Blond

"Blonde" redirects here. For other uses, see Blond (disambiguation) and Blonde (disambiguation).

Blond (MASC) or blonde (FEM), also referred to as fair hair, is a human hair color characterized by low levels of eumelanin, the dark pigment. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be from the very pale blond (caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment) to reddish "strawberry" blond or golden-brownish ("sandy") blond colors (the latter with more eumelanin). Occasionally, the state of being blond, and specifically the occurrence of blond traits in a predominantly dark or colored population are referred to as blondism.^[1]

German footballer Lars Unnerstall, who has blond hair and a blond beard

Because hair color tends to darken with age, natural blond hair is significantly less common in adulthood. Naturally-occurring blond hair is primarily found in people living in or descended from people who lived in Northern Europe, and may have evolved alongside the development of light skin that enables more efficient synthesis of vitamin D, due to northern Europe's lower levels of sunlight. Blond hair has also developed in other populations, although it is usually not as common, and can be found among the native populations of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji; among the Berbers of North Africa; and among some Asian people.

In Western culture, blonde hair has long been associated with beauty and vitality. Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty, was described as having blonde hair. In the Greco-Roman world, blonde hair was frequently associated with prostitutes, who dyed their hair using saffron dyes in order to attract more customers. The Greeks stereotyped Thracians and slaves as blond and the Romans associated blondness with the Celts and the Germanic peoples to the north. In the ancient Greek world, Iliad presented the mythological hero Achilles as what was then the ideal male warrior: handsome, tall, strong, and blond.^[2] In Western Europe during the Middle Ages, long and blonde hair was idealized as the paragon of female beauty. Sif, the wife of Thor in Norse mythology, and Iseult, the Celtic-origin legendary heroine, were both significantly portrayed as blonde. In contemporary Western culture, blonde women are often stereotyped as beautiful, but unintelligent.

Etymology, spelling, and grammar

Origins and meanings

Detail of a portrait of Sigismund Casimir Vasa (c. 1644), with characteristic blond hair which darkened with time as confirmed by his later effigies.

The word blond is first documented in English in 1481^[3] and derives from Old French blund, blont, meaning 'a colour midway between golden and light chestnut'.^[4] It gradually eclipsed the native term fair, of same meaning, from Old English fæġer, causing fair later to become a general term for 'light complexioned'. This earlier use of fair survives in the proper name Fairfax, from Old English fæġer-feahs meaning 'blond hair'.

The word blond, taken from Old French, may derive from the Medieval Latin blundus, meaning 'yellow'.^[5] The feminine form blonde was introduced in the 17th century.^[5]

Usage

Further information: Grammatical gender § As agreement or concord

Blond/blonde, with its continued gender–varied usage, is one of the few adjectives in written English to retain separate lexical genders. The two forms, however, are pronounced identically. American Heritage's Book of English Usage propounds that, as "a blonde" (just so, with "blonde" as noun) might not uncommonly be used to describe a woman, but less often "a blond" used to describe a man,^{[citation needed]} the term is an example of a "sexist stereotype [whereby] women are primarily defined by their physical characteristics."^[6] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records that the phrase "big blond beast" was used in the 20th-century to refer specifically to men "of the Nordic type" (that is to say, blond-haired).^[7] The OED also records that this term for fair hair as an adjective is especially used with reference to women, in which case it is likely to be spelt blonde, citing three Victorian usages of the term. The masculine version is used in the plural, in "blonds of the European race",^[7] in a citation from 1833 Penny cyclopedia, which distinguishes genuine blondness as a Caucasian feature distinct from albinism.^[8]

By the early 1990s, blonde moment or being a dumb blonde had come into common parlance to mean "an instance of a person, esp. a woman... being foolish or scatter-brained."^[9] Another hair color word of French origin, brunette (from the same Germanic root that gave brown), functions in the same way in orthodox English. The OED gives brunet as meaning 'dark-complexioned' or a 'dark-complexioned person', citing a comparative usage of brunet and blond to Thomas Henry Huxley in saying, "The present contrast of blonds and brunets existed among them."^[10] Brunette can be used, however, like blonde, to describe a mixed-gender populace. The OED quotes Grant Allen, "The nation which resulted... being sometimes blonde, sometimes brunette."^[11]

Blond and blonde are also occasionally used to refer to objects that have a color reminiscent of fair hair. For example, the OED records its use in 19th-century poetic diction to describe flowers, "a variety of clay ironstone of the coal measures", "the colour of raw silk",^[7] a breed of ray, lager beer, and pale wood.^[12]

Varieties

Various subcategories of blond hair have been defined to describe the different shades and sources of the hair color more accurately. Common examples include the following:

Women with blonde hair of different shades at WTMD's First Thursday series in Canton, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, in June 2014

• ash-blond:^[13] ashen or grayish blond.
• blond/flaxen:^[14][15] when distinguished from other varieties, "blond" by itself refers to a light but not whitish blond, with no traces of red, gold, or brown; this color is often described as "flaxen".
• dirty blond^[16] or dishwater blond:^[17] dark blond with flecks of golden blond and brown.
• golden blond: a darker to rich yellow blond.
• honey blond: dark iridescent blond.
• platinum blond^[18] or towheaded:^[19][20] whitish-blond.
• sandy blond:^[21][22] grayish-hazel or cream-colored blond.
• strawberry blond^[23] or Venetian blond: reddish blond^{[24][25][26][27][28]}

Artificially blond hair may be called bleached blond, bottle blond, or peroxide blond.^[29]

Genetics of blond hair

The mutation for blond hair is thought to have originated among the Afontova Gora population of the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) cline of south-central Siberia

A typical explanation found in the scientific literature for the adaptation of light hair is related to the adaptation of light skin, and in turn the requirement for vitamin D synthesis and northern Europe's seasonally reduced solar radiation.^[30]

Ancient DNA analysis (ADNA) has revealed that the oldest fossil known to carry the mutated allele rs12821256 of the KITLG gene, which is responsible for blond hair in modern Europeans, is a 17,000 year old Ancient North Eurasian specimen from Afontova Gora in Southern Siberia.^{[31][a 1]}

The precise genetic origin and spread of blond hair into its present-day distribution is a topic of debate amongst population geneticists.

Geneticist David Reich said that the hundreds of millions of copies of this SNP, the classic European blond hair mutation, entered continental Europe by way of a massive population migration from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.^[32] Ancient North Eurasian admixture is present in mesolithic fossils from Northern Europe, and is linked to the prediction of blond hair in stone-age Scandinavians by ancient DNA analysis.^[33] Gavin Evans analyzed several years of research on the origin of European blond hair, and concluded that the widespread presence of blond hair in Europe is largely due to the territorial expansions of the "all-conquering" Western Steppe Herders; who carried the genes for blond hair.^{[31][a 2]} A review article published in 2020 analyzes fossil data from a wide variety of published sources. The authors affirm the previous statements, noting that Ancient North Eurasian-derived populations carried the derived blond hair allele to Europe, and that the "massive spread" of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists likely caused the "rapid selective sweep in European populations toward light skin and hair."^[34]

In contrast, geneticist Iosif Lazaridis questioned whether or not blond hair could have originated from the migration of Steppe peoples. He found evidence for blond individuals in ancient Southern Europe and the Levant, with no Steppe ancestry.^[35] He also observed that blond hair was rare in the available samples for early Bronze Age Steppe groups, yet common in the later Bronze Age groups, which is inconsistent with the theory that Steppe populations spread the phenotype for blond hair.^[36] However, this is consistent with a phenotype turnover occurring within the Steppe pastoralists, leading to a shift towards blond hair becoming a common hair color in the later Steppe-derived populations of Europe and Central Asia.^[37] Lazaridis further wrote that the frequencies of traits like blonde hair could have been shaped by mass migration or selection; but that it is more complex than "simple stories" of sexual selection, or of spreading by Steppe pastoralists.^[38]

A 2024 study found that both Neolithic farmer and Steppe-associated ancestries were more significantly associated with blond hair, while European hunter gatherers tended to have dark or even black hair.^[39]

There is some evidence that natural blond hair is associated with high levels of prenatal testosterone.^[40][41]

Prevalence

General

Distribution map of blonde hair around Europe according to anthropologist Peter Frost's 2006 study on light hair, published by University of St. Andrews. It shows that it is most common in Northern Europe

According to the sociologist Christie Davies, only around five percent of adults in Europe and North America are naturally blond.^[42] A study conducted in 2003 concluded that only four percent of American adults are naturally blond.^[43] A significant number of Caucasian women who have blonde hair have dyed it that way.^[42][44]

Europe

The pigmentation of both hair and eyes is lightest around the Baltic Sea, and darkness increases regularly and almost concentrically around this region.^[45]

In France, according to a source published 1939, blondism is more common in Normandy, and less common in the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean seacoast; 26% of the French population have blond or light brown hair.^[46] A 2007 study of French females showed that by then roughly 20% were blonde, although half of these blondes were fully fake. Roughly ten percent of French females are natural blondes, of which 60% bleach their hair to a lighter tone of blond.^[47]

In Portugal, the national average of the population shows 11% of varying traces of blondism, peaking at 15% blond people in Póvoa de Varzim in northern Portugal.^[48][49]

In Italy, a study of Italian men conducted by Ridolfo Livi between 1859 and 1863 on the records of the National Conscription Service showed that 8.2% of Italian men exhibited blond hair; blondism frequency displayed a wide degree of regional variation, ranging from around 12.6% in Veneto to 1.7% among the Sardinians.^[50] In a more detailed study from the 20th-century geneticist Renato Biasutti,^{[51] [page needed]} the regional contrasts of blondism frequency are better shown, with a greater occurrence in the northern regions, where the figure may be over 20%, and a lesser occurrence in Sardinia, where the frequency in many of its districts was 0.5%. With the exception of Benevento and the surrounding area in Campania, where various shades of blond hair were present in 10–15% of the population, Southern Italy as a whole averaged between 2.5% and 7.4%.^{[51][page needed]}

Africa

A number of blond naturally mummified bodies of common people (i.e. not proper mummies) dating to Roman times have been found in the Fagg El Gamous cemetery in Egypt. "Of those whose hair was preserved 54% were blondes or redheads, and the percentage grows to 87% when light-brown hair color is added."^[52] Excavations have been ongoing since the 1980s. Burials seem to be clustered by hair-colour.^[53]

Oceania

Blonde girl from Vanuatu

Blonde hair is also found in some other parts of the South Pacific, such as the Solomon Islands,^[54][55] Vanuatu, and Fiji, again with higher incidences in children. Blond hair in Melanesians is caused by an amino acid change in the gene TYRP1.^[54] This mutation is at a frequency of 26% in the Solomon Islands and is absent outside of Oceania.^[54]

Asia

The higher frequencies of light hair in Asia are prevalent among the Pamiris, Kalash, Nuristani and Uyghur ethnic groups.^[56][57]

According to geneticist David Reich, blond hair has ancient roots in Asia. The derived allele responsible for blond hair in Europeans likely evolved first among the Ancient North Eurasians. The earliest known individual with this allele is a Siberian fossil from Afontova Gora, in south-central Siberia.^[58] Reich has written that the derived SNP for blond hair entered continental Europe by way of a massive population migration from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.^[32] Blond hair has been discovered in human burial sites in north-western China and Mongolia dating to the Iron Age.^[59][60]

The Hmong people, originally from northern China, were historically recorded as having blonde hair and blue eyes by the Chinese in ancient times, but their features became darker as they migrated out of China and in to Southeast Asia.^[61] The ethnic Miao people of Guizhou province from China, a subgroup of Hmong people, have been described as having blue eyes and blonde hair. F.M Savina of the Paris Foreign missionary society wrote that the Miao are "pale yellow in complexion, almost white, their hair is often light or dark brown, sometimes even red or corn-silk blond, and a few even have pale blue eyes."^[62]

Chinese historical documents describe blond haired, blue-eyed warriors among the Xiongnu, a nomadic equestrian culture from Mongolia, who practiced Tengriism.^[63] The Shiwei people were a Mongolic-speaking ethnic group who were blond-haired and blue eyed. Blond hair can still be seen among people from the region they inhabited, even today.^[64] Some Xianbei were described with blond hair and blue eyes according to Chinese historical chronicles.^[65] The Uriankhai tribe of Mongols, to which the military generals Subotai and Jelme belonged, were described by Mongol chronicles as blond haired in the 2nd millennium CE.^[66] The Tuvans are a Turkic ethnic group with an occasional occurrence of blond hair with freckles, blue-green eyes.^[67]

• Children from different ethnicities around Asia
• 
  Pamiri child in Tajikistan
• 
  Uyghur girl in Turpan, Xinjiang, China
• 
  Arab boy with blond hair, Mount Lebanon, Lebanon

Historical cultural perceptions

Ancient Greece

Left: Reconstructed Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis, c. 480 BC.
Right: Ganymede, a Trojan youth, rolling a hoop, Attic vase c. 500 BC.

Most people in ancient Greece had dark hair and, as a result of this, the Greeks found blond hair immensely fascinating.^[68] In the Homeric epics, Menelaus the king of the Spartans is, together with some other Achaean leaders, portrayed as blond.^[69] Other blond characters in the Homeric poems are Peleus, Achilles, Meleager, Agamede, and Rhadamanthys.^[69] Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, was often described as golden-haired and portrayed with this color hair in art.^[70] Aphrodite's master epithet in the Homeric epics is χρυσέη (khruséē), which means "golden".^{[a 3]} The traces of hair color on Greek korai probably reflect the colors the artists saw in natural hair;^[73] these colors include a broad diversity of shades of blond, red and brown.^[73] The minority of statues with blond hair range from strawberry blond up to platinum blond.^[73]

Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630–570 BC) wrote that purple-colored wraps as headdress were good enough, except if the hair was blond: "...for the girl who has hair that is yellower than a torch [it is better to decorate it] with wreaths of flowers in bloom."^[74] Sappho also praises Aphrodite for her golden hair, stating that since gold metal is free from rust, the goddess' golden hair represents her freedom from ritual pollution.^[71] Sappho's contemporary Alcman of Sparta praised golden hair as one of the most desirable qualities of a beautiful woman,^[71] describing in various poems "the girl with the yellow hair" and a girl "with the hair like purest gold".^[71]

In the fifth century BC, the sculptor Pheidias may have depicted the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena's hair using gold in his famous statue of Athena Parthenos, which was displayed inside the Parthenon.^[75] The Greeks thought of the Thracians who lived to the north as having reddish-blond hair.^[76] Because many Greek slaves were captured from Thrace, slaves were stereotyped as blond or red-headed.^[76] "Xanthias" (Ξανθίας), meaning "reddish blond", was a common name for slaves in ancient Greece^[76][77] and a slave by this name appears in many of the comedies of Aristophanes.^[77] Historian and Egyptologist Joann Fletcher asserts that the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great and members of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Hellenistic Egypt had blond hair, such as Arsinoe II and Berenice II.^[78] Additionally, the ancient Greek lyric poet Bacchylides wrote of "the blonde daughters of the Lacedaemonians" (Spartans),^[79] while also noting the golden hair of athletes at the Nemean Games.^[80]

The most famous statue of Aphrodite, the Aphrodite of Knidos, sculpted in the fourth century BC by Praxiteles, represented the goddess' hair using gold leaf^[81] and contributed to the popularity of the image of Aphrodite as a blonde goddess.^[82] Greek prostitutes frequently dyed their hair blond using saffron dyes or colored powders.^[83] Blond dye was highly expensive, took great effort to apply, and smelled repugnant,^[83] but none of these factors inhibited Greek prostitutes from dying their hair.^[83] As a result of this and the natural rarity of blond hair in the Mediterranean region, by the fourth century BC, blond hair was inextricably associated with prostitutes.^[83] The comic playwright Menander (c. 342/41–c. 290 BC) protests that "no chaste woman ought to make her hair yellow".^[83] At another point, he deplores blond hair dye as dangerous: "What can we women do wise or brilliant, who sit with hair dyed yellow, outraging the character of gentlewomen, causing the overthrow of houses, the ruin of nuptials, and accusations on the part of children?"^[83]

Roman Empire

On the left: Statue of Antinous (Delphi), depicting Antinous, polychrome Parian marble, made during the reign of Hadrian (r. 117–138 AD)
On the right: detail of athletic women in the "bikini girls" mosaic of the Villa Romana del Casale, Roman Sicily, 4th century AD

During the early years of the Roman Empire, blond hair was associated with prostitutes.^[84] The preference changed to bleaching the hair blond when Greek culture, which practiced bleaching, reached Rome, and was reinforced when the legions that conquered Gaul returned with blond slaves.^[85] Sherrow also states that Roman women tried to lighten their hair, but the substances often caused hair loss, so they resorted to wigs made from the captives' hair.^[86] According to Francis Owen, Roman literary records describe a large number of well-known Roman historical personalities as blond.^[87]

Juvenal wrote in a satirical poem that Messalina, Roman empress of noble birth, would hide her black hair with a blond wig for her nightly visits to the brothel: sed nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero intravit calidum veteri centone lupanar.^[88] In his Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil, Maurus Servius Honoratus noted that the respectable matron was only black haired, never blonde.^[89] In the same passage, he mentioned that Cato the Elder wrote that some matrons would sprinkle golden dust on their hair to make it reddish-color. Emperor Lucius Verus (r. 161–169 AD) was said to sprinkle gold-dust on his already light hair to make it blonder and brighter.^[90]

From an ethnic point of view, Roman authors associated blond and red hair with the Gauls and the Germans: e.g., Virgil describes the hair of the Gauls as "golden" (aurea caesaries),^[91] Tacitus wrote that "the Germans have fierce blue eyes, red-blond hair (rutilae comae), huge (tall) frames";^[92] in accordance with Ammianus, almost all the Gauls were "of tall stature, fair and ruddy".^[93] Celtic and Germanic peoples of the provinces, among the free subjects called peregrini, served in Rome's armies as auxilia, such as the cavalry contingents in the army of Julius Caesar.^[94] Some became Roman citizens as far back as the 1st century BC, following a policy of Romanization of Gaul and Lesser Germania.^[95] Sometimes entire Celtic and Germanic tribes were granted citizenship, such as when emperor Otho granted citizenship to all of the Lingones in 69 AD.^[96]

By the 1st century BC, the Roman Republic had expanded its control into parts of western Germany, and by 85 AD the provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior were formally established there.^[97] Yet as late as the 4th century AD, Ausonius, a poet and tutor from Burdigala, wrote a poem about an Alemanni slave girl named Bissula, whom he had recently freed after she'd been taken as a prisoner of war in the campaigns of Valentinian I, noting that her adopted Latin language marked her as a woman of Latium yet her blond-haired, blue-eyed appearance ultimately signified her true origins from the Rhine.^[98] Further south, the Iberian Peninsula was originally inhabited by Celtiberians outside of Roman control. The gradual Roman conquest of Iberia was completed by the early 1st century AD.^[99] The Romans established provinces such as Hispania Terraconensis that were inhabited largely by Gallaeci, whose red- and blond-haired descendants (which also include those of Visigothic origins) have continued to inhabit northern areas of Spain such as Galicia and Portugal into the modern era.^[99]

The Goths, a Germanic tribe who played a central role in the Fall of the Western Roman Empire through their conquest, were always described in ancient sources as tall and athletic, with light skin, yellow (blond) hair and blue eyes,^[100][101] The contemporary Greek scholar and historian Procopius noted of the Goths: "they all have white bodies and fair hair, and are tall and handsome to look upon."^[102]

Medieval Europe

Mary Magdalene (c. 1480–1487), altarpiece in International Gothic style by Carlo Crivelli showing her with long, blonde hair

Medieval Scandinavian art and literature often places emphasis on the length and color of a woman's hair,^[103] considering long, blond hair to be the ideal, as it was associated with gold.^[103] In Norse mythology, the goddess Sif has famously blond hair.^[104] In the Old Norse Gunnlaug Saga, Helga the Beautiful, described as "the most beautiful woman in the world", is said to have had blond hair so long that it can "envelope her entirely".^[103] In the Poetic Edda poem Rígsþula, the blond man Jarl is considered to be the ancestor of the dominant warrior class.

The Scandinavians were not the only ones to place strong emphasis on the beauty of blond hair;^[103] the French writer Christine de Pisan writes in her book The Treasure of the City of Ladies (1404) that "there is nothing in the world lovelier on a woman's head than beautiful blond hair".^[103] In medieval artwork, female saints are often shown with long, shimmering blond hair, which emphasizes their holiness and virginity.^[105] At the same time, however, Eve is sometimes shown with long, blond hair, which frames her nude body and draws attention to her sexual attractiveness.^[84][106] Iseult was so closely associated with blondness that, in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, she is called "Iseult le Blonde".^[107] In Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the knight describes the Princess Emily as blond in his tale.^[107]

In the older versions of the story of Tristan and Iseult, Tristan falls in love with Iseult after seeing only a single lock of her long, blond hair.^[107] In fact, Iseult was so closely associated with blondness that, in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, she is called "Iseult le Blonde".^[107] In Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (written from 1387 until 1400), the knight describes the beautiful Princess Emily in his tale, stating, "yclothed was she fressh, for to devyse:/Hir yellow heer was broided in a tresse/Behinde hir bak, a yerde long, I gesse" (lines 1048–1050).^[107]

Because of blond hair's relative commonness in northern Europe, folk tales from these regions tend to feature large numbers of blond protagonists,^[84][108] although these stories may not have been seen by their original tellers as idealizing blond hair.^[108] Furthermore, it is noted that there is also a black-haired ideal of female beauty in northern Europe, as shown in plays like Snow White and other forms of entertainment portraying black-haired heroines.^[108] Similarly, Nordic Skalds often glorified dark-haired women.^[109]

During the medieval period, Spanish ladies preferred to dye their hair black, yet by the time of the Renaissance in the 16th century the fashion (imported from Italy) was to dye their hair blond or red.^[110]

Early twentieth-century

Propaganda in Nazi Germany often featured people with blond hair and blue eyes and other "Teutonic" traits, said to embody features of a "master race".

In 'Mark Twain and the American West', American novel writer Willa Cather's depiction of Alexander the Great in 'Alexander's Bridge' was described as "embodying the ideal", a "large, strong man with broad shoulders and rugged, blond good looks".^[111]

In Nazi Germany, blond, stern-jawed men were seen as the masculine ideal as depicted in the films of Leni Riefenstahl and other propaganda.^[112][113] Writer R. Horrocks noted that totalitarianism reached a ludicrous extreme in Nazi society, where "men were virile blond warriors, women were breeders, and gay men were killed in the death camps".^[114]

The fact that many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, did not possess these traits was noted with irony by the Allies of World War II. The most famous joke on the subject asked: What is the ideal German? Blond like Hitler, slim like Göring, masculine like Goebbels. . . .^[115]

Senior curator at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology Jon Røyne Kyllingstad has written that in the early twentieth-century racialist and supremacist thinkers promulgated the theory that human features such as blond hair and blue eyes were hallmarks of a "master race".^[116] In the 1920s, the eugenicist Eugen Fischer invented a hair palette called the Fischer scale that he said could categorize racial typology—these typologies were abandoned after World War II.^[117] Kyllingstad sees classification of race based on physical characteristics such as hair color as a "flawed, pseudo-scientific relic of the past".^[117]

Modern cultural stereotypes

Main article: Blonde stereotype

Sexuality

In the stage play “A Week-End” (1918), Lucille (Yvonne Arnaud) is depicted as a French woman with a “weakness for yellow-haired men”, and in expressing her deep attraction and admiration to her love interest Ambrose is fixated on his hair color.^[118]

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto, traditionally assumed to be Lucrezia Borgia

Robert Redford, a well-known natural blond actor and "Male Sex Symbol of the Seventies".^[119] (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here production still)

In contemporary Western popular culture, blonde women are sometimes stereotyped as being attractive.^[85] For example, Anita Loos popularized this idea in her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.^[85] However, studies which sought to verify this found no evidence for a general preference of blonde women among Western men.^[120] A 2008 study found that men in Greater London, England preferred dark haired women rather than women with blond hair.^[121] A 2018 study based on University of Florida students found that men prefer brunette women over blonde women.^[122] Swami, et al. (2008) suggested that men may prefer women with dark hair because they are predominant in the fashion and modelling industries, or because they may be perceived as healthier or more fertile than blonde women.^[123]

In Central Asia and East Asia, blonde women are ranked below black-haired women in the hierarchy of female attractiveness. In the Soviet Union, Russian schoolteachers struggled to convince Central Asian students that blue-eyed, blonde heroines in Russian poetry were attractive.^[124] The ethnic Kyrgyz students, in particular, regarded blonde women as "hideous", and insisted that their hair be changed to black.^[124][125] Popular television commercials in Japan have portrayed blonde women as highly jealous of black-haired Japanese women.^[126] In 2014, a study found that blond-haired Swedish women were ranked below Chinese women in the female beauty hierarchy. According to the author, the blonde hair of Swedish women reduced their femininity, because it was seen as a Western trait. These women's Swedish husbands were highly attracted to local East Asian women, which further reduced the self-esteem of the blonde Swedish women.^[127]

Similarly in many eastern cultures (Asia, The Middle East) blond men are often seen as symbolizing western masculinity: excessively manly, flirtatious, and sexually attractive.^[128][129] Depictions of relations between blond European men and dark-haired Arab women have even been used as an allegory for European colonialism, specifically in regards to French Algeria.^[130]

Intelligence

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), was one of several films in which Marilyn Monroe portrayed a sexually attractive and naïve "dumb blonde"

Originating in Europe, the "blonde stereotype" is also associated with being less serious or less intelligent.^[85] Blonde jokes are a class of jokes based on the stereotype of blonde women as unintelligent.^[85][131] In Brazil, this extends to blonde women being looked down upon, as reflected in sexist jokes, as also sexually licentious.^[132] It is believed the originator of the dumb blonde was an eighteenth-century blonde French prostitute named Rosalie Duthé whose reputation of being beautiful but dumb inspired a play about her called Les Curiosités de la Foire (Paris 1775).^[85] Blonde actresses have contributed to this perception; some of them include Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Holliday, Jayne Mansfield and Goldie Hawn during her time at Laugh-In.^[85]

The British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock preferred to cast blonde women for major roles in his films as he believed that the audience would suspect them the least, comparing them to "virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints", hence the term Hitchcock blonde.^[133] This stereotype has become so ingrained it has spawned counter-narratives, such as in the 2001 film Legally Blonde in which Elle Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, succeeds at Harvard despite biases against her beauty and blond hair.^[85]

In the 1950s, American actress Marilyn Monroe's screen persona centered on her blonde hair and the stereotypes associated with it, especially dumbness, naïveté, sexual availability and artificiality.^[134] She often used a breathy, childish voice in her films, and in interviews gave the impression that everything she said was "utterly innocent and uncalculated", parodying herself with double entendres that came to be known as "Monroeisms".^[135] For example, when she was asked what she had on in a 1949 nude photo shoot, she replied, "I had the radio on".^[136] Monroe often wore white to emphasize her blondeness, and drew attention by wearing revealing outfits that showed off her figure.^[137] Although Monroe's typecast screen persona as a dim-witted but sexually attractive blonde was a carefully crafted act, audiences and film critics believed it to be her real personality and did not realize that she was only acting.^[138]

The notion that blonds are less intelligent is not grounded in fact. A 2016 study of 10,878 Americans found that both women and men with natural blond hair had IQ scores similar to the average IQ of non-blond white Americans, and that white women with natural blond hair in fact had a slightly higher average IQ score (103.2) than white women with red hair (101.2), or black hair (100.5). Although many consider blonde jokes to be harmless, the author of the study stated the stereotype can have serious negative effects on hiring, promotion and other social experiences.^[139][140] Rhiannon Williams of The Telegraph writes that dumb blonde jokes are "one of the last 'acceptable' forms of prejudice".^[141]

See also

Science

• Ancient North Eurasian
• Disappearing blonde gene
• Human hair color
  • Auburn hair
  • Black hair
  • Brown hair
  • Red hair

Society

• Blonde vs. brunette rivalry
• Blonde stereotype
• Ganguro
• Go Blonde Festival

Notes

1. Japanese research in 2006 found that the genetic mutation that prompted the evolution of blond hair dates to the ice age that happened around 11,000 years ago. Since then, the 17,000-year-old remains of a blonde–haired North Eurasian hunter-gatherer have been found in eastern Siberia, suggesting an earlier origin.
2. "But whatever the evolutionary causes of blond and red hair, their spread in Europe had little to do with their possible innate attractiveness and much to do with the success of the all-conquering herders from the steppes who carried these genes."
3. Aphrodite is commonly described as "golden" in ancient sources. The adective is variously seen as referring either to golden hair,^[71] the gold adornments of her statues, her glimmering beauty, or the riches of her shrines.^[72]

References

1. "blondism". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
2. Nolasco, Sócrates (9 June 2017). From Tarzan to Homer Simpson: Education and the Male Violence of the West. Springer. p. 143. ISBN 978-94-6351-035-6. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
3. "blonde|blond, adj. and n.". OED Online. March 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 17 May 2012.
4. Harper, Douglas. "Blond (Adj.)." Online Etymology Dictionary. Web. Archived 1 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine 17 May 2012.
5. Delahunty, A. (2008). From Bonbon to Cha-cha: Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases. OUP Oxford. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-19-954369-4. Retrieved 27 May 2024.
6. "5. Gender: Sexist Language and Assumptions § 2. blond / brunet". The American Heritage Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. Bartleby.com. 1996. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
7. "blonde, blond, a. and n." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 August 2010.
8. Penny cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, s.v. Albinos. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain, 1833).
9. "blonde, blond, a. and n." The Oxford English Dictionary. June 2006 [draft editions]. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 August 2010
10. "brunet, a. and n." The Oxford English Dictionary. June 2006 [draft editions]. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 August 2010
11. "brunette, n. and a." The Oxford English Dictionary. June 2006 [draft editions]. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 August 2010.
12. "blonde, blond, a. and n." The Oxford English Dictionary. Additions Series 1997. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 August 2010.
13. "Ash-blond". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 24 April 2009.
14. "Flaxen". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Yahoo! Education. 2000. Archived from the original on 12 May 2007. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
15. "Flaxen". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 24 April 2009.
16. "Dirty blond". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 16 December 2008.
17. "Dishwater blonde". Encarta. Archived from the original on 24 May 2024.
18. "Platinum blonde". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013.
19. "Towhead". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Yahoo! Education. 2000. Archived from the original on 26 June 2008. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
20. "Towhead". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 24 April 2009.
21. "Sandy". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Yahoo! Education. 2000. Archived from the original on 10 April 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
22. "Sandy". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 22 April 2009.
23. "Strawberry blond". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Yahoo! Education. 2000. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
24. Nenarokoff-Van Burek, Anne (2013). Ariadne's Thread: The Women in My Family. FriesenPress. ISBN 9781460207192. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
25. Davydov, Denis Vasilʹevič (1999). Troubetzkoy, Gregory (ed.). In the Service of the Tsar Against Napoleon: The Memoirs of Denis Davidov, 1806–1814. Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal, Limited. ISBN 9781853673733. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
26. Sutherland, Daniel E. (2000). The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 9781610751452. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
27. Browne, Ray Broadus; Kreiser, Lawrence A. (2003). The Civil War and Reconstruction. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 70. ISBN 9780313313257. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
28. France, Anatole (2010). Works of Anatole France. MobileReference. ISBN 9781607785422. Retrieved 24 October 2013.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
29. "Peroxide blond". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 16 December 2008.
30. Robins, Ashley H. Biological Perspectives on Human Pigmentation. Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 195–208.
31. Evans, Gavin (2019). Skin Deep: Dispelling the Science of Race (1 ed.). Simon and Schuster. p. 139. ISBN 9781786076236. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2021.|
32. Reich, David (2018). Who We are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198821250. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
33. Human Origins. Quercus. 2018. pp. 124–125. ISBN 978-1473670426.
34. Carlberg, Carsten; Hanel, Andrea (2020). "Skin colour and vitamin D: An update". Experimental Dermatology. 29 (9): 864–875. doi:10.1111/exd.14142. PMID 32621306.
35. Lazaridis 2022, p. 23: "Blond hair was present in the Neolithic of Anatolia (Turkey) at Barcın(5), Chalcolithic Southeastern Europe (Romania at Bodrogkeresztur), Chalcolithic of the Levant (Israel)(70), and a Minoan from Lasithi.(4)"
36. Lazaridis 2022, p. 23: "Similarly, blond hair was inferred for 1/34 individuals of the combined Yamnaya and Afanasievo cluster, but reached ~14-60% in the aforementioned later steppe groups. Interestingly, light pigmentation phenotype prevalence was nominally higher in the Beaker group than in Corded Ware than in the Yamnaya cluster (where as we have seen it was rare), in reverse relationship to steppe ancestry, and thus inconsistent with the theory that steppe groups were spreading this set of phenotypes"
37. Lazaridis 2022, pp. 20-21: "By examining simple phenotypes (Table S 3) we see that Southern Arc individuals have a lower frequency of light hair, blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin compared to non-Southern Arc ones, a finding that is in agreement with the ancient sources that commented on the appearance of Celts, Germans, and Scytho-Sarmatians from Europe and Central Asia...The Beaker group (with a large sample size) stands out with its higher frequency of blue eyes and blond hair... suggesting a turnover of phenotypes before the time of the written sources."
38. Lazaridis 2022, p. 24: "The frequency of these traits could have been shaped by migration or by selection, but is more complex than simplistic stories, e.g., of these traits arising due to sexual selection in boreal hunter-gatherers(75) or spread by steppe Indo-Europeans.(68)"
39. Irving-Pease, Evan K.; Refoyo-Martínez, Alba; Barrie, William (10 January 2024). "The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians". Nature. 625 (7994). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 312–320. Bibcode:2024Natur.625..312I. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06705-1. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 10781624. PMID 38200293. Both Neolithic farmer- and Steppe-associated ancestries have higher scores for blonde and light brown hair, whereas the hunter-gatherer-associated ancestries have higher scores for dark brown hair and CHG-associated ancestries had the highest score for black hair.
40. Bryden, Barbara E. (2005). Sundial: Theoretical Relationships Between Psychological Type, Talent, and Disease. CAPT. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-935652-46-8. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
41. Manning, John T. (2002). Digit Ratio: A Pointer to Fertility, Behavior, and Health. Rutgers University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8135-3030-7. Archived from the original on 30 July 2022. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
42. Davies 2011, p. 73.
43. Russell-Cole, Wilson & Hall 2013, p. 52.
44. Russell-Cole, Wilson & Hall 2013, pp. 51–53.
45. Cavalli-Sforza, L., Menozzi, P. and Piazza, A. (1994). The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.^{[page needed]}
46. Coon, Carleton S. (27 January 2024). The Races of Europe. The Macmillan Company. France as a whole finds but 4 per cent of black and near-black hair color, 23 per cent of dark brown, 43 per cent of medium brown, 14 per cent of light brown, 12 per cent of various degrees of blond, and some 4 per cent of reddish-brown and red. […] The regional distribution of hair color in France follows closely that of stature. Although the position of the French in regard to hair pigmentation is intermediate between blond and black, the diagonal line from Mont St. Michel to Orléans, Lyons, and the Italian border divides the country into a northeastern quadrant, in which the hair is somewhat lighter than medium, and a southwestern, in which it is somewhat darker. High ratios of black and very dark brown hair are found not in the typically Alpine country, but along the slope of the Pyrenees, in Catalan-speaking country, and on the Mediterranean seacoast. Blond hair is commonest along the Channel, in regions settled by Saxons and Normans, in Burgundy and the country bordering Switzerland, and down the course of the Rhône. In northern France it seems to follow upstream the rivers which empty into the Channel. The hair color of the departments occupied by Flemish speakers, and of others directly across the Channel from England in Normandy, seems to be nearly as light as that in the southern English counties; the coastal cantons of Brittany are lighter than the inland ones, and approximate a Cornish condition. In the same way, the northeastern French departments are probably as light-haired as some of the provinces of southern Germany.
47. "5 millions de blondes en France, dont 50% de fausses". ladepeche.fr. Archived from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
48. Tamagnini Eusebio: "A Pigmentacao dos Portugueses". Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra. Instituto de Antropologia Portuguesa, 1936. Contribuicoes para o Estudo da Antropologia Portuguesa. Vol. VI, no. 2, pp. 121–197.
49. Mendes Correa: American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol 2, 1919.
50. Livi, Ridolfo (1921). Antropometria Militare. Risultati Ottenuti Dallo Spoglio Dei Fogli Sanitarii Dei Militari Dello Classi 1859–63. Turin: Nabu Press.
51. Biasutti, Renato (1941). Razze e popoli della Terra. Turin: Union Tipografico-Editrice.
52. C. Wilfred Griggs, "Excavating a Christian Cemetery Near Selia, in the Fayum Region of Egypt" Archived 4 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine, in Excavations at Seila, Egypt, ed. C. Wilfred Griggs, (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1988), 74–84.
53. "Egyptian Cemetery May Contain a Million Mummies History" Archived 26 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine, 19 December 2014
54. Kenny, Eimear E.; Timpson, Nicholas J. (4 May 2012). "Melanesian Blond Hair Is Caused by an Amino Acid Change in TYRP1". Science. 336 (6081): 554. Bibcode:2012Sci...336..554K. doi:10.1126/science.1217849. PMC 3481182. PMID 22556244.
55. Corbyn, Zoë (3 May 2012). "Blonde hair evolved more than once". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10587. S2CID 191400735.
56. Shoumatoff, Nicholas; Shoumatoff, Nina (2000). Around the Roof of the World. University of Michigan Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-472-08669-6. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2016.
57. B. Minahan, James (2014). Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1610690188.
58. Mathieson et al. 2018.
59. Puigdevall, Federico (2017). The Secrets of Ancient Tombs. Cavendish Square. p. 88. ISBN 978-1502632630. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
60. "Ancient Mummy Found in Mongolia". Der Spiegel. 25 August 2006. Archived from the original on 23 July 2019. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
61. Chao Romero, Robert; Ong, James; Guillermo-Wann, Chelsea; Logia, Jenifer (3 October 2019). Mixed Race Student Politics: A Rising "Third Wave" Movement at UCLA. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center. ISBN 978-0934052528. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2020. "As the Hmong migrated over time out of China, the phenotype became lost and less frequent."
62. Hattaway, Paul (19 July 2018). Guizhou: The Precious Province. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge(SPCK). ISBN 978-0281079896. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
63. Gžard, Chaliand; Wong, R. Bin (2014). A Global History of War: From Assyria to the Twenty-First Century. University of California Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0520283602. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
64. Schwarz, Henry (1984). The Minorities of Northern China. Western Washington University. p. 169. ISBN 0914584170.
65. Wang, Pengling (2018). Linguistic Mysteries of Ethnonyms in Inner Asia. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1498535281. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
66. Okada, Hidehiro (1986). "The Fall of the Uriyangqan Mongols". Mongolian Studies. 10 (25): 49–57. JSTOR 43193100.
67. Minahan, James (10 February 2014). Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1610690171. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
68. Pitman 2003, p. 12.
69. Myres, John Linton (1967). Who were the Greeks?, pp. 192–199. University of California Press.
70. Pitman 2003, pp. 9–10.
71. Pitman 2003, p. 13.
72. "Discourses by Dio Chrysostom". penelope.uchicago.edu.
73. Stieber 2004, pp. 66–68.
74. Stieber 2004, p. 156.
75. Eddy 1977, pp. 107–111.
76. Marshall 2006, p. 148.
77. Olson 1992, pp. 304–319.
78. Fletcher 2008, pp. 87, 246–247, see image plates and captions.
79. Bacchylides, Dithyrambs (470 B.C); xx. 2
80. Bacchylides, Epinikion; ix. 23
81. Pitman 2003, pp. 9–10, 14–15.
82. Pitman 2003, pp. 9–11, 14–15.
83. Pitman 2003, p. 11.
84. Sherrow 2006, p. 148.
85. Sherrow 2006, p. 149.
86. Victoria Sherrow, For Appearance' Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 136, Google Books Archived 4 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine
87. " (Francis Owen, The Germanic people; their Origin Expansion & Culture", 1993 Barnes & Noble Books ISBN 0-88029-579-1, p. 49.)
88. "Juvenal, Satires, book 2, Satura VI". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
89. "Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil, SERVII GRAMMATICI IN VERGILII AENEIDOS LIBRVM QUARTVM COMMENTARIVS, line 698". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
90. Michael Grant (1994). The Antonines: The Roman Empire in Transition Archived 4 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10754-7, pp. 27–28.
91. "P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneid, Book 8, line 630". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
92. "Cornelius Tacitus, Germany and its Tribes, chapter 4". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 27 December 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
93. "Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum, Book XV, chapter 12, section 1". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
94. Goldsworthy, Adrian (2000). Roman Warfare. Edited by John Keegan. Cassell, p. 126.
95. Rüger, C. (2004) [1996]. "Germany". In Alan K. Bowman; Edward Champlin; Andrew Lintott (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History: X, The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. – A.D. 69. Vol. 10 (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 523–526. ISBN 978-0-521-26430-3.
96. Tacitus, Annales I.78
97. Rüger, C. (2004) [1996]. "Germany". In Alan K. Bowman; Edward Champlin; Andrew Lintott (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History: X, The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. – A.D. 69. Vol. 10 (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 527–528. ISBN 978-0-521-26430-3. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 19 October 2016.
98. Wolfram, Herwig (1997) [1990]. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08511-6. p. 65.
99. James B. Minahan (2000). One Europe, Many Nations: a Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Westport and London: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30984-1, p. 278.
100. Bradley, Henry (1888). The Story of the Goths: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 9. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
101. Wolfram, Herwig (1988). History of the Goths. University of California Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-520-06983-1. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
102. Procopius 1914, Book III, II
103. Milliken 2012, p. 41.
104. Ellis Davidson, H. R. (1965). Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p. 84. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-013627-4
105. Milliken 2012, pp. 41–43.
106. Milliken 2012, p. 100.
107. Milliken 2012, p. 43.
108. Six 2014, pp. 75–76.
109. Turner, Bryan S. (1999). Max Weber: Methods and theory. Taylor & Francis US. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-415-18475-5. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
110. Eric V. Alvarez (2002). "Cosmetics in Medieval and Renaissance Spain", in Janet Pérez and Maureen Ihrie (eds), The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature, A–M. 153–155. Westport and London: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29346-5, p. 154
111. Coulombe, Joseph L. (2003). Mark Twain and the American West. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-6318-6. Archived from the original on 23 March 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
112. Lorenz, Dagmar C. G. (19 June 2018). Nazi Characters in German Propaganda and Literature. BRILL. p. 3. ISBN 978-90-04-36526-1. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
113. O'Brien, Daniel (2014). Classical masculinity and the spectacular body on film : the mighty sons of Hercules. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire. ISBN 978-1-137-38471-3. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
114. Horrocks, R. (30 August 1994). Masculinity in Crisis: Myths, Fantasies And Realities. Springer. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-230-37280-1. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
115. Proctor, Robert N. (5 June 2018). The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton University Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-691-18781-5. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
116. Kyllingstad 2014, p. xiii.
117. Kyllingstad 2014, p. xiv.
118. The Bystander. 1918. p. 239. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
119. Allen, Michael (25 March 2021). Robert Redford and American Cinema: Modern Film Stardom and the Politics of Celebrity. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-350-14199-5. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
120. Jacobi, Lora; Cash, Thomas F. (1994). "In Pursuit of the Perfect Appearance: Discrepancies Among Self-Ideal Percepts of Multiple Physical Attributes 1". Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 24 (5): 379–396. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1994.tb00588.x. ISSN 0021-9029.
121. Swami, Viren; Furnham, Adrian; Joshi, Kiran (October 2008). "The influence of skin tone, hair length, and hair colour on ratings of women's physical attractiveness, health and fertility". Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 49 (5): 429–437. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2008.00651.x. PMID 18452501.
122. Wortham, Jen; Miller, Abraham; Delvescovo, Daniela (2018). "Male and female hair color preferences: influences of familiarity, geographic region of origin, and environment on mate attraction in University of Tampa students". Florida Scientist. 81 (1). Florida Academy of Sciences, Inc.: 33–54. ISSN 0098-4590. JSTOR 26477962. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
123. Swami, Furnham & Joshi 2008, p. 435
124. Kreindler, Isabelle T. (1993). "A Second Missed Opportunity: Russian in Retreat as a Global Language". International Political Science Review. 14 (3). SAGE Publications: 263. doi:10.1177/019251219301400304. ISSN 0192-5121. p.263: "A teacher had to make her pupils appreciate the beauty of a blonde blue-eyed maiden..."
125. Fierman, W. (1991). Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation. Series on Development and Int'l. Avalon Publishing. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-8133-7907-4. Retrieved 10 February 2024. "There is also the problem of hair and eyes: light-haired and light-eyed Russian heroines usually stir little emotion among Central Asian students whose ideal beauty has black hair and black eyes. Teachers had to work very hard indeed to overcome the aversion to the concept of a blonde, blue-eyed beauty. Even artistic representation was of little help."
126. Jones, Geoffrey (25 February 2010). Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry. OUP Oxford. p. 314. ISBN 978-0-19-160961-9.
127. Lundström, C. (2014). White Migrations: Gender, Whiteness and Privilege in Transnational Migration. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 978-1-137-28919-3.
128. Appleby, R. (10 December 2014). Men and Masculinities in Global English Language Teaching. Springer. pp. 30–40. ISBN 978-1-137-33180-9. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
129. Stanley, Phiona (11 February 2013). A Critical Ethnography of 'Westerners' Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai. Routledge. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-135-13568-3. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
130. Paragraph: The Journal of the Modern Critical Theory Group. Modern Critical Theory Group. 1986. p. 56. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
131. Thomas 1997, pp. 277–313.
132. Revista Anagrama, Universidade de São Paulo, Stereotypes of women in blonde jokes pp. 6–8 Archived 21 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine, version 1, edition 2, 2007
133. Allen, Richard (2007). Hitchcock's Romantic Irony. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13574-0.
134. Churchwell 2004, pp. 21–26, 181–185.
135. Dyer 1986, pp. 33–34; Churchwell 2004, pp. 25, 57–58; Banner 2012, p. 185; Hall 2006, p. 489.
136. Banner 2012, p. 194.
137. Churchwell 2004, p. 25; Banner 2012, pp. 246–250.
138. Banner 2012, pp. 273–276.
139. Jay L. Zagorsky, "Are Blondes Really Dumb?" Archived 23 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Economics Bulletin 36(1):401–410 · March 2016
140. "Are blondes actually dumb?" Archived 12 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine by Jay L. Zagorsky
141. Williams, Rhiannon (12 December 2013). "Why I hate 'dumb blonde' jokes". Archived from the original on 3 July 2018. Retrieved 3 July 2018 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.

Bibliography

• Banner, Lois (2012), Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-1-4088-3133-5
• Churchwell, Sarah (2004), The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, Granta Books, ISBN 978-0-312-42565-4
• Davies, Christie (2011), Jokes and Targets, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-22302-9, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Dyer, Richard (1986), Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-31026-0
• Eddy, Samuel (1977), "The Gold in the Athena Parthenos", American Journal of Archaeology, 81 (1): 107–111, doi:10.2307/503656, JSTOR 503656, S2CID 192941915
• Lazaridis, Iosif (2022). "A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia". Science. 377 (6609): 940–951. Bibcode:2022Sci...377..940L. doi:10.1126/science.abq0755. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 10019558. PMID 36007020.
• Fletcher, Joann (2008), Cleopatra the Great: The Woman Behind the Legend, New York: Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-058558-7.
• Hall, Susan G. (2006), American Icons: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things that Have Shaped Our Culture, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-275-98429-8
• Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne (2014), Measuring the Master Race: Physical Anthropology in Norway, 1890–1945, Cambridge, England: Open Book Publishers, ISBN 978-1-909254-57-2, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 17 March 2018
• Marshall, C. W. (2006), The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Unviversity Press, ISBN 978-0-521-86161-8, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Mathieson, Iain; Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Songül; Posth, Cosimo; et al. (21 February 2018). "The genomic history of southeastern Europe" (PDF). Nature. 555 (7695): 197–203. Bibcode:2018Natur.555..197M. doi:10.1038/nature25778. PMC 6091220. PMID 29466330. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 April 2022. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
• Milliken, Roberta (2012), Ambiguous Locks: An Iconology of Hair in Medieval Art and Literature, Jefferson, North Carolina and London, England: MacFarlane & Company, Inc., Publishers, ISBN 978-0-7864-4870-8, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Olson, S. Douglas (January 1992), "Names and Naming in Aristophanic Comedy", The Classical Quarterly, 42 (2), The Classical Association: 304–319, doi:10.1017/S0009838800015949, JSTOR 639409, S2CID 170291127
• Pitman, Joanna (2003), On Blondes, New York City and London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-1-58234-402-7, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Procopius (1914), Dewing, Henry Bronson (ed.), History of the Wars, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
• Russell-Cole, Kathy; Wilson, Midge; Hall, Ronald E. (2013) [1992], The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium, New York City: Anchor Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., ISBN 978-0-307-74423-4, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Schiller, Gertud (1971), Iconography of Christian Art, vol. I, London: Lund Humphries, ISBN 978-0-85331-270-3, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 12 September 2020
• Sherrow, Victoria (2006), "Hair color", Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, Westport, Connecticut and London, ISBN 978-0-313-33145-9, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 23 September 2016{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Six, Abigail Lee (2014), "Chapter Five: Spinning Straw into Gold: Blond Hair and the Autobiographical Illusion in the Fiction of Esther Tusquets", in Molinaro, Nina L.; Pertusa-Seva, Inmaculada (eds.), Esther Tusquets: Scholarly Correspondences, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4438-5908-0, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 25 October 2020
• Stieber, Mary (2004), The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic Korai, Austin: University of Texas Press, ISBN 9780292701809, archived from the original on 25 April 2023, retrieved 12 September 2020
• Thomas, Jeannie B. (1997). "Dumb Blondes, Dan Quayle, and Hillary Clinton: Gender, Sexuality, and Stupidity in Jokes". The Journal of American Folklore. 110 (437): 277–313. doi:10.2307/541162. JSTOR 541162.

External links