What's the thing about blondes? According to popular idiom, they have so much FUN, right? So why they are always dying of mysterious circumstances, going to rehab, having outrageous FREAKOUTS, getting pigs' blood dumped all over them at the prom, going to jail, (maybe) falling under Satanic curses and (sort of) being decapitated, et cetera? There's more to blondness than having fun and being preferred by gentlemen, that's for sure.
In high school and college, many of my best friends included: kooky blondes, bitchy blondes, bombshell blondes, troubled blondes, good-time blondes, tragic blondes, and wild blondes. There was not a dumb blonde among them. Instead, what they all seemed to have in common--besides a distinctive SCORCHED EARTH strategy when it came to bleaching--was a certain (sometimes misguided) joie de vivre that tended to result in dramatic situations of both the disastrous and the awesome variety. What I am saying is that they were never boring.
But the world has a weird attitude when it comes to blondes. I spent a lot of time researching blonde jokes for my new book, THE BLONDE OF THE JOKE (natch), and discovered that not only are most blonde jokes totally unfunny--did you hear about the blonde who thought day rates were cheaper than nitrates?! LOL!-- but also that a lot of them are straight-up misogynist and sometimes actually violent. You don't even want to know the one about the blonde who tried to blow up her husband's car. Trust me, it's a joke only John Wayne Gacy should find funny, but there it is on 101 Best Blonde Jokes! (Or wherever; I forget.) Clearly, our fascination with blondes is pretty, um, COMPLICATED. We--meaning, you know, SOCIETY--love to obsess about them, fantasize about them, worship them, make fun of them, torment them, judge them, and then feel sad and sorry when they run into trouble.
What is it about blondes? Or maybe I should ask: what is it about the obsession with blondes? It's possible it has nothing to do with how blondes actually ARE. Maybe we're just projecting all our own mommy issues, all our insane virgin/whore complexes, all our jealousies and pettinesses, onto these women who, other than their choice (and it IS a choice) in hair color, are just regular people. Poor Britney. How could anyone handle the weight of all that?
I don't know. I've thought about all of this a lot, and I still don't have a conclusion. So I wrote a book about it. In preparation for THE BLONDE OF THE JOKE, I'll be also be writing a weekly essay on my blog about my favorite blondes in history. Who should I include? Nominate subjects here in the comments.
Bennett Madison
Author of Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls, Lulu Dark & the Summer of the Fox, I Hate Valentine's Day, and The Blonde of the Joke (coming September 08)
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