"I have always been puzzled by it. What could be so important about a genetic trait that someone would use it to describe herself long after the trait’s phenotypic expression — light hair — no longer exists? It makes literal sense only if by blonde she is referring to something more than hair. Being a natural blonde must confer honor, esteem and power to those who can legitimately claim it. Guess how we define social status? It is as a role or identity that confers honor, esteem and power to those who legitimately hold it.... People who were born blond and now have dark hair were among the angriest. They insisted that being a 'natural blonde' should matter more than their actual hair color. When pushed on what makes that matter, they got even angrier.... That is the thing about status. We all want it, but, should we acquire it, we don’t want it to mean anything...."
Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom in "The Enduring, Invisible Power of Blond" (NYT). The author, a sociologist, is black. Here's her TikTok that made people mad:
@black_was_genius #stitch with @mariel_darling blonde is not a hair color. #fyp #blonde #racialprofile ♬ Love You So - The King Khan & BBQ Show
By the way, I'm not a natural blonde. I go with blonde because it's too hard to maintain my original natural color after my natural color changed to white. My original natural color is red, and growing up with red hair was not an advantage — especially while having a blonde-haired sister.
I agree with McMillan Cottom that blondness isn't about what hair color you have at the moment. I've had my hair blonde longer than I've had this blog, but if you call me a blonde — and if I'm not moved to just keep silent — I'll say I'm not really a blonde, I'm really a redhead. I grew up and developed my sense of myself as a redhead, with the cultural meaning of redheadedness aimed at me.
What was the meaning? I remember at least 3 negative qualities: 1. ugliness, 2. oddness, and 3. hot temper. Crazy stuff!
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76 comments:
Transchromic.
but, at heart.. Aren't you aware; that you're STILL a redhead?
On the Other hand.. My first girlfriend was Adamant, that she used to be a blonde..
Even though her hair changed to boring brown when she was about 3
On the Other Other hand.. I hear a new word last week...
Copper Blonde. Which, near as i can tell means what most people would call light brown hair
(but, that gilbar would definitely call RED)
Yes, there is obvious honor, esteem and power in being deemed a ditz.
I had fiery red hair as a youth; it's gray-brown now. My younger brother had snow white hair, which progressively darkened, spreading from what we jokingly referred to as his "oil stain" (we were all bike and car mechanics from birth). Family background was English, Welsh, Swedish, plus etc.
In my era, red hair on a boy was no big deal. Being tiny and heavily freckled was, though. I literally cannot recall a single instance where a boy's hair color was even mentioned, aside from the occasional reference to me as a "carrot-top" by some adult.
My 3 sisters (brunette, red, red) probably had different experiences.
There needs to be a word in English for the idea/concept that describes "making oneself trivial", the way "beclowning" works for people donning figurative clown shoes and facepaint.
If you're focused and fixated on minor things like skin and hair color? You're a self-rendered failure at life. Who cares if you prefer blond? Who cares if you have a high melanin content or a low one? What intrinsic difference does any of that make?
None whatsoever. And, so... This woman puts herself into the same ranks as the Aryan fetishists. Which tells us precisely how seriously to take her.
Her multi-year project already has her conclusion. You're a racist.
Cartman on ginger kids
"gingers": people with red hair, freckles, and pale skin due to an alleged disease called "Gingervitis". Cartman describes them as being disgusting, inhuman, unable to survive in sunlight, and having no souls.
gilbar, on the other hand, KNOWS that redheads are Hot (like, say; Vampires)
They Obviously have souls.. Because they take them from Most red* blooded males
Reasons Why You Should Date A Redhead #No.10 Is Hot!
red* see what i did there?
"What could be so important about a genetic trait that someone would use it to describe herself"
Ask Rachel Dolezal and get back to us sweetheart.
My hair went from blond to brownette and it was my parent who was all bothered about it. She put rinses on my hair and when I was old enough I took over with the rinsing and dying and bleaching.
I stayed blond until about 4 years ago when I had my hairdresser transition me to natural and I'm quite pleased with it. I was so ready to be my age.
My parent was a dyed redhead and yeah she caught a lot of flak.
Who cares if hair is long or short or sprayed or partly grayed?
We know that hair ain't where it's at
There will come a time when you won't even be ashamed if you are fat...
I had blonde hair until I was 5, then it turned brunette. It got darker with each passing year until I started to turn gray. It is mostly gray now. I never considered myself blonde. I remember my mom being disappointed when my hair turned. She seemed to think I wasn’t as cute. So I associate brunette with being unattractive.
I was born blond (as were my wife, and our son) but mine darkened (including a reddish phase) to medium brown. I call my wife's natural color almost-blonde, but she tends to color it with coppery rather than blonde or yellow tints. Son's hair has reverted to the mean for our families: brown.
As far as genetics, hair's thickness, straightness, etc say as much or more (or as little, as your POV allows).
Not sure if I've got the Racial Kevin Bacon game correct, but here goes:
Black people (presumably?) cannot be a 'natural blonde'. 'Natural blonde' is some form of status. Thus, black people are denied that status: it is racist.
""What could be so important about a genetic trait that someone would use it to describe herself""
Now do "bald".
One thing I notice about all of this woke tribalism is how much of it is based on elevating molehills to mountain status.
I have never heard of this idea in my life, but I've always been a very dark brunette. One of my children was blonde, she keeps her hair long and I was just noticing that if she cut about 4 inches there would be no blonde left. I don't think that's bad. I think I've always told her it would get darker as she got older, something I knew from having light haired cousins who now look like me.
I wish I could see the original TikTok, but I already don't think asking a mom who also dyes her hair about hair color is an own. She has her own hair color issues too. I'm looking forward to going gray. My dad grayed very early, but I don't take after him.
Blondes are easier to find in the dark.
I have had brown hair all my life. But when I was in the sun a lot as a teenager and in my early 20s, it bleached really quickly, looking like I paid someone good money to have blonde and blonde highlights. My beard was also very blonde (now gray). But I've never considered myself blonde.
Not a great connection, but I've also noticed the opposite when it comes to diversity and skin color. A lot of "people of color" have lighter skin than I do (and I come from Northern European heritage) but because they're Asian or Hispanic, they are included in that group. There are some very, very pale Asians and Hispanics out there! The latter are primarily carrying European genes to get that light, but speaking Spanish or Portuguese as a first language is considered a color by current diversity standards.
I had blue eyes as a kid. Now I think they are probably hazel. Whenever I need to fill in eye-color, I always ask a neutral party--I don't want to be accused of stolen valor for putting down blue.
My license still says blue, but that was the decision of a lady at the DMV.
My 9th grade teacher was a 22 year old rookie. She told us jokes.
Why do men prefer blondes? Blondes are easier to find in the dark.
She was a fun teacher.
So, is true that blondes have more fun?
Althouse, you were gorgeous as a redhead, as many are. My mother maintained auburn tones when she started to go gray. She had a subtle colorist, and it worked out well. She maintained it through her seventies. Famous beautiful redheads? Rita Hayworth, Maureen O'Hara, Gina Lollobrigida, Julianne Moore, Lucille Ball, Esther Williams, Deborah Kerr. Modern redheads? Kelly Reilly, Jessica Chastain, Emma Stone, Christina Hendricks, Amy Adams.
My older brother had red hair, now white. While he was nicknamed "Red" in high school, it was an honorific rather than mockery. But then we lived just below the Wooden Shoe Line in West Michigan, so there lots of blond Dutch kids around.
"What was the meaning? I remember at least 3 negative qualities: 1. ugliness, 2. oddness, and 3. hot temper. Crazy stuff!"
Wow. Ugliness? Huh. That's not what I heard. As a very young male, I formed my opinion about redheads on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland (speaking of crazy, the original version of that ride was bonkers). It's definitely a familiar, possibly unwelcome, but not unequivocally negative, stereotype.
1. Many or most people are de facto racists in a neutral sense. They perceive biological differences between groups and they prefer one group over another. They may or may not like their own group (e.g., Rachel Dolezal). Call it tribalism or call it in-group versus out-group relations, but it boils down to adding up physical traits and using them to make lifelong judgements. As a nice-guy Jewish colleague once said to me "Jews are just better."
2. Women are the strongest gatekeepers of racial, tribal, and group identities. Many women are openly status-conscious bean counters. Many women absolutely, positively won't date short men or men perceived to be below their own social status. Women and their dating physical standards are therefore the definers and keepers of tribal / race / in-group identities for the next generation. Women want very much to be with the best or to move up through social relationships, and they often perceive themselves to be special and superior even when they are not.
3. Men are not that complex. They literally assess women on a bell curve distribution, and are pretty accurate judges of women on a 1 to 10 scale. If she's young and at least average looking and isn't too crazy...they are typically up for a party or a relationship or marriage. In the words of pre-Civil War slaveowners, the owners had sex with female slaves to "improve the breeding stock." See Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings and their many living offspring at Jefferson family reunions today.
[Insert various academic references...there are plenty.]
Perhaps she should watch the musical number “Cause I’m a Blonde” from the movie Earthgirls Are Easy. Look it up on YouTube. Catchy and informative!!
I had blond hair as a child, but it gradually darkened to brown in my teens and 20s. Because it was gradual, I continued to think of myself as a blond long after I stopped being one. Can't say as I was all that upset the day I accepted that I wasn't blond anymore. Not sure why anybody would.
Now I'm grey and feel just fine about it. It's thick enough that I got called a silver fox once. That meant more to me than years of being blond.
Hello? Did this guy ever have a daughter or a sister? Girls love changing their hair color and their eye color. Our daughter wanted to get contact lenses to have blue eyes! Or maybe it was Green eyes. Anything to be different. Good thing my wife put her foot down.
White girls wear black dreds. THere was a girl in Peanuts who was incredibly proud of her "naturally curly hair". Why? Because none of the other girls had it.
After we get black girls to stop dying their hair blond, maybe we can get white boys to stop wearing backwards caps, hoodies, and all the other oddball rapper stuff.
Is this completely made up? I've never heard anyone refer to blonde as anything but light-colored, yellowish hair without any concern for whether or not a person had such hair as a child.
I was born with red hair, turned cotton top, then blonde, then brownish. I list blonde on my license because it’s more fun.
"If you want to drive white people crazy..."
She means white "women" not "people." I've never known a man in my life that gave a damn about his natural hair color.
Somehow this reminds me of Dolly saying, "I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde."
gilbar's mention of copper blonde made think of dishwater blonde, a term I haven't heard in years. I remember my mother using it as a term of derision for blonds who had a slight brownish/grayish tint.
Interesting. I’ve known of people who were born blonde and their hair color naturally changed but never knew about this aspect of it, or of blondness as an idea or essence. If I think about it for a minute I realize I’ve been unconsciously anti-blonde for most of my life.
Some people have way too much time. A multi-year project?
Multi years?
I take it shes not done "studying" the issue.
Ill wait for the movie.
We all evolve from a light-skinned epidermis. There are few white people, still discriminated under banners and parades that celebrate albinophobia.
I had blonde hair from birth. Gradually, the underlayers turned more of an ash brown but that didn't happen until later in my twenties. Overall, my hair color was still blonde. Finally, it got to the point where I had to get partial blonde highlights to overcome the light ash brown.
What the heck is wrong with me still identifying as being a blonde? Althouse may say that she is naturally red-haired even though at some point in late middle age it turned white.
I had extremely black hair as a kid to the extent that I was a few steps past mere "brunette". I still identify as having black, black hair, even though that hasn't been true for decades.
I have light brown hair, but most of my body hair is blonde. If I was in the sun all summer instead of working a 9-5, I would have a head of blonde hair. If you look at hair dye samples, my light brown hair is labeled ‘Medium Ash Blonde’. Obviously, some people would consider me a blonde, but some wouldn’t.
Surprised that no one has noticed the inherent hypocrisy of the article. Imagine if a white woman had criticized how black women describe their appearance? The author would be incensed.
"What kind of person..." and said with such smirking glee. Twice. What a revolting person she is.
though I'm sure half her glee is from the knowledge that she's got a new grift she can milk for income and clout for a few years at least. Did you know her salary and book sales count toward the nation's GDP? Aren't we proud and productive?
I learned the term dishwater blond in high school. My sisters who had it did not appreciate the term, even though in my role as truth-teller I was compelled to use it.
"We all want it, but, should we acquire it, we don’t want it to mean anything"
Who dat we?
"If you want to drive white people crazy..."
If you want to drive black people crazy, tell them white people actually never think about them (unless they are actual friends etc.).
Anyway, there are men who have an issue with baldness. But hair color?
My hair changes with the seasons.
I want it to turn white/grey. It turns out the hardest color to die your hair is white.
One of the reputed attributes of redheads used to be (is it still?) intense sexuality. Anecdotally, one of the hottest women I've ever had in bed was a true redhead. All the way to the root.
Perhaps related, the first full-frontal naked woman I remember seeing - when I was probably 3 yrs old - was a true redhead. Her "burning bush" is still vivid to my mind's eye nearly seven decades later.
But back to the post, the author seems to traffic in stereotypes with which she has little experience. Plenty of black women dye their hair blonde (and red!). Who are they, really? What are they trying to convey? An uproar would result if a white female professor did an analysis of hair types/modifications of black women.
And don't get me started on fake nails...
Say it loud!
“I’m blonde and I’m proud!”
“I paid the cost to have the frost”
Interesting that someone named "Tressie" is obsessed with hair. Scott Alexander calls that "nominative determinism."
I was blonde until puberty, then it turned darker. Except in summer, when it would lighten up in the sun. Then I never knew what color my hair was. Ash blonde? Dishwater blonde? Dark blonde? Light ashy brown? I remember my mom saying blonde hair, blue eyes was boring. So, I always wanted brown eyes. Because my hair was so in-between, it had no identity.
Now, it’s ashy light brown with lots of silver streaks. I got tired of coloring, because it always grabbed red and didn’t look natural. I still fondly remember the delivery guy on the street waiting for the light saying to me, “Look at you rockin’ that silver. Sexy!”
I had a GF once with that exact hair color. She was plenty blonde enough for me, signifier or no. Yeah, she kept it the color it was in her childhood, who gives a rip?
Don't forget strawberry blondes - a blend of the most desirable characteristics imagined by horny young men of my acquaintance.
I started an interesting row among my family a few weeks ago on this very topic. My kids were both born with medium-blonde, straight hair. Having hit their teens, they suddenly developed astoundingly curly hair which is now best described as chestnut brown. When I remarked upon their current hair, both objected to being described as brunette but very clearly had no warrant to object to being described as "curly haired".
I like to tease them that these are their wild, Jewish roots coming out. Wife and I were both raised Catholic, but my Mom's side of the family was German-Polish "Catholic"...if you know what I mean and I think you do.....
My first girlfriend had stop-sign red hair. Then she broke my heart. A few years after she dumped me I saw her again and she had gone mousey brown. Karma!
She thinks she's on to some new race huckstering angle. Next up is blue eyes.
Remember hanging out with this guy in a couple bars in Vail maybe 15 years ago. He commented once that we were the only two natural blonds in the entire bar. We were both gray moving towards white.
My partner was light blond when she was young, the only towhead in a family where everyone else had hair that ranged from dark brown to almost black. Only blue eyes too, of course. Her 4 siblings used to tease her that the milkman was her father (we did the similarly with my #4 brother). It was obviously not true, because she looked the most like their father, except for his curly black French har, and matching complexion. He could have fit right in in the TV series The Village, where they were all kinda part of the Resistance during WW II. Her hair has darkened over the last 65 years from an almost white blond to a light brown. But, to this day, she insists that she is blond. So, I tell a lot of blond jokes around her.
I was 5’2” at 15 and 6’2” at 18. Still identify a bit with the short cohort.
I used to have hair....
What's her name Laura Ingraham used to say in interviews with Imus "I have to go dye my roots."
People who were born blond and now have dark hair were among the angriest.
At the risk of being pedantic, she misspelled "Women".
Being a natural blonde must confer honor, esteem and power to those who can legitimately claim it.
There is an obvious question just begging to be asked: Why?
Consider this possibility. As men hit puberty, their features typically become more lupine. Women, however, retain childlike characteristics: rounde facial features, high pitched voice, narrow shoulders, etc. That could be down to physical cues giving the appearance of vulnerability, with the effect of adding another incentive to retain male protection and resource provision.
Blond hair is far more common in Northern Europe than elsewhere. Most people born with blond hair have it turn brown as they grow up, so blonde hair on women could be a proxy for vulnerability, giving blondes an attractiveness edge over their darker haired sisters.
Not honor, not esteem, and not power, aside from the sexual kind.
I started out blond, turned brown, then rapidly gray starting at fifteen. In my mid-30s I briefly had a beard: brown, blond, gray. I looked like a tortoise shell cat.
Diamonds are Forever
And which do you prefer?
Oh, providing the collars and cuffs match ..
I had near white blonde hair when I was a child. My hair is still blonde, but a couple of shades darker. I used to frost it in the 70s-90's, but stopped doing that in the early 2000's. Have not done ANYTHING to my hair since, and it is still blonde, and gets blonder in the summer when I am out in the sun.
The Rev. Mrs. Cate went from brown (natural) to red, to blonde, but for years now has been naturally silver.
@The One Who Is Not Obeyed: "... elevating molehills to mountain status."
I'm reminded of a delightful malapropism said by a tri-lingual gf: Don't make a mole out of a moundhill.
I have blue eyes and had dark brown hair until my mid-20s. My Welsh heritage rapidly made my hair entirely gray in 10 years. Now it's becoming white. My beard is dark brown with red and gray mixed in. It's all hereditary genetics and doesn't really mean anything. So, ladies, and gentlemen, choose your hair color at will, or live with what you got. Or nowadays, choose your identity regardless of the hair color everyone sees.
I'm glad someone mentioned that "Tressie" writing about hair is -- odd? ridiculous? a perfect calling?
A blonde child will have a certain skin tone. When older, the hair may darken but the skin tone doesn't change. Therefore, once blonde, forever blonde.
I looked up the prevalence of natural blonde hair in the United States. It's 2%. Given that anyone can be made blonde, even us baldies could wear a blonde wig, I don't really see how one can rationally describe blonde as a racial signifier.
FWIW. I was platinum blonde when very young and it was really embarrassing, since by 3 siblings were dark brunettes and would tease that I was adopted. Before mostly falling out, my hair gradually became light brown. I don't think I've ever described myself as blonde, because it didn't come up while I was blonde and later, I wasn't blonde.
Tressie McMillan Cottom should write an article on the invisible, enduring power of black women to have huge noses compared to white women and still be seen as normal or even attractive. Her nose is three times the normal nose of any white woman who is seen as attractive. You could make three of my nose out of one of hers. With a nose like that I would never have gotten married without having rhinoplasty. Yet she is whining because men like blondes. Blonde hair is flashy, it attracts attention. Much like all the flashy, colorful outfits I see Tressie McMillan Cottom wearing in photos on the internet. She’s just mad she can’t be flashy with her hair. Sad. Tiny violins for Tressie.
The blondest woman I ever knew with Scottish and German ancestry, back in the 70's, used to lighten her hair to make it platinum blond. Since that revelation I have always assumed that many other natural blondes also do the same. It doesn't mean they are not natural blondes imo. Natural blondes generally do tend to have very fair complexions abd Nordic type features, which is how I differentiate between real and fake blondes. Fake blondes can be anyone, including Blacks. Upon quick Google check: there is a group of Black people with natural blonde hair, a rare tribe called Melanesians.
One thing that really irritates me is when anyone generalizes or stereotypes people by skin color, especially when that is done to be demeaning to a certain group.
Hair color is deeply emotional. Look how many of you are moved to tell us about your hair color!
I am just going to call bullshit on the original TikTok. I have never once seen someone agonize over what to call "blonde" and not to call "blonde".
I'm not emotional about my hair color but it was blonde and curly when I was five. That's just a fact and I have a picture to prove it. It took a lot of brushing to maintain its natural beauty back then. Even now it's hard to manage because it's so thick and wavy which is unusual at my age.
Hair color is deeply emotional.
Color, for one. A low information attribute. Embrace diversity [dogma].
I've never understood the preference for (or obsession with) blonde hair, on the part of men and women. Blonde is fine, but I always preferred women with dark or red hair, (I'm a red head myself). Blonde is last in preference for me. Bleached blonde is definitely unappealing.
Look how many of you are moved to tell us about your hair color!
I think you meant "us," boss...
I was naturally blonde until after my second child was born, when I was 35, whereupon my hair started to mouse out. My roots are now bleah, not even a nice gray, so I color my hair back to the last natural color I had (handily, my daughter has that color now, at 21 - so if she's available I can just point at her and say, "Like that").
My hair texture changed dramatically, sort of in cycles. As a wee thing, my hair was wildly curly. Then it was straight with just a bit of wave until my mid-30s - same time as the color change - and now it is back to curly, but a different, non-corkscrew curl pattern. I've just let it grow through COVID (and really through my six-plus years in Texas, as I haven't found a cutter I really like), so it's most of the way down my back now. More than one young woman has told me, "You have mermaid hair!", which fills my heart with love for the younger generation and makes me pat my head and say, "What, this? I just put some goop in it so I can fit my head through doors, and let it dry."
My husband's hair is gorgeous silver. If my hair had turned or was turning that color, I'd let it go natural in a heartbeat.
My sister is a lifelong redhead, brighter when younger, now a gorgeous auburn. She's never colored her hair and her graying pattern is just a slight lightening at the temples. If my hair were that color, ditto.
But since my natural color now is "fieldmouse," to the salon I go!
Althouse, I think you are mistaking ubiquity of experience for emotion. But I also think that women's experience here is very different from men's.
If you had blonde hair as a child, you will always be blonde to your family, especially if there were people in your family who weren't blond, but I can't see carrying that identity all through the years after your hair has changed color.
If you do feel compelled to dye your hair, don't forget about the roots. You're not really fooling anybody old enough to notice, and it can be comical or unattractive if you let the roots grow out too much.
Could it be that women discussing hair and beauty tips and men talking about women they laid are the triggers that make so many of our young people question their gender?
Color is the least of my wife's complaints about her hair-like substance. It has always been sparse and lank; she used to get perms just so that it would do something for a while other than hang limply.
Hours of work sometimes paid off for half an evening. In the last few years for some strange reason her hair has a bit of body and will maintain some styling. She's thrilled.
My hair, OTOHAIISSM, is magnificent, or was. Wavy but not curly, brown but not dull, and thick. It was long for about four years (70-74) and I'd still wear it long if I was even more vain than I am already, but long hair is hot and troublesome.
Was in a field project in college. One woman, who took better care of her roots than some bu still...some kind of brown. Her blonde was such that no hint of brown or red or any warmth at all showed. Is this "ash blonde" and what is it good for?
But is OK to touch blonde hair? That's the important question.
I love that Ann was the one to insert Frank Zappa lyrics into the discussion.
Natural redhead, now blond here. Ann nails it from my prospective. Redheads attract a small but devoted group of men. My husband is one. He finally got used to the blond, my hair but not my identity, has become.
Redhead has two meanings to me: 1. my wife, and 2. Ann-Margret, both very, very positive.
I don't need racist cows to ask me any questions for them to drive me crazy.
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