Sunday, November 08, 2009

Knowledge November - Day 9 - The original blonde Joke

Why was the blonde frowning at the orange juice carton? Because it said ‘concentrate’.















Har har har. No prizes for guessing that I am a blonde. I am also educated, a published writer, a trained teacher and facilitator, a qualified solo sky-diver and book reviewer who escaped a rape scene by punching the man so hard in the face and I'm considered acceptably intelligent by most people who know me.

Okay, so that’s nothing different to any other blonde out there trying to eradicate the dumb-blonde stereotype, but I’ll add this – it’s all true and I am a *natural* blonde.

No, my hair wasn’t just blonde as a child and now darker as an adult, it is still blonde. It is the colour that my hair-dresser says is the most sought-after shade by ex-blondes or brunette wannabes who go to her salon for highlights, touch-ups or a complete transformation. Unfortunately it is also extremely fine and cannot support even a coloured rinse through it without taking on the hue in a deeply fluorescent fashion (a painfully embarrassing lesson learned when putting through a henna highlight in high school). It does, however, get a few streaks put in to thicken up my hair slightly or I risk having it all fly off in a gust no more powerful than a kitten's hiccough.

In deference to my mantra of ‘One Minute Only,’ my hair is kept short and I avoid wearing make-up as much as Paris avoids a book store. When I do occasionally put on some mascara or lipstick, I either resemble an ageing Emo clown or the first female member of the Clockwork Orange Droogs (but minus the outfit!).

Instead, it is easier for me to play down the blonde hair/blonde brain perception by not placing much emphasis on my appearance. My clothes are neat, clean and allow me to fit into the crowd without looking like a wrinkly fashion victim or a fifty-something librarian. I’m no Katherine Heigl, but I’m no Pig Troll either; just a Low Maintenance Mother with a million more important matters on her mind (Where are my litter tongs? Why does Mark Dorman get paid to write a column? How come all the vegans I know are fat?)



















Pamela Anderson is a mere year older than me and is the living embodiment of the Bottle Blonde with eyebrows and lips she has to draw on like a cartoon and painfully bloated breasts that ensure an ever-dwindling income from Tommy Lee's tape sales and the added bonus of being extra protected from impact if she ever finds herself in a car crash. Her career has mostly involved attending events wearing a smile and sequinned dental floss and having extremely poor taste in men (ditto for Paris).

Pammy and Paris reinforce the stereotype of the dumb blonde and encourage those who aren't yet featured on internet pages the world over. These acolytes are often ordinary suburban women who spend an inordinate amount of time on their physical appearance: dried, long yellow hair, ridiculously square manicured nails that clearly show that the hands are seldom used for anything more demanding than a straightening iron and outfits that scream out ‘Desperate Bar Maid’ instead of ‘Destined for the Boardroom.’




















If blonde is your natural colour, then all well and good. If you’re paying for it to be your colour, then forget it: you’ll be taken about as seriously as Madonna at the Academy Awards.

Then again, I probably shouldn't have walked into the lounge room on way to getting a glass of water and asked Love Chunks "What's the dumbest question I've ever asked you?"

"Does now count?"

15 comments:

Rowe said...

I'd rather be bottle blonde than naturally grey.

Kath Lockett said...

Nah, I'm going to go grey. My Mum is now a completely silver bodgie and as she says, "My hair goes with every colour now!"

River said...

I'm a blonde/baby toddler with darker hair by the time I was in high school. Every summer it would lighten practically by the hour as I spent days at the beach, only to brown up again through the winter. These days it's still brown under the grey which is fast taking over. I don't mind going grey, like your Mum says, it goes with everything. I'm not kidding myself that I'm super intelligent or even educated, but I don't think I'm quite in the leagues of the dumb blondes either. That picture of Madonna makes me want to force feed her an eclair or two. How can she not see that those arms are ugly?

Kath Lockett said...

If that's what a full-time personal trainer, several nannies and a macrobiotic diet does to your arms, then I'll stick with my Lindt-Nestle-Cadbury diet thanks!

Kath Lockett said...

Oh and I should have added that Love Chunks (who is now dark) was a white-blonde as a boy. Wonder what that says about him?

Plastic Mancunian said...

Hi Kath,

Yes - I'm blonde too (well a kind of mousey-blonde).

No sign of grey yet - although on holiday in Majorca in August, Mrs PM suddenly announced "YOU HAVE A GREY HAIR!" Slightly paranoid, I had a closer look and thankfully, it was just a slightly lighter blonde hair.

Thanks for the Madonna picture by the way - I used to have a major crush on hair - what the hell happened?

:0)

Cheers

PM

Plastic Mancunian said...

Of course I meant crush on her" - "not crush on hair".

A senior moment I'm afraid - I'm not some kind of weird perv!!

D'OH!!!

Louise Bowers said...

I can't remember what my natural hair colour was. I must say I particularly loved the picture of the camel not wanting to pick up swine flu from Paris Hilton. Classic.

Cat J B said...

I've always wanted to skydive and will do it someday. Last time I tried I was up the duff, therefore it was disallowed. I was a blondie blondie toddler but had gone to dark brown by the time I was about 4. I always wanted black....

Catastrophe Waitress said...

i was a superblonde child, but over time the blonde got darker, until in my early twenties i had to supplement the blonde, because i like it really light. i blame my love of abba as a child.

my hairdresser calls me ash blonde. she uses my real name too though.

Baino said...

Ha, we all have our 'blonde' moments. I was thinking of going blonde as a way to gracefully fading to grey but . . I lack courage. My feckin' dog is a blonde and if she doesn't stop barking at bleedin' rabbits like a banshee on speed, I'm going to dye her black! Excuse me while I go and put on my angry voice!

JahTeh said...

I should have been a natural redhead but due to a mix-up in baby heaven I was put in the fat queu twice. (that queu doesn't look right)
Anyway if I want to see what colour my hair is now I have to stand in front of a mirror and look down.
If they call fat arms 'bingo wings' what on earth do they call those things hanging off Madonna's shoulders?

deepkickgirl said...

I didn't know you were a sky diver. That freaks me out. Why would you want to jump out of a perfectly functional plane? That's just crazy!

As far as hair colour, I haven't had "natural" hair colour since I was 14 or so (we're talking almost 30 years). Now I have so much grey that I have to do a home colour job every 4 or 5 weeks, otherwise I start looking like I'm ready for Shady Pines.

Kath Lockett said...

Sky diving yes, at 21. I'd broken up with someone and wanted to do something different in the holidays I was 'assigned' (ie given no choice in) by the ANZ bank.

No-one else had holidays at the same time (ie NOVEMBER, what the?) so I did a sky diver course and, well, jumped!

(In an old lady-without-her-dentures-in croak): Those were the days that we had to climb out of the plane, grab hold of the under wing strut and then let go - no 'being velcroed to an instructor and allowed to lie there like a lazy beetle' for us!

ashleigh said...

Those photos, oh those photos. The Pamela smash-your-face-in is most unattractive. So's Madonna, but then she ALWAYS WAS. Yuk yuk yuk.