Stop me if you’ve heard this one...

A couple of Saturdays ago my college friends took me to their campus pub to give me a taste of university life. They mean well, but I guess it kind of backfired. All my fault. I felt defensive. My friends are pursuing higher learning; I’m selling towels. I can’t help feeling like a bit of an underachiever. I have as much God-given natural ability as anyone. I just I don’t have a clue what to do with it... and I don’t have the cash to go to university right now even after I do decide what I want to do with my life. Inevitably a couple of them started telling me how cool it would be if I joined them at university and wondering why I wasn’t. And inevitably a couple of them jumped in to defend me, saying things like "university isn’t for everyone."

With half of my friends making me feel dumb for not attending university, and the other half making me feel even dumber by saying maybe Kimmy just isn’t cut out for it, I got kind of flustered. I felt like everybody was piling on. It took some work to get everybody to pile off and let it drop. I needed to give myself a chance to relax, so I got up to buy a drink. I guess I was blocking the aisle, because some chick squeezed past me. As she did, she said "Excuse me, blondie."

I was kind of stunned. I said "Excuse me?!"

She looked at me and made the "ditzy blonde" gesture. You know the one: bouncing her head side to side like a bobblehead, flipping her ponytail back and forth, and clapping her hands. I extended my middle finger towards her and she did it again, then headed off to the washroom.

I bought my drink and returned to my table, where I continued feeling inadequate compared to my ambitious friends. I got bored of listening to them talk about their classes and professors. I got agitated and left. It was a pretty poor display by yours truly, brought on by envy of people who are going out and chasing their dreams while I sit and stagnate.

To make a long story short, I got upset, got mad at my friends, and stormed out of the pub. But on my way out I noticed the same girl, the one who called me "blondie" and made the insulting "ditzy blonde" gestures. She was looking at me- maybe I drew attention to myself by getting mad at my friends, or maybe she was just being rude again, but she was looking at me. I was already upset, and I became more upset when I remembered how irritated this girl made me with her rude behavior. I went over to the table where she sat with her friends. I pressed her face firmly against the table. I asked her if she had a problem with me. I asked her if she would like to fight me. I used her pretty brown ponytail to wipe up a couple of spills from off their table. I humiliated her in front of her friends, and all she would do about it was cry, so I guess I made my point. The point, I guess, was that you shouldn’t get in somebody’s grill if you’re not ready to back it up. I called her out in front of her friends, I used her hair as a dish-rag, and what did she do about it? She cried. That’s really all there is to say. She smarted off to me, but when I called her on it all she would do was cry.

(To her credit, I should mention that for her, that was the smart thing to do. Crying, groveling, and sniveling was absolutely the correct way for her to handle the situation. She saved herself a lot of pain. However, I still think she must have been pretty dumb. If I were a scrawny little chick with spaghetti arms, I wouldn’t go around insulting big strong girls with anger-management problems. That’s just common sense, right? It seems logical to me. I guess Dumb-Chick didn’t see it that way. I would expect a college girl to be a little wiser than this.)

Of course, when I started wiping the table with this chick’s hair, the bouncer came over and suggested I leave. Well, I was on my way out anyway. I felt a little bad afterwards. Under normal circumstances I probably would not have gone after this chick for something kind of minor. Don’t get me wrong, even on the happiest day, the "blondie" stuff still bugs the hell out of me, but normally I would let it slide. But Saturday was just the wrong day to pull that shit on me. Still, even at the time I realized that I was making the rude chick a surrogate for the hostility and defensiveness I felt towards my friends. Those weren’t the exact words I had for it at the time, but I understood it. I was frustrated, upset, felt inadequate, and took it out on the chick instead of my friends. Probably, she didn’t think she was doing any harm. Probably, she thought she was being "tee-hee" funny. Probably, I made much too big of a deal out of it.

Well, after reflecting on it for a while, I don’t feel too bad about it at all.

I am currently a bottle blonde. I was born with blonde hair and blue eyes, and that was the way things were for the first 14 or so years of my life. As I grew more physically mature, my hair became a little darker. You could call it light brown or sandy blonde- or somewhere in there. Over the past couple of years I’ve experimented with hair colors- red, auburn, chestnut, whichever, and currently I have my the shade that I used to be when I was younger. It is well suited to my skin-tone and my blue eyes, and my special guy likes it. Anyway, the point is that I’ve been blonde for most of my life, and still identify with it.

On Saturday night I was stunned because quite honestly I was surprised to hear somebody say something so rude. "Blondie"? I wish I had something as dismissive to say to that brunette girl. I don’t think you’d go up to a fat girl and call her "tubby". I don’t think you’d go up to a skinny girl and call her "chicken-legs". I don’t think you’d go up to a buxom girl and call her "boobs". I don’t think you’d go up to a buck-toothed girl and call her "Hee-Haw". Not unless you were trying to be rude, at least. Up until Saturday I didn’t think anybody would come up to me and call me "blondie", either.

However, it’s long been established that the ordinary common-sense standards for politeness don’t apply where blondes are concerned. Abuse any ethnic group, or the handicapped, or the fatties, even in jest, and somebody will go to war with you over it. Blondes, though? It’s just in fun, right? The typical argument goes like this:

"Everybody knows that the 'dumb blonde' is just a stereotype. There’s sometimes an element of truth behind stereotypes, or they wouldn’t have become stereotypes. However, they don’t apply to individuals. Smart blondes know that the stereotype doesn’t apply to them and they don’t take it personally."

Seems solid, right? Sounds pretty reasonable? The easiest test for bias in an argument is to replace a noun with a different one. Replace the word "blonde" with the word "Paki" in that argument, then see how reasonable it sounds. It falls apart pretty badly, doesn’t it?

The notion of stupid or demure blondes might be based in ancient history. The ancient Romans sent their armies throughout northern Europe and conquered people- often fair-haired- who the Romans saw as barbarians or savages. The legions brought sex-slaves back from the conquered territories. These women, often blonde, were considered exotic and sexy by Roman men, and jealous Roman women soon started finding ways to turn their own hair blonde. Or it may be biology. In Caucasians, females are paler in color than males. All other things being equal, a white male has a higher concentration of melanin and blood vessels in his skin than his female counterpart. Amongst Caucasians, lighter coloration is identified with femininity... delicacy... frailty... weakness. As well, the tendancy of hair to be paler during childhood and darken upon physical maturity equates blonde hair with innocence and youth. It is only a short leap from innocence and youth to naivete, immaturity, and stupidity in the popular imagination.

Wherever it originated, the stereotype has been perpetuated mostly through arts- in literature, and more prominently in film and television. Victorian writers used hair color as a metaphor. The blonde women in their stories were demure and innocent (desirable characteristics for a woman of the day) and dark-haired women were cunning and deceitful. Again, in modern times it has been a short step from demure and innocent to submissive and gullible. Hair color as a metaphor is a tradition that endures in movies and television, right to present day. For instance it’s an obvious symbol in the movie Pretty Woman when we meet Julia Roberts she appears to be a vacuous blonde prostitute. Once she removes her blonde wig to reveal her red hair, Richard Gere begins to learn that she has depth and character. Of course hair color has been not just a metaphor for character development, but also a substitute for it. You can look at any number of movies or television shows where the viewer is assumed to know that a character is stupid or promiscuous (often both) simply because she is blonde. Over the years, the vacuous blonde sex-object has become a stock character in western culture. From "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" straight through to Pam Anderson’s current dramatic stylings; from Sally Struthers on Archie Bunker to Christina Applegate on Married With Children; from the sex objects in dime-a-dozen sex comedies to the clueless victims in dime-a-dozen slasher movies... the dumb blonde has been a big part of our movie and television viewing habits for almost as long as we’ve had movies and television. In a nice change, a lot of very smart blondes have been popping up on TV over the past two seasons.

And of course there are the jokes. There are literally thousands of them. Some of them are even quite funny- I got a giggle out of the one at the top of this page. But a lot of them are extremely demeaning. The jokes could work equally well if someone changed the word "blonde" to "Catholic" or "Jamaican" or any other racial or ethnic group. Except that most people would be too ashamed to tell such a joke. After all, people have finally learned that when you demean races or religions it leads to hate, violence, riots, wars, and deaths. But teasing the blondes is pretty harmless, right? That’s not going to lead to riots. Although, pick the wrong blonde on the wrong night, and she might use your face as a dish-rag.

If you are my age, you grew up with Kelly Bundy on your TV. You grew up hearing about dumb blondes long before you or your classmates understood what "stereotype" means. If you’re blonde, you’ve probably grown up getting extra attention because of your hair. Probably you’ve also been teased and been in fights because of it (though likely with kids who would have found some other excuse to pick on you.) Probably you at some point asked your mom if blondes really are dumb. "Oh sweetie, of course not!" Kids are resilient and can live through teasing. Still, it can’t be a positive thing. Getting the message that your hair makes you special can’t be positive either. It’s probably the most unhealthy aspect of the whole thing.

If you are me, you have grown up with a younger brother that everybody thinks is a genius. And he quite possibly is. He’s extremely intelligent. And I don’t resent that my parents have lavished attention on him and encouraged his interest in academics since a young age. I think it is terrific. All I resent is that my parents never gave me the same encouragement.

You know what my parents encouraged ME to do when I was young? Gymnastics and figure skating. YAY! Just what every little golden-haired princess should be involved in! And when I physically outgrew those, mom pushed me into singing and dance classes. No way! I rebelled against those, and wound up in basketball and soccer and track and swimming. I enjoyed them, and I was good at them. And that gave mom something to write in Christmas cards every year. Mom would write yearly updates to send to our relatives, and she would glow with pride over Ed’s academic achievements and Kimmy’s athletic successes.

My relatives probably assume I must be as dumb as a brick, since mom always tells them about Ed’s terrific grades but never mentioned my schoolwork at all. Maybe they think I didn’t even go to school and just played sports full-time since that’s all mom ever told them about.

I still do not really understand what my parents must have been thinking. Figure skating... singing... dancing... who did they think they were raising? Shirley Temple? I mean, if they’ve been guiding Ed towards a career in computers or engineering since he was young, what the heck were they preparing me for? Vaudeville? I should go entertain job interviewers with some tap-dancing and a song? Honestly, I don’t understand it. I suppose I can at least be thankful that mom didn't push me into beauty pageants.

It’s not that I ever felt dumb. I was actually not bad in school. I never struggled with anything. I did ok. I just think that with some encouragement, I could have done a lot better than just ok. It is only just recently that I have begun to realize that I am an intelligent person. What made me realize it? Partly my internet friends, who got to know how I think before they knew how I look. And partly my wonderful guy, who makes me feel intelligent just by talking to me like I am intelligent. I’ve started to think that I am actually a pretty bright person, and that I could do well at any number of things that require intelligence.

What I don’t understand is why did it take so long to see that?

I know this will sound whiny and bitter, but I can’t help but feel like I have been let down. At some point in my life, my parents, or a teacher, or a friend, or SOMEBODY, should have grabbed me and said "Kim, you could do better than this." Shouldn’t they have? Would it have killed one of my teachers to take me aside and say, "I think you have some talent for this if you work at it." Would it have killed my parents to take some interest in my schoolwork instead of my sports? Shouldn’t somebody have let me know that coasting along doing as little work as possible wasn’t good for me?

I keep thinking that a little brown-haired girl would have been given that message. I think people somehow just developed a very modest set of academic expectations for their little Kimmy; I think the reason nobody ever prodded me is that I never had any trouble exceeding their modest expectations. I quite honestly think that nobody really expected much at all from little golden-haired princess, little figure-skating Kimmy, dancing Kimmy, sporty Kimmy... and they were pretty easily satisfied by what little work I did put into learning. Somehow, I just get the feeling that people have never assumed I was capable of much, and it makes me mad.

Which brings me back to the incident in the bar that had me squashing that chick’s face onto her table. Honest, I normally have thicker skin about stuff like that. But on a night when I was already feeling sorry for myself, feeling dumb, feeling inadequate compared to my academically gifted friends,"blondie" was exactly the wrong word to throw in my face.