Blond

Blond (MASC) or blonde (FEM), also referred to as fair hair, is a

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 the northern half of 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

The word blond is first documented in English in 1481

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

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 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:

• 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:
  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]

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

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

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

Children from different ethnicities around Asia

Pamiri child in Tajikistan

Uyghur girl in Turpan, Xinjiang, China

Arab boy with blond hair, Mount Lebanon, Lebanon

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

According to geneticist

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]

Chinese historical documents describe blond haired, blue-eyed warriors among the

The Tuvans are a Turkic ethnic group with an occasional occurrence of blond hair with freckles, blue-green eyes.^[66]

The ethnic

Left image: Reconstructed Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis, c. 480 BC.
Right image: 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.

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."^[73] 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

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^[80] and contributed to the popularity of the image of Aphrodite as a blonde goddess.^[81] Greek prostitutes frequently dyed their hair blond using saffron dyes or colored powders.^[82] Blond dye was highly expensive, took great effort to apply, and smelled repugnant,^[82] but none of these factors inhibited Greek prostitutes from dying their hair.^[82] 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.^[82] The comic playwright Menander (c. 342/41–c. 290 BC) protests that "no chaste woman ought to make her hair yellow".^[82] 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?"^[82]

Roman Empire

Roman Sicily

, 4th century AD

During the early years of the Roman Empire, blond hair was associated with prostitutes.^[83] 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.^[84] 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.^[85] According to Francis Owen, Roman literary records describe a large number of well-known Roman historical personalities as blond.^[86]

Maurus Servius Honoratus noted that the respectable matron was only black haired, never blonde.^[88] 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 "golden" blond hair to make it even blonder and brighter.^[89]

From an ethnic point of view, Roman authors associated blond and

Lesser Germania.^[94] Sometimes entire Celtic and Germanic tribes were granted citizenship, such as when emperor Otho granted citizenship to all of the Lingones in 69 AD.^[95]

By the 1st century BC, the

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.^[98]

Medieval Europe

Medieval Scandinavian art and literature often places emphasis on the length and color of a woman's hair,

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;

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".^[99] In medieval artwork, female saints are often shown with long, shimmering blond hair, which emphasizes their holiness and virginity.^[101] 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.^[83][102] Iseult was so closely associated with blondness that, in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, she is called "Iseult le Blonde".^[103] In Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the knight describes the Princess Emily as blond in his tale.^[103]

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.^[103] In fact, Iseult was so closely associated with blondness that, in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, she is called "Iseult le Blonde".^[103] 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).^[103]

Because of blond hair's relative commonness in northern Europe, folk tales from these regions tend to feature large numbers of blond protagonists.

heroines.^[104]

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.^[105]

Early twentieth-century

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".^[106]

In Nazi Germany, blond, stern-jawed men were seen as the masculine ideal as depicted in the films of Leni Riefenstahl and other propaganda.^[107][108] 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".^[109]

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. . . .^[110]

Senior curator at the

Fischer scale that he said could categorize racial typology—these typologies were abandoned after World War II.^[112] Kyllingstad sees classification of race based on physical characteristics such as hair color as a "flawed, pseudo-scientific relic of the past".^[112]

Modern cultural stereotypes

Sexuality

In contemporary Western popular culture, blonde women are sometimes stereotyped as being attractive.^[84] For example, Anita Loos popularized this idea in her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.^[84] However, studies which sought to verify this found no evidence for a general preference of blonde women among Western men.^[114] A 2008 study found that men in Greater London, England preferred dark haired women rather than women with blond hair.^[115] A 2018 study based on University of Florida students found that men prefer brunette women over blonde women.^[116] 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.^[117]

In

Russian poetry were attractive.^[118] The ethnic Kyrgyz students, in particular, regarded blonde women as "hideous", and insisted that their hair be changed to black.^[118][119] Popular television commercials in Japan have portrayed blonde women as highly jealous of black-haired Japanese women.^[120] 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.^[121]

Singer-songwriter Madonna popularized the short, bleached-blond haircut after the release of her 1986 studio album True Blue, and influenced both the 1980s fashion scene as well as many future female musicians such as Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus.^[122]

Similarly in many eastern cultures (Asia, The Middle East) blond men are often seen as symbolizing western masculinity: excessively manly, flirtatious, and sexually attractive.^[123][124] 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.^[125]

Intelligence

Originating in Europe, the "

Laugh-In.^[84]

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.^[128] 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.^[84]

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.^[129] 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".^[130] For example, when she was asked what she had on in a 1949 nude photo shoot, she replied, "I had the radio on".^[131] Monroe often wore white to emphasize her blondeness, and drew attention by wearing revealing outfits that showed off her figure.^[132] 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.^[133]

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.^[134][135] Rhiannon Williams of The Telegraph writes that dumb blonde jokes are "one of the last 'acceptable' forms of prejudice".^[136]

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."

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External links

Look up blond in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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