person smarter or prettier than another, and we would all do well to remember that.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, one blonde can change a light bulb just fine, thank you.
Written by Sarah Fornshell’15
