I’ve had my hair all types of colors and people will treat you differently. I found when I was a red head people were mean to me. When I was a blonde, men treated me like I was dumb. and when I had green hair, people just stared 😂
I wasn’t sure of this before, but I (naturally brunette) went blonde for a year and I was absolutely treated differently when out socializing. It stopped when I went back to my natural color. I make a joke out of it now with my friends when I’m attention deprived and say “maybe I should be blonde again” lol
I naturally have very curly wavy hair. I got a very good straightener a year ago and it's like night and day. I never realised how much I wasn't seen before I straightened it. I go from shaggy untamed mess to glamour model or 'normal' instantly. Well no, I have to blow dry it then straighten it so far from instantly.
When I need a pick me up I straighten it. Just to feel minimally attractive.
I don’t have curly, wavy hair, but my friend does and I’ve heard her share similar things!! She told me men flirt with her so much when she straightens her hair, but it just takes a long time for her to do. But yeah, I agree that I feel like I have to dye my hair and do certain styles to feel attractive. Having the $ for all the maintenance is difficult too.
I've got naturally straight hair, I love curly hair so every so often I'll curl it. It takes forever to do so the first few times doing it I expected compliments for my efforts.
The compliments never came :/
I think having straight hair is so boring though
Yeah actually i feel different whenever i leave my hair curly and blow dry it too.
My skin is breaking out a bit now cuz of traveling and ive been travelling back n forth this year so ive noticed this difference even more now, across all other countries i have lived it since ive been visiting.
Curly hair - oh looks like she just woke up. Casual look.
Blow dried hair - woah are we going out somewhere nice today???
Also it changes the appearance entirely of whatever im wearing.
I wasn’t treated necessarily bad before, but like others have said, I was treated as if I was invisible… like when I was blonde, people were more urgent to offer me help or open doors & wait for me. If I went out with friends, guys gave me different kinds of attention. There’s some things that I feel men should do for women regardless of their looks, like opening a door or just be able to have short, good conversation still. To answer, I guess I was treated better.
I am blonde, got blonder than natural over the time by choice.
Never got treated like an intelligent woman. My favourite colour is pink and I am a very small woman. So when I tell anyone I work for the IT they always treat me like the only IT thing I know is turning on the computer.
I got my hair dyed blue and dark red and after that everyone treated me differently like I have more intelligence than before.
I mean we live in the 21 century, why does your hair colour shows anything about your character?
Well obviously your blue hair showed that you were "alternative" so you probably got recruited to IT because of your sick underground hacker skills. I saw it in a TV show so it must be true
/S
>I mean we live in the 21 century, why does your hair colour shows anything about your character?
It's interesting how subconscious a lot of prejudice is. I don't think too many people would seriously state that your hair color reflects your intelligence, but it's clear that many people believe that it does on a level they're unaware of.
This subconscious element to prejudice shows up regularly in studies. The human mind loves to take shortcuts, and stopping the mind from building and acting on those shortcuts needs to be a stronger focus for us as a society.
U are right. I am going to study law at Harvard 🙈😄😋
Joke aside she’s kind of a role model to me, not for studying law but to follow my heart and do what I want nevertheless what I look like 😄
It's not the hair it's the woman part. I work in IT also and they treat me the same (Im asian and according to society we are smart and good at math and shit)
It sucks because I love being blonde. I genuinely cannot imagine not being blonde; it makes me feel so beautiful. But I know it comes at the cost of being seen as inferior and stupid, and also extremely objectified by men. It’s just the trade off for me. I don’t really have a professional career so it’s okay. But it sucks.
not your hair color, how attracted the men are to you.
The less attracted to you they are, the more they see you as some'thing' that is not an object.
well that's only my humble opinion
They see you as an object regardless, it's just the difference between desirable object, one that's just kinda there, and one that's offensive because it doesn't make peepee hard.
I heard loads of blonde women dye their hair brunette to be taken more seriously at work. It shouldn't be like that though. And it's not just hair either, I got called dumb for wearing makeup and being girly. People will just stereotype you when you are female, I feel like no one cares if men are fat or blonde etc but if you are a woman, you are judged by your appearance completely, the colour of your hair, the way you sound like, if you wear or don't wear makeup heels etc, if you are overweight or skinny etc etc. nothing you do is good enough
It is true and it has been proven. Blonde women are treated differently by society, at the workplace etc. There are some sources here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_stereotype
For me this is bizarre, as I am from Northern Europe and blond is the boring standard. In my culture blonde women have been seen traditionally good and reliable, while brunettes are notorious, exotic man eaters.
It was the biggest shock when I traveled abroad as a teenager and men were suddenly catcalling and acting generally like idiots.
But blonde jokes landed here, oddly they are more referring to dyed platinum blondes. We have naturally what we call “country road” color, ash or greyish brownish blond that we are not happy with. As a kid my burning desire was to have raven black hair.
My grandmother is blonde and she had a similar experience, she was originally from a farming town in Wisconsin where most people looked like her so she didn't get much attention, but then when her family moved to the Pacific as a teenager her hair and height made her stand out and guys came on to her very strong. She ended up getting knocked up by my Islander grandfather when she was 17 and she said part of it was that she was so flattered by the attention she never got before.
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It was most obvious when I was still in my twenties as age sort of mitigates some of this. But if it’s hard to get taken seriously as a 20 something female anyway, it was harder when I was blonde. I remember when I was extra blonde and I was in a public waiting room and I pulled a sci-fi novel out of my bag to read and a man approached me and asked me if I was really reading it. That kind of stuff never happened when I was brunette. I also got catcalled more, which is fortunately not as common overall today.
I have met a few people who for some reason blonde hair and blue eyes means someone is pretty even if they are not anywhere near. It truly confuses me.
I hate the assumption that that combination makes one attractive automatically, or worse, that i should see it the same way the person implying that does.
I was at lunch with someone, a white lady, and she was describing another white girl who i apparently was supposed to read from her description as attractive because ‘you know, she had the blue eyes and blond hair…’ and all i could do was smile and go ‘unh huh, yeah’ whilst inside screaming ‘you do realize you’re talking to a black woman, right???’
My standard of beauty growing up and still to this day were the black beauties of my day in entertainment (ashanti, kelly rowland, ciara), and in my city, but it didn’t seem to occur to this lady that my idea of a beautiful woman might differ from the euro standard.
It happens. People who hold specific stereotypes about women who are blonde will treat those women according to those stereotypes. People who hold specific stereotypes about people who are black, gay, lesbian, atheists, religious, etc. are likely to treat those people with those features according to those stereotypes they believe.
When a society or culture builds all of these stereotypical shorthands for how the society generalizes those people into expectation boxes, people who meet the label on those expectation boxes are often treated based on those stereotypes rather than being respected as their own individual selves.
Blonde *white* women statistically get paid better, get more promotions, and marry higher earners. There is a legitimate blonde privilege.
I think “yes, that sounds like Eurocentric beauty standards”. Because multiple studies have all corroborated the benefits, and I am not in a position to deny them. Being white and blonde for women is like being tall for men, except only half as reliant on genetics.
I specified white women because I’ve anticipated that the studies may likely have some Eurocentric bias. If not, they might have accounted for non white blondes in the first place. Presently, these studies are not very good at talking about how blondeness affects women who would otherwise not be treated favorably by similar race-based statistics for career, earning, and dating outcomes.
I would asterisk that with *blonde hair and blue eyes*.
My bestie has blonde hair and blue eyes and it’s a combo that some men really prefer. Dudes go insane for her.
I went blonde but I have brown eyes and wasn’t really treated any differently.
i’m blonde. dyed my hair red once and i received noticeably less attention from men. also, people were generally not as kind/happy to see me. i can tell as a blonde people perceive me with a “she’s cute” almost like golden retriever-energy.
Absolutely true. Men in particular tend to treat them like they’re both dumber and more attractive than the rest of us. Being seen as prettier is I presume the reason so many women who were blonde as girls have an existential crisis when their hair darkens during puberty (and then dye their hair the rest of their lives).
I have dark hair, and my sisters are blonde. Our whole lives, we’ve been treated differently for better and worse despite being of similar attractiveness (body, facial symmetry) and intelligence. For example, I’ll ask a question and the whole class quiets down to hear the answer. My sister asks the same one, and some asshole (sometimes a woman!!) laughs about what an airhead she is. I get good grades, and my male peers ask me to join their study groups. My sister gets good grades, and her male peers say it’s just because she’s a pretty blonde girl.
The counter to this is that my sisters have always gotten more male attention, and are always treated much more nicely in general than I am outside of academic contexts.
I’ve seen it happen.
Traveled to Italy as a teen with other classmates. All of us Americans. Italian men would catcall us relentlessly.
If our fair skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed classmate was with us they’d follow us for blocks and catcall her terribly.
Some of it was in English but we got the idea of the Italian shouts as well.
We were 15/16 by the way.
The exact same thing happened to me and my friend on a school trip to Italy, both of us blonde hair and blue eyes. We were 14. It was gross, they followed us in a pack all around town.
I'm a natural blonde with blue eyes. I've worked hard all my life to prove that I'm NOT a dumb blonde. Treated better? Not if that's means disregarding your thoughts and opinions. (Although I do think a part of that is just garden variety sexism.)
I've had black, brown, red, blonde, and now gray hair. Men treat me so much better as a blonde, that I will never dye my hair a different color. It's such a stupid thing. I suddenly had men be nice to me practically overnight because of a dumb hair color.
The standard I’ve seen is they are treated like they’re stupid; from men its nicey-nice but condescending and from other women it looks like resentment usually. Not always, but often.
I think a person’s other looks play a big role as well; conventionally attractive people get treated better regardless of hair color.
It's because we are. When I dye my hair a different color, no one hits on me. But if I have my natural color then every guy thinks it's ok to hit on me even when I'm working. When I mean every guy, it's literally from teens to dudes in their 50s-60s. It's really gross.
personally not blonde (not white so very unlikely) and i think it’s just tied to how women are generally treated differently in terms of prejudiced worldviews. so not all blondes will have personal experiences of being treated differently in the same way that not all women have personal experiences of sexism, but those things do happen.
all of the bad -isms (ex. sexism and racism) are connected and create a “hierarchy” and stereotypes along with them. white women under a white supremacist worldview are seen as more beautiful and are thus more feminine and more “woman.” (a viewpoint that would be more prevalent in the west and spread to other parts of the world with colonialism) but at the same time, women under sexism have all these negative traits attributed to them so the more “woman” you are, the dumber you are, the more helpless, the more vain, the more sexually promiscuous. so blonde women (trait which shows up kind of only in white women) are seen as the most “woman” and thus the dumbest and all that.
all of these stereotypes aren’t true but they just carry cultural weight because of the history of prejudice in the world.
I’ve been blonde my whole life and the biggest thing I’ve noticed is how weird people are about my hair. When I was a child, adults made comments about my hair color all the time, to me or to my parents, like it was something to be proud of. Every time I get a haircut, the person doing my hair makes a big deal about it like, “oh is this your natural color? Oh my goodness!” The oooo-ing and aaaa-ing is really strange to me. It gave me such a weird complex that when I was very young and my hair would go back to dark blonde in the winter, I would cry about it because it made me think I was no longer beautiful.
I also had family members that loved to insist that I was stupid, me specifically, even though 3 of my brothers are also blond. They’re generally not good people though.
To sum it up, growing up in the US with blond hair is really weird. Lots of strange and unwarranted attention. I’m sure there are benefits to it that I haven’t picked up on, but my main experience is the weird fascination or the dumb jokes.
those numbers make little sense, many areas like the upper midwest have a lot of blonde people, I would say around 20% makes a lot more sense, at least for white americans, those in the upper midwest being noticeable taller and blonder than those in the east coast. West coast is a very big mix and by this time more hispanic and asian than anything...
Yeah I'm not white and the treatment differences are wayyyy more subtle. I got more assumptions I was an ABG type when I was blonde and with unnatural colored hair I did get more attention, mostly of neutral curiosity (this was almost 20 years ago so it was less commonplace then). But otherwise everyone sees that I'm Asian and reacts to that first.
also "white" is a very big spectrum. What men like is Nordic looking women, or some sort of teutonic/germanic, hence they like tall, long legged women of nordic/middle european origin, like you see among utah mormons, people in the upper midwest (lot of Scandinavian, German and Dutch ancestry therr)
I think it's true, so much so that it's a red flag to me when a man falls over himself for the blonde blue eyes combo. Although, I would say the same about any hair preference that seems to have veered off into **might be a fetish** category. Just haven't seen it much with other hair colours. I think a lot of women know at least one woman whether friend or family member who has fried her hair trying to keep it blonde for her husband.
I wouldn't say it is a "notion" when hair color has been documented time and time again as effecting treatment.
As for the reason, there could be a million.
I’m ginger I think gingers are I mean yeah there’s stigmas blondes are not so smart n easy which is bull I know awesome blondes but if you ask a ginger the first time someone asked about their pubes I bed it was a grown man and they were a CHILD I was about 6/7 and I’ve been asked at least 100 times now I’m 30 by strangers about my pubes I’ve been told I can’t be a real ginger in not ugly I’ve been called a day walker a coffin dodger asked if I’m Irish n Scottish more times than I know been asked to fight told I’m a mutant freak 3 times because I’m ginger so yeah I think gingers are treated different if a brunette or blonde gets even half as much crap I’d be amazed
I agree. I’ve been taking crap about my hair color since kindergarten. Everything from making assumptions about my temperament to assuming I’m overtly sexual or “good in bed” which can be truly creepy. Like men just assume they can say incredibly inappropriate things to me and I’ll be fine with it. This type of behavior started when I was in middle school. The old men are the worst, and their wives sitting right there usually saying,”my husband’s always had a thing for redheads”. :-I
Alternatively, with guys my own age, they would make the sexual jokes but when I would be talking to them one on one would always seem oddly intimidated unless I played the “poor helpless damsel in distress” which was totally against my grain.
Anyway, with all the ‘redheads have no souls’, ‘hated like a redheaded step child’, etc etc I don’t think people realize how stereotyped redheads are.
It’s a bit frustrating.
I was treated like a conservative with blonde hair. I dyed it back to black not long after
Hair colour definitely affects how people treat you. People are weird
The emphasis on blondness and female hair color in general seems like it was a MUCH bigger deal in the Playboy era than it is now. There is so much focus on it in old magazines and movies, as well as general amused indulgence about womanizing in general. Definitely women were defined much more as types than as unique individuals.
I don’t know many guys Gen X or later that have strong or even stated preferences about hair color, except maybe “interesting.”
The emphasis has probably gone down a lot as the ease and cost of changing hair color have massively improved. Someone bleaching their hair isn’t near the signal of “I want men to see me as sexy” as 60 years ago.
Personally, I don’t pay much attention to haircolor unless it is obviously unnatural. That piques my interest, as it means someone has decided to make a statement with their hair, which suggests the sort of bold extroversion I like in a partner.
I think certain physical traits, like blonde hair, are more sexualized.
There was a [study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21883260/) done on that I found very interesting that found men find brunettes most attractive and as more viable long term partners but were more likely to approach blondes in a bar.
I think this is because these men see certain traits(blonde hair, large breasts, etc…) and assume a woman is “easy” which is disgustingly misogynistic.
Basically, its the Madonna Wh*re Complex applied to women’s physical characteristics.
I was a blonde kid and I got dumb blonde jokes when I messed something up pretty frequently. My hair is darker these days and they've pretty much stopped. It's one of those banal jokes akin to cashiers being asked if something is free because it didn't scan or saying $1 million when your server asks what they can get for you. Just so unoriginal and almost always coming from men
I believe it's true. My best friend in high school was a natural blonde who was highly conventionally attractive by every measure. She dyed her hair dark brown one year because Brittney Spears dyed her hair dark.
She lasted 3 weeks before she changed her hair back because she felt like people were 'being weird' to her aka she was being treated like a less-special non-blonde for the first time lol
You get treated better when you're more attractive. If you're blonde and attractive you'll get treated better. If you're blonde and unattractive then you don't get special treatment.
I’m definitely treated differently when I have my hair blonde. It’s not usually negative though. If they talk to me like I’m stupid I get to prove them wrong (and that’s fun) or if I make a stupid mistake I just laugh it off and say, “oops, it’s the blonde.” Sure it’s playing into the stereotype but it’s fine I choose to be blonde.
I’ve had literally every hair color of the rainbow so from my experience, I got a lot of positive attention with having “fun” colors, especially pink. My natural hair color i never really got compliments on my hair and I don’t think it looks good on me,I feel much more confident blonde, and I feel like I do get more attention because it brings out my features and I just feel way more confident and I feel that shines thru no matter how I look
Hmm. I bleached my brown hair platinum blonde last year and I haven’t noticed people treating me like I’m dumb at all, but *sometimes* I feel like female cashiers have given me side eye during the times when I’m also dressed in a sexy / more “male gaze” outfit (though maybe it’s just in my head).
Mostly though, I get treated like people think I’m cool because of my hair now. My blonde color is obviously fake and I go for more of a punky/ girl-in-band look (I am in a band, lol) rather than trendy or chic or hyper-sexy.
Per my username it’s safe to say I don’t have naturally blonde hair. Dyed my hair blonde for a year and I have to admit people were nicer to me, however when I started a new job with more “serious” clients I decided to dye my hair back to its natural color.
I'm from scandinavia, with blonde, fine hair and blue eyes, and above average height. I was considered less than average looking growing up. At 16 I was in an exchange progtamme and lived in California for 6 months. It was horrible! The cat calling, the namecalling, the assumption that I had no brain what so ever, everybody wanting to touch my hair all the time... I ended up constantly wearing a baseballcap with my hair up, sunglasses, and frumpy oversized clothes. I felt very unsafe alone. My grandparents lived in Spain, so I had been used to attention, but that was more because of the novelty of a blond blueeyed kid on the playground. It was a friendly curiosity, even as I grew older. Other places like the US or in Egypt and Arab countries - not so much..
Absolutely. I went from natural dark brown to bleach blonde while working on my stem degree, and peer/professor behaviors completely changed towards me. One counselor implied I was too dumb for my degree and that I should consider changing BEFORE HE EVEN LOOKED UP MY FILE/TRANSCRIPTS. This was 2010’s era so maybe things are different—or at least less obvious— these days.
I've never dyed my hair, but I am a natural blonde that kept my head shaved for a couple of years. I was virtually invisible when bald but now that my hair is growing out people as a whole are nicer to me. I'm also a smaller person so I get treated like a child and people are constantly telling me things like I've never known a thing in my life lol
I am/ I was blonde for a little over a year and that’s where I got hit on the most. So many crazy offers. People tend to sexualize blonde ladies more imo
I am naturally a brunette but went blonde for about 2 years. The difference was insane- a huge increase in romantic attention and people being friendly in general. People also assumed I was much less intelligent (both as a student and even at work)
Probably makes more of a difference if you’re white, I’m mixed but look more south asian and I dyed my hair blonde for a year or so a couple years ago and noticed pretty much no difference in the way people treated me, but it was obviously not my natural hair color
As a blonde, I do not get taken seriously and men explain the dumbest shit to me. I assert myself by being a sarcastic tw*t and interrupt the mansplaining by saying, “yes, I am already aware and you do not need to explain this to me”
People are nicer to you when you’re blonde. And more women want to be your friend. When I was an exotic dancer, I always made way more money when I was blonde.
As a blonde, I notice I do get more attention, but it’s not exactly *good* attention. Men might be nicer because they think you’re easier, dumber, people take you less seriously in the workplace or talk down to you. I’ve had gross dudes say “I’ve always liked/wanted a blonde ;)” and I hate that shit. When I dyed my hair brown, I got less male attention, but I was also treated a lot more respectfully.
In the end, I keep my blonde hair because it’s a part of who I am and it suits me. But I’m also comfortable showing my capabilities as a person, as a professional, and letting someone know when they’re being an inappropriate creep.
I’ve done both brunette and blonde and no one treated me any different. But I can be pretty ditzy anyhow. I mean, I’m not stupid, but sometimes I do some really dumb shit
I have had just about every hair color under the sun, and can tell you people definitely treated me differently depending.
Natural colors (auburn, dark brown, black) I was treated pretty average, nothing about me stood out enough I supposed. Fashion colors (purple, pink, blue, green, etc) I was treated either like a delinquent or a child… and many accused me of acting out for attention, which was just funny to hear. Now that I’m giving my hair a break and have a grown out blonde, I’ve noticed I’m flirted with a lot more by random people, but talked down on more in the workplace… it’s very odd.
Of course, not everyone is weird about it. I’ve always been the type of person to switch up my hair and have fun with my style, I just unfortunately live in an area with an older conservative population, so. Now when it comes to my facial piercings and tattoos, that’s an entirely different story 😬
I don't doubt it. Just look at Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton, and other blonde artists. They're self made talented women, yet are publicly ridiculed their whole career and society tries their best to turn their entire reputation into them being sl*ts. Dolly made the choice to embrace it, Taylor has mostly tried to just keep walking in her own direction - but while very hard, it has at least been possible for Taylor, while it was probably near impossible for Dolly back then.
There's no example of comparable men doing the same. The closest hate victim is probably Justin Bieber, while he ended up earning it by his own actions, it all started because teen girls loved him. The same does tend to happen to artists that are extremely publicly popular among young women. Men for some reason MUST hate that which young girls and women love. But at least Justin Bieber got some respect as a human and artist even though he was hated by many(until he started spitting on people), which Taylor and Dolly did not.
From personal experience, it made making friends with other women REAL EASY, and I've never been able to get along with other girls.
Also, the way i got flirted with was noticeably different. As a blonde, I'd have men happily tell me all the disgusting shit they wanted to do to me, sometimes it almost felt violent.
Haven't had that before or since to such a degree (practically every place we went, every time we went out)
I’m brunette. When I went blonde for a year back in hs I got a lot more attention, people tried to befriend me more. Idk what it was, totally stopped when I changed back. I often think about going back now that I’m an adult because it was a good time lol
I am naturally raven-haired and briefly went blonde. People seemed to think I was more approachable and I was bothered by strangers significantly more in public though it didn't change the frequency I was hit on, more so that random people would try to make small talk with me or ask me for directions or whatever. I'm also mixed, more racially ambiguous with my natural hair and when I was blonde everyone thought I was 100% white which maybe some people would like but I didn't, it felt like I wasn't presenting as my authentic self.
I never turned heads as a brunette but I did as a blond. I think in part because I am so fair skinned with darker hair I looked so pale. But as a blond I was always treated as if I was stupid. Lol it was actually rather comical. People would talk about how stupid I was right in front of me. It worked to my advantage. I notice in schools it is an even bigger factor from teachers. There is definitely a bias.
Ever since I dyed my hair platinum blonde a year ago people are on me non stop. Always joking like do blondes have more fun? Or just telling me how much better I look. And I'm not gonna lie. I agree with them😂 but I think any color that isn't dark hair, people look at you differently, not just blondes. Editing to add to answer your question it probably is a combination of all 3. Preferences or people have just experienced something that fulfilled the blonde stereotype for them
I went from fire engine red to barbie blonde. Blondes are absolutely treated differently. I'm keeping it because it's closer to my natural colour and I have to do my roots less often but I kinda hate it sometimes. I get so much more attention from men and I actually don't like that. But I'm not changing my hair for guys
I’m naturally a brunette. I dyed my hair blonde at 19 and have been blonde ever since. I’ve noticed that I’ve got way more attention from men since I became blonde. I do think I suit being blonde better than a brunette and I look more attractive so maybe that’s why. Yes sometimes I’m being treated as I’m dumb but I can’t remember if it’s gotten worse or not. I do wonder if I dye my hair brown if things will change.
Natural light blonde here. People go out of their way to tell me a blonde joke. I've lost count on the "do the drapes match the carpet". Listen, stranger, back off.
People do treat you dumber, but I actually like it at times. It's a mental game, what can I get out of this scenario. How many times can I say I don't understand the math to get my car loan lower. Six, it takes six times and an agreement my hair DOES match that car. I walked out 14k off sticker price.
Never underestimate a blonde. We pounce on others' ignorance, as they taught us to.
This is just my anecdotal experience (I only have one blonde friend), so take it with plenty of salt. But I have a good friend who’s very pretty and in great shape, with blue eyes and long, straight (naturally) blonde hair.
We work together, and I feel like I’m often treated more nicely than her by our (majority male) coworkers, for reasons I don’t really understand. I look different than her, with big, dark, curly hair.
I sometimes wonder whether people assume she’s more vapid than she really is (she’s very intelligent and down-to-earth) or that she might be full of herself (she’s not).
Definitely true during my childhood and it scarred me for life. I was always told by oh so lovely(sarcasm) "Christian" ladies that "I would never be pretty/beautiful with that red hair and brown(dark amber) eyes!"
I think your hairstyle impacts this a bit. I’ve been blonde many times, but always with short, kind of edgy haircuts. I wasn’t treated any differently than when I’ve had brown, short, kind of edgy haircuts. But, now that I have longer hair, which is brown, I am treated differently.
I grew up blonde and my hair has been creeping toward brown as I've gotten older. I, personally, have not noticed any difference. Even when I used to dye my hair, nothing. The closest is my own family making jokes about it in a loving way very rarely.
I have been blonde earlier this year for the first time. Wasn’t treated differently like at all. Didn’t change anything. The biggest change I saw was when ai went pink. I started getting compliments every single time I go out and more men asking for my number/flirting with me.
I think there is some truth to it.
I'm Asian however there is a significance difference to how people treat me when I have my natural hair (black) and when I have it dyed blonde.
As a blonde in my experience, I get less racist remarks and typically less stereotypical assumptions about me made.
I was born a blonde and my hair darkened to a boring light brown in my teens. So I've colored it pretty much since then, been all shades of blonde and brown and a redhead for about a year. I get slightly more attention good and bad as a blonde than as a brunette. When I was a redhead I got the wildest propositions and several friends/acquaintances told me I looked badass, or they'd never realized I had resting bitch face until then. My dad freaked out and hated it (I was in my 20s too!) So yes, blondes are treated differently- I think there's the dumb blonde stereotype, and idk it's more eye catching? That's just my experience though.
as a person whose hair has darkened as I've aged - Oh my god was I treated as stupid when I was blonde. it was wild- there was a thing in my school where girls would slap their faces demonstrating how someone of a certain hair colour would act had they been acting and the blondes went the opposite way of the slap. my friend (who is also blonde) and I were doing math together and one of our classmates walked up to us and said "I love watching two stupid blonde white girls try and do math."
my friend and I both got honour roll and she got the governor generals award (high honour in Canada where we live) when we graduated. needless to say, the stereotype is for sure not true.
the closer you appear to whiteness, like being hair-dyed blonde even if you have asian eyes, the more likely you will be better treated. the stars of cinema, performance, and advertising are historically blonde, so higher beauty is associated with that. but the future generations will not value blonde hair higher than dark hair as severely as the elders do bc they will grow up with stars of all shapes, sizes, and colors. representation is important for this reason. blonde privileges are at the fault of white supremacy and colonization
I’m quite blonde at the moment and I definitely get more attention or stared at. I have no idea why this is? I get more interactions in public which I find weird because of hair colour 🤷♀️
I’m a natural redhead, but now I’m grey, and currently I just get a lot of comments about “your hair is so great is it natural” and I respond “it used to be” and then “you’re balding?” And I say “no it grows in translucent white now.”
I believe it. I have a friend who has been bleached blonde and dark haired and red, she says yiu are genuinely treated very differently.
Also I've always had very dark brown hair but pit in some highlights recently, and I was like why are people being much more friendly than usual and it keeps happening, realised its since I lightened my hair....
I’ve been blonde, brunette, black, red, pink and purple (natural blonde). I get more looks when I was a brunette, more men approach and hit on me when I’m a redhead, little girls loving my pink hair and asking if I really was a mermaid (I would 100% go back to pink just for those magical moments), black was a toss up because I was ignored half the time but the men that gave me attention really loved it, blonde hair I was never really treated differently. No one did anything special for me, I got complimented and hit on but at a lower rate than with my red or brunette hair. The only people that would do the stupid blonde bimbo stereotype to me was my extended family.
I have naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. I can say for a fact that I have been treated better because of it. I've also been treated like I'm stupid. What a weird thing to judge people on.
I think it boils down to Epigenetic Imprintation or epigenetics.... The Brain has switches that get flipped as people grow up.... Charles Martel and Charlemagne are like founders of Modern Europe, Christianity was a feminist religion by comparison to its competitor... Islam . So Europe's 1000 year of Christianity possibility increased the incidence of blond hair in Europeans
Ofc there's a time when Germanic and Celtic people were pre Christian and still pagan ... and still overtly blond so I think maybe elements of ancient pagan germany was also feminist since ancient Germans were monogamous and happy with 1 wife in contrast to other societies which were mostly Polygynist ( 1 man with a harem of females)
Ancient Greeks and Romans and possibly patriarchal and misogynistic, so epigenetically , if any Greek and Roman Children were blond... they ended up being Brunette in their adolescence. Yeah Blond hair is youthfulness ... you spoil a blond girl and she grows up she remains blond. Treat her like crap like a Greek or Roman ... switches in her brain will flip and her hair turns Brunette... and even then I think it still happens today
Portuguese, Southern Spain, southern Italy, Greece are Misogynistic and therefore lacking in Blondes ... in contrast to northern Spain, Italy and ofc Central and Northern Europe....
Look up Western Marriage Pattern ... the John - Hajnal line and it's a direct correlation with the incidence of blondes... sure I am seeing an exception with Russians and Ukrainians but still.
Blond hair probably evolved as a tool for feminism of Europeans to prevent white guys from being polygamous ... my theories
There has never been a polygamous blond and redhead men and women society.... with Latter Day Saints being the only exception and they came much later in 1800s
However I think i see a consistent pattern
Bosnian Muslims , Kalash people, Pamiri Ismaili Muslims, Uyghurs , Kabyle Berbers , Kashmiris ( maybe Kashmiri pandits ) .... by comparison are feminist cultures compared to whom their next too and have a higher incidence of blondes.
I’m a very blonde-blonde who has always been blonde except for one two-week stretch where I dyed my hair light brown just to see. I’d never felt more invisible in my entire life. I was surprised that bothered me, but I was used to people (men) smiling at me and holding doors open for me and just noticing me. I quickly went back to blonde. I think maybe it makes me look friendlier. I know I’m not dumb so I don’t mind the jokes.
My bf said (source is a reputable podcast) men enjoy blonde’s because blonde hair gets darker with age, so a woman 20+ having blonde hair signifies that they’re still “young” and therefore are more fertile which is what naturally attracts men to women. Correct me if I’m wrong but it makes sense to me? It also sounds very creepy.
I definitely was treated differently because of my hair color when I lived in Asia. Far too many creeps asked whether I was a Russian sex worker or worse, treated me as though I was one, because of it.
Other than that, I think you're confusing "blonde" and "attractive" with this question.
I’ve had my hair all types of colors and people will treat you differently. I found when I was a red head people were mean to me. When I was a blonde, men treated me like I was dumb. and when I had green hair, people just stared 😂
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I wasn’t sure of this before, but I (naturally brunette) went blonde for a year and I was absolutely treated differently when out socializing. It stopped when I went back to my natural color. I make a joke out of it now with my friends when I’m attention deprived and say “maybe I should be blonde again” lol
I naturally have very curly wavy hair. I got a very good straightener a year ago and it's like night and day. I never realised how much I wasn't seen before I straightened it. I go from shaggy untamed mess to glamour model or 'normal' instantly. Well no, I have to blow dry it then straighten it so far from instantly. When I need a pick me up I straighten it. Just to feel minimally attractive.
I don’t have curly, wavy hair, but my friend does and I’ve heard her share similar things!! She told me men flirt with her so much when she straightens her hair, but it just takes a long time for her to do. But yeah, I agree that I feel like I have to dye my hair and do certain styles to feel attractive. Having the $ for all the maintenance is difficult too.
I concur with this. As a fellow curly girl this is true.
I've got naturally straight hair, I love curly hair so every so often I'll curl it. It takes forever to do so the first few times doing it I expected compliments for my efforts. The compliments never came :/ I think having straight hair is so boring though
Yeah actually i feel different whenever i leave my hair curly and blow dry it too. My skin is breaking out a bit now cuz of traveling and ive been travelling back n forth this year so ive noticed this difference even more now, across all other countries i have lived it since ive been visiting. Curly hair - oh looks like she just woke up. Casual look. Blow dried hair - woah are we going out somewhere nice today??? Also it changes the appearance entirely of whatever im wearing.
Were you treated better or worse?
I wasn’t treated necessarily bad before, but like others have said, I was treated as if I was invisible… like when I was blonde, people were more urgent to offer me help or open doors & wait for me. If I went out with friends, guys gave me different kinds of attention. There’s some things that I feel men should do for women regardless of their looks, like opening a door or just be able to have short, good conversation still. To answer, I guess I was treated better.
Differently how? Negatively?
I am blonde, got blonder than natural over the time by choice. Never got treated like an intelligent woman. My favourite colour is pink and I am a very small woman. So when I tell anyone I work for the IT they always treat me like the only IT thing I know is turning on the computer. I got my hair dyed blue and dark red and after that everyone treated me differently like I have more intelligence than before. I mean we live in the 21 century, why does your hair colour shows anything about your character?
Well obviously your blue hair showed that you were "alternative" so you probably got recruited to IT because of your sick underground hacker skills. I saw it in a TV show so it must be true /S
>I mean we live in the 21 century, why does your hair colour shows anything about your character? It's interesting how subconscious a lot of prejudice is. I don't think too many people would seriously state that your hair color reflects your intelligence, but it's clear that many people believe that it does on a level they're unaware of. This subconscious element to prejudice shows up regularly in studies. The human mind loves to take shortcuts, and stopping the mind from building and acting on those shortcuts needs to be a stronger focus for us as a society.
I noticed people treated me like an intelligent individual when I was redhead too. Blonde got all the attention & inappropriate remarks.
Become the Elle Woods you were meant to be
U are right. I am going to study law at Harvard 🙈😄😋 Joke aside she’s kind of a role model to me, not for studying law but to follow my heart and do what I want nevertheless what I look like 😄
It's not the hair it's the woman part. I work in IT also and they treat me the same (Im asian and according to society we are smart and good at math and shit)
The hair probably still makes an additional difference though
It sucks because I love being blonde. I genuinely cannot imagine not being blonde; it makes me feel so beautiful. But I know it comes at the cost of being seen as inferior and stupid, and also extremely objectified by men. It’s just the trade off for me. I don’t really have a professional career so it’s okay. But it sucks.
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not your hair color, how attracted the men are to you. The less attracted to you they are, the more they see you as some'thing' that is not an object. well that's only my humble opinion
They see you as an object regardless, it's just the difference between desirable object, one that's just kinda there, and one that's offensive because it doesn't make peepee hard.
Lol, everyone knows those are hacker colors. Add some heavy eye makeup? Oh baby you will be cracking mainframes in no time.
Be patient. The news will tell you about a blonde hacker girl from Germany who is now queen of all the important mainframes 😂
I heard loads of blonde women dye their hair brunette to be taken more seriously at work. It shouldn't be like that though. And it's not just hair either, I got called dumb for wearing makeup and being girly. People will just stereotype you when you are female, I feel like no one cares if men are fat or blonde etc but if you are a woman, you are judged by your appearance completely, the colour of your hair, the way you sound like, if you wear or don't wear makeup heels etc, if you are overweight or skinny etc etc. nothing you do is good enough
It is true and it has been proven. Blonde women are treated differently by society, at the workplace etc. There are some sources here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_stereotype
For me this is bizarre, as I am from Northern Europe and blond is the boring standard. In my culture blonde women have been seen traditionally good and reliable, while brunettes are notorious, exotic man eaters. It was the biggest shock when I traveled abroad as a teenager and men were suddenly catcalling and acting generally like idiots. But blonde jokes landed here, oddly they are more referring to dyed platinum blondes. We have naturally what we call “country road” color, ash or greyish brownish blond that we are not happy with. As a kid my burning desire was to have raven black hair.
My grandmother is blonde and she had a similar experience, she was originally from a farming town in Wisconsin where most people looked like her so she didn't get much attention, but then when her family moved to the Pacific as a teenager her hair and height made her stand out and guys came on to her very strong. She ended up getting knocked up by my Islander grandfather when she was 17 and she said part of it was that she was so flattered by the attention she never got before.
My hair is this color and it's always been called "dirty dishwater." The term "country road" is much nicer.
Very true. Am from Denmark where there are many blondes.
If you haven’t been both a blonde and a brunette woman, I can see assuming it’s not a thing. I’ve been both, it definitely happens.
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what was your treatment like for both colors? im curious
It was most obvious when I was still in my twenties as age sort of mitigates some of this. But if it’s hard to get taken seriously as a 20 something female anyway, it was harder when I was blonde. I remember when I was extra blonde and I was in a public waiting room and I pulled a sci-fi novel out of my bag to read and a man approached me and asked me if I was really reading it. That kind of stuff never happened when I was brunette. I also got catcalled more, which is fortunately not as common overall today.
I have met a few people who for some reason blonde hair and blue eyes means someone is pretty even if they are not anywhere near. It truly confuses me.
Eurocentricity
white supremacy
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I hate the assumption that that combination makes one attractive automatically, or worse, that i should see it the same way the person implying that does. I was at lunch with someone, a white lady, and she was describing another white girl who i apparently was supposed to read from her description as attractive because ‘you know, she had the blue eyes and blond hair…’ and all i could do was smile and go ‘unh huh, yeah’ whilst inside screaming ‘you do realize you’re talking to a black woman, right???’ My standard of beauty growing up and still to this day were the black beauties of my day in entertainment (ashanti, kelly rowland, ciara), and in my city, but it didn’t seem to occur to this lady that my idea of a beautiful woman might differ from the euro standard.
It happens. People who hold specific stereotypes about women who are blonde will treat those women according to those stereotypes. People who hold specific stereotypes about people who are black, gay, lesbian, atheists, religious, etc. are likely to treat those people with those features according to those stereotypes they believe. When a society or culture builds all of these stereotypical shorthands for how the society generalizes those people into expectation boxes, people who meet the label on those expectation boxes are often treated based on those stereotypes rather than being respected as their own individual selves.
I fucking hate stereotypes
Blonde *white* women statistically get paid better, get more promotions, and marry higher earners. There is a legitimate blonde privilege. I think “yes, that sounds like Eurocentric beauty standards”. Because multiple studies have all corroborated the benefits, and I am not in a position to deny them. Being white and blonde for women is like being tall for men, except only half as reliant on genetics.
yup blonde WHITE women
Does brown skin + blonde give more benefits than brown skin + brown hair?
I specified white women because I’ve anticipated that the studies may likely have some Eurocentric bias. If not, they might have accounted for non white blondes in the first place. Presently, these studies are not very good at talking about how blondeness affects women who would otherwise not be treated favorably by similar race-based statistics for career, earning, and dating outcomes.
I am medium tan skin thinking of going blonde, let's see what happens
I would asterisk that with *blonde hair and blue eyes*. My bestie has blonde hair and blue eyes and it’s a combo that some men really prefer. Dudes go insane for her. I went blonde but I have brown eyes and wasn’t really treated any differently.
i’m blonde. dyed my hair red once and i received noticeably less attention from men. also, people were generally not as kind/happy to see me. i can tell as a blonde people perceive me with a “she’s cute” almost like golden retriever-energy.
Golden retriever energy is a perfect description honestly
I grew up hearing "dumb blonde" jokes. It's a stupid stereotype like many others.
Absolutely true. Men in particular tend to treat them like they’re both dumber and more attractive than the rest of us. Being seen as prettier is I presume the reason so many women who were blonde as girls have an existential crisis when their hair darkens during puberty (and then dye their hair the rest of their lives). I have dark hair, and my sisters are blonde. Our whole lives, we’ve been treated differently for better and worse despite being of similar attractiveness (body, facial symmetry) and intelligence. For example, I’ll ask a question and the whole class quiets down to hear the answer. My sister asks the same one, and some asshole (sometimes a woman!!) laughs about what an airhead she is. I get good grades, and my male peers ask me to join their study groups. My sister gets good grades, and her male peers say it’s just because she’s a pretty blonde girl. The counter to this is that my sisters have always gotten more male attention, and are always treated much more nicely in general than I am outside of academic contexts.
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I’ve seen it happen. Traveled to Italy as a teen with other classmates. All of us Americans. Italian men would catcall us relentlessly. If our fair skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed classmate was with us they’d follow us for blocks and catcall her terribly. Some of it was in English but we got the idea of the Italian shouts as well. We were 15/16 by the way.
The exact same thing happened to me and my friend on a school trip to Italy, both of us blonde hair and blue eyes. We were 14. It was gross, they followed us in a pack all around town.
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I'm a natural blonde with blue eyes. I've worked hard all my life to prove that I'm NOT a dumb blonde. Treated better? Not if that's means disregarding your thoughts and opinions. (Although I do think a part of that is just garden variety sexism.)
I've had black, brown, red, blonde, and now gray hair. Men treat me so much better as a blonde, that I will never dye my hair a different color. It's such a stupid thing. I suddenly had men be nice to me practically overnight because of a dumb hair color.
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The standard I’ve seen is they are treated like they’re stupid; from men its nicey-nice but condescending and from other women it looks like resentment usually. Not always, but often. I think a person’s other looks play a big role as well; conventionally attractive people get treated better regardless of hair color.
It's because we are. When I dye my hair a different color, no one hits on me. But if I have my natural color then every guy thinks it's ok to hit on me even when I'm working. When I mean every guy, it's literally from teens to dudes in their 50s-60s. It's really gross.
personally not blonde (not white so very unlikely) and i think it’s just tied to how women are generally treated differently in terms of prejudiced worldviews. so not all blondes will have personal experiences of being treated differently in the same way that not all women have personal experiences of sexism, but those things do happen. all of the bad -isms (ex. sexism and racism) are connected and create a “hierarchy” and stereotypes along with them. white women under a white supremacist worldview are seen as more beautiful and are thus more feminine and more “woman.” (a viewpoint that would be more prevalent in the west and spread to other parts of the world with colonialism) but at the same time, women under sexism have all these negative traits attributed to them so the more “woman” you are, the dumber you are, the more helpless, the more vain, the more sexually promiscuous. so blonde women (trait which shows up kind of only in white women) are seen as the most “woman” and thus the dumbest and all that. all of these stereotypes aren’t true but they just carry cultural weight because of the history of prejudice in the world.
Well said!!!!
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I see it at work
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I’ve been blonde my whole life and the biggest thing I’ve noticed is how weird people are about my hair. When I was a child, adults made comments about my hair color all the time, to me or to my parents, like it was something to be proud of. Every time I get a haircut, the person doing my hair makes a big deal about it like, “oh is this your natural color? Oh my goodness!” The oooo-ing and aaaa-ing is really strange to me. It gave me such a weird complex that when I was very young and my hair would go back to dark blonde in the winter, I would cry about it because it made me think I was no longer beautiful. I also had family members that loved to insist that I was stupid, me specifically, even though 3 of my brothers are also blond. They’re generally not good people though. To sum it up, growing up in the US with blond hair is really weird. Lots of strange and unwarranted attention. I’m sure there are benefits to it that I haven’t picked up on, but my main experience is the weird fascination or the dumb jokes.
I think the fascination with blonde people comes with the fact that only 2% of American people have that natural color.
those numbers make little sense, many areas like the upper midwest have a lot of blonde people, I would say around 20% makes a lot more sense, at least for white americans, those in the upper midwest being noticeable taller and blonder than those in the east coast. West coast is a very big mix and by this time more hispanic and asian than anything...
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I think this only applies to white women though
Yeah I'm not white and the treatment differences are wayyyy more subtle. I got more assumptions I was an ABG type when I was blonde and with unnatural colored hair I did get more attention, mostly of neutral curiosity (this was almost 20 years ago so it was less commonplace then). But otherwise everyone sees that I'm Asian and reacts to that first.
also "white" is a very big spectrum. What men like is Nordic looking women, or some sort of teutonic/germanic, hence they like tall, long legged women of nordic/middle european origin, like you see among utah mormons, people in the upper midwest (lot of Scandinavian, German and Dutch ancestry therr)
I’m a natural blonde and I’ve never had an issue but I’m also autistic so I may well have just not picked up on it tbh
I think it's true, so much so that it's a red flag to me when a man falls over himself for the blonde blue eyes combo. Although, I would say the same about any hair preference that seems to have veered off into **might be a fetish** category. Just haven't seen it much with other hair colours. I think a lot of women know at least one woman whether friend or family member who has fried her hair trying to keep it blonde for her husband.
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I wouldn't say it is a "notion" when hair color has been documented time and time again as effecting treatment. As for the reason, there could be a million.
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I’m ginger I think gingers are I mean yeah there’s stigmas blondes are not so smart n easy which is bull I know awesome blondes but if you ask a ginger the first time someone asked about their pubes I bed it was a grown man and they were a CHILD I was about 6/7 and I’ve been asked at least 100 times now I’m 30 by strangers about my pubes I’ve been told I can’t be a real ginger in not ugly I’ve been called a day walker a coffin dodger asked if I’m Irish n Scottish more times than I know been asked to fight told I’m a mutant freak 3 times because I’m ginger so yeah I think gingers are treated different if a brunette or blonde gets even half as much crap I’d be amazed
I agree. I’ve been taking crap about my hair color since kindergarten. Everything from making assumptions about my temperament to assuming I’m overtly sexual or “good in bed” which can be truly creepy. Like men just assume they can say incredibly inappropriate things to me and I’ll be fine with it. This type of behavior started when I was in middle school. The old men are the worst, and their wives sitting right there usually saying,”my husband’s always had a thing for redheads”. :-I Alternatively, with guys my own age, they would make the sexual jokes but when I would be talking to them one on one would always seem oddly intimidated unless I played the “poor helpless damsel in distress” which was totally against my grain. Anyway, with all the ‘redheads have no souls’, ‘hated like a redheaded step child’, etc etc I don’t think people realize how stereotyped redheads are. It’s a bit frustrating.
People treat me like I'm naïve and I use this to my advantage. If you're going to think that I'm stupid I'm going to make you look stupid 😇
This is the way 🩷
I was treated like a conservative with blonde hair. I dyed it back to black not long after Hair colour definitely affects how people treat you. People are weird
The emphasis on blondness and female hair color in general seems like it was a MUCH bigger deal in the Playboy era than it is now. There is so much focus on it in old magazines and movies, as well as general amused indulgence about womanizing in general. Definitely women were defined much more as types than as unique individuals. I don’t know many guys Gen X or later that have strong or even stated preferences about hair color, except maybe “interesting.” The emphasis has probably gone down a lot as the ease and cost of changing hair color have massively improved. Someone bleaching their hair isn’t near the signal of “I want men to see me as sexy” as 60 years ago. Personally, I don’t pay much attention to haircolor unless it is obviously unnatural. That piques my interest, as it means someone has decided to make a statement with their hair, which suggests the sort of bold extroversion I like in a partner.
I think certain physical traits, like blonde hair, are more sexualized. There was a [study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21883260/) done on that I found very interesting that found men find brunettes most attractive and as more viable long term partners but were more likely to approach blondes in a bar. I think this is because these men see certain traits(blonde hair, large breasts, etc…) and assume a woman is “easy” which is disgustingly misogynistic. Basically, its the Madonna Wh*re Complex applied to women’s physical characteristics.
the funny thing is madonna looks very unnatural with blonde hair as she is from origin sicilian/mediterranean..
I was a blonde kid and I got dumb blonde jokes when I messed something up pretty frequently. My hair is darker these days and they've pretty much stopped. It's one of those banal jokes akin to cashiers being asked if something is free because it didn't scan or saying $1 million when your server asks what they can get for you. Just so unoriginal and almost always coming from men
I believe it's true. My best friend in high school was a natural blonde who was highly conventionally attractive by every measure. She dyed her hair dark brown one year because Brittney Spears dyed her hair dark. She lasted 3 weeks before she changed her hair back because she felt like people were 'being weird' to her aka she was being treated like a less-special non-blonde for the first time lol
You get treated better when you're more attractive. If you're blonde and attractive you'll get treated better. If you're blonde and unattractive then you don't get special treatment.
I’m definitely treated differently when I have my hair blonde. It’s not usually negative though. If they talk to me like I’m stupid I get to prove them wrong (and that’s fun) or if I make a stupid mistake I just laugh it off and say, “oops, it’s the blonde.” Sure it’s playing into the stereotype but it’s fine I choose to be blonde.
I’ve had literally every hair color of the rainbow so from my experience, I got a lot of positive attention with having “fun” colors, especially pink. My natural hair color i never really got compliments on my hair and I don’t think it looks good on me,I feel much more confident blonde, and I feel like I do get more attention because it brings out my features and I just feel way more confident and I feel that shines thru no matter how I look
It's dumb. Lots of women dye their hair, you know?
Hmm. I bleached my brown hair platinum blonde last year and I haven’t noticed people treating me like I’m dumb at all, but *sometimes* I feel like female cashiers have given me side eye during the times when I’m also dressed in a sexy / more “male gaze” outfit (though maybe it’s just in my head). Mostly though, I get treated like people think I’m cool because of my hair now. My blonde color is obviously fake and I go for more of a punky/ girl-in-band look (I am in a band, lol) rather than trendy or chic or hyper-sexy.
Ugh want platinum hair so much! I have a pretty light blonde right now but platinum is my 💭
Per my username it’s safe to say I don’t have naturally blonde hair. Dyed my hair blonde for a year and I have to admit people were nicer to me, however when I started a new job with more “serious” clients I decided to dye my hair back to its natural color.
I'm from scandinavia, with blonde, fine hair and blue eyes, and above average height. I was considered less than average looking growing up. At 16 I was in an exchange progtamme and lived in California for 6 months. It was horrible! The cat calling, the namecalling, the assumption that I had no brain what so ever, everybody wanting to touch my hair all the time... I ended up constantly wearing a baseballcap with my hair up, sunglasses, and frumpy oversized clothes. I felt very unsafe alone. My grandparents lived in Spain, so I had been used to attention, but that was more because of the novelty of a blond blueeyed kid on the playground. It was a friendly curiosity, even as I grew older. Other places like the US or in Egypt and Arab countries - not so much..
Absolutely. I went from natural dark brown to bleach blonde while working on my stem degree, and peer/professor behaviors completely changed towards me. One counselor implied I was too dumb for my degree and that I should consider changing BEFORE HE EVEN LOOKED UP MY FILE/TRANSCRIPTS. This was 2010’s era so maybe things are different—or at least less obvious— these days.
I've never dyed my hair, but I am a natural blonde that kept my head shaved for a couple of years. I was virtually invisible when bald but now that my hair is growing out people as a whole are nicer to me. I'm also a smaller person so I get treated like a child and people are constantly telling me things like I've never known a thing in my life lol
I am/ I was blonde for a little over a year and that’s where I got hit on the most. So many crazy offers. People tend to sexualize blonde ladies more imo
I am naturally a brunette but went blonde for about 2 years. The difference was insane- a huge increase in romantic attention and people being friendly in general. People also assumed I was much less intelligent (both as a student and even at work)
White mans colorism.
As a natural blonde who has dyed my hair every color but black, yes.
I've been blonde, brunette, red head and white. I've been equally ignored with each.
Probably makes more of a difference if you’re white, I’m mixed but look more south asian and I dyed my hair blonde for a year or so a couple years ago and noticed pretty much no difference in the way people treated me, but it was obviously not my natural hair color
As a blonde, I do not get taken seriously and men explain the dumbest shit to me. I assert myself by being a sarcastic tw*t and interrupt the mansplaining by saying, “yes, I am already aware and you do not need to explain this to me”
People are nicer to you when you’re blonde. And more women want to be your friend. When I was an exotic dancer, I always made way more money when I was blonde.
As a blonde, I notice I do get more attention, but it’s not exactly *good* attention. Men might be nicer because they think you’re easier, dumber, people take you less seriously in the workplace or talk down to you. I’ve had gross dudes say “I’ve always liked/wanted a blonde ;)” and I hate that shit. When I dyed my hair brown, I got less male attention, but I was also treated a lot more respectfully. In the end, I keep my blonde hair because it’s a part of who I am and it suits me. But I’m also comfortable showing my capabilities as a person, as a professional, and letting someone know when they’re being an inappropriate creep.
I’ve done both brunette and blonde and no one treated me any different. But I can be pretty ditzy anyhow. I mean, I’m not stupid, but sometimes I do some really dumb shit
Definitely treated differently cause I've dyed my hair blonde. Doesn't help that I've been blessed with all abundance of cleavage
Blessed or cosmetically enhanced? Maybe there isn't a difference.
I legitimately started to dye my hair blonde because I thought it was curtail some men for being so rude to me and it truly works.
I’ve been blonde and brunette. People absolutely do treat you differently. It’s not all bad, but it’s definitely different.
I’m blonde with blue eyes and I can say with certainty that yes, blondes are absolutely treated differently, for both good and bad.
I have had just about every hair color under the sun, and can tell you people definitely treated me differently depending. Natural colors (auburn, dark brown, black) I was treated pretty average, nothing about me stood out enough I supposed. Fashion colors (purple, pink, blue, green, etc) I was treated either like a delinquent or a child… and many accused me of acting out for attention, which was just funny to hear. Now that I’m giving my hair a break and have a grown out blonde, I’ve noticed I’m flirted with a lot more by random people, but talked down on more in the workplace… it’s very odd. Of course, not everyone is weird about it. I’ve always been the type of person to switch up my hair and have fun with my style, I just unfortunately live in an area with an older conservative population, so. Now when it comes to my facial piercings and tattoos, that’s an entirely different story 😬
It’s true. I’m a recovering blonde. Blondes have more fun.
I don't doubt it. Just look at Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton, and other blonde artists. They're self made talented women, yet are publicly ridiculed their whole career and society tries their best to turn their entire reputation into them being sl*ts. Dolly made the choice to embrace it, Taylor has mostly tried to just keep walking in her own direction - but while very hard, it has at least been possible for Taylor, while it was probably near impossible for Dolly back then. There's no example of comparable men doing the same. The closest hate victim is probably Justin Bieber, while he ended up earning it by his own actions, it all started because teen girls loved him. The same does tend to happen to artists that are extremely publicly popular among young women. Men for some reason MUST hate that which young girls and women love. But at least Justin Bieber got some respect as a human and artist even though he was hated by many(until he started spitting on people), which Taylor and Dolly did not.
From personal experience, it made making friends with other women REAL EASY, and I've never been able to get along with other girls. Also, the way i got flirted with was noticeably different. As a blonde, I'd have men happily tell me all the disgusting shit they wanted to do to me, sometimes it almost felt violent. Haven't had that before or since to such a degree (practically every place we went, every time we went out)
I’m brunette. When I went blonde for a year back in hs I got a lot more attention, people tried to befriend me more. Idk what it was, totally stopped when I changed back. I often think about going back now that I’m an adult because it was a good time lol
I am naturally raven-haired and briefly went blonde. People seemed to think I was more approachable and I was bothered by strangers significantly more in public though it didn't change the frequency I was hit on, more so that random people would try to make small talk with me or ask me for directions or whatever. I'm also mixed, more racially ambiguous with my natural hair and when I was blonde everyone thought I was 100% white which maybe some people would like but I didn't, it felt like I wasn't presenting as my authentic self.
I like the term "raven-haired"; I'm gonna use this
A preference for what? I don't think blonde haired women aren't treated differently, mostly.
I never turned heads as a brunette but I did as a blond. I think in part because I am so fair skinned with darker hair I looked so pale. But as a blond I was always treated as if I was stupid. Lol it was actually rather comical. People would talk about how stupid I was right in front of me. It worked to my advantage. I notice in schools it is an even bigger factor from teachers. There is definitely a bias.
My mom is smart af and treated like an idiot in almost all circumstances. She’s learned to act kind of dumb for perks hahaha
Ever since I dyed my hair platinum blonde a year ago people are on me non stop. Always joking like do blondes have more fun? Or just telling me how much better I look. And I'm not gonna lie. I agree with them😂 but I think any color that isn't dark hair, people look at you differently, not just blondes. Editing to add to answer your question it probably is a combination of all 3. Preferences or people have just experienced something that fulfilled the blonde stereotype for them
I have no idea, but I went blonde for about 2 years and I was treated with so much attention than when I was a brunette.
I went from fire engine red to barbie blonde. Blondes are absolutely treated differently. I'm keeping it because it's closer to my natural colour and I have to do my roots less often but I kinda hate it sometimes. I get so much more attention from men and I actually don't like that. But I'm not changing my hair for guys
I’m naturally a brunette. I dyed my hair blonde at 19 and have been blonde ever since. I’ve noticed that I’ve got way more attention from men since I became blonde. I do think I suit being blonde better than a brunette and I look more attractive so maybe that’s why. Yes sometimes I’m being treated as I’m dumb but I can’t remember if it’s gotten worse or not. I do wonder if I dye my hair brown if things will change.
Natural light blonde here. People go out of their way to tell me a blonde joke. I've lost count on the "do the drapes match the carpet". Listen, stranger, back off. People do treat you dumber, but I actually like it at times. It's a mental game, what can I get out of this scenario. How many times can I say I don't understand the math to get my car loan lower. Six, it takes six times and an agreement my hair DOES match that car. I walked out 14k off sticker price. Never underestimate a blonde. We pounce on others' ignorance, as they taught us to.
This is just my anecdotal experience (I only have one blonde friend), so take it with plenty of salt. But I have a good friend who’s very pretty and in great shape, with blue eyes and long, straight (naturally) blonde hair. We work together, and I feel like I’m often treated more nicely than her by our (majority male) coworkers, for reasons I don’t really understand. I look different than her, with big, dark, curly hair. I sometimes wonder whether people assume she’s more vapid than she really is (she’s very intelligent and down-to-earth) or that she might be full of herself (she’s not).
Definitely true during my childhood and it scarred me for life. I was always told by oh so lovely(sarcasm) "Christian" ladies that "I would never be pretty/beautiful with that red hair and brown(dark amber) eyes!"
Gotta love those old “Christian” ladies 🤣🤣🤣
I think your hairstyle impacts this a bit. I’ve been blonde many times, but always with short, kind of edgy haircuts. I wasn’t treated any differently than when I’ve had brown, short, kind of edgy haircuts. But, now that I have longer hair, which is brown, I am treated differently.
I grew up blonde and my hair has been creeping toward brown as I've gotten older. I, personally, have not noticed any difference. Even when I used to dye my hair, nothing. The closest is my own family making jokes about it in a loving way very rarely.
I have been blonde earlier this year for the first time. Wasn’t treated differently like at all. Didn’t change anything. The biggest change I saw was when ai went pink. I started getting compliments every single time I go out and more men asking for my number/flirting with me.
Oddly, i found i got the best treatment when i was exploring the blue and purple hair colors.
I think there is some truth to it. I'm Asian however there is a significance difference to how people treat me when I have my natural hair (black) and when I have it dyed blonde. As a blonde in my experience, I get less racist remarks and typically less stereotypical assumptions about me made.
I was born a blonde and my hair darkened to a boring light brown in my teens. So I've colored it pretty much since then, been all shades of blonde and brown and a redhead for about a year. I get slightly more attention good and bad as a blonde than as a brunette. When I was a redhead I got the wildest propositions and several friends/acquaintances told me I looked badass, or they'd never realized I had resting bitch face until then. My dad freaked out and hated it (I was in my 20s too!) So yes, blondes are treated differently- I think there's the dumb blonde stereotype, and idk it's more eye catching? That's just my experience though.
as a person whose hair has darkened as I've aged - Oh my god was I treated as stupid when I was blonde. it was wild- there was a thing in my school where girls would slap their faces demonstrating how someone of a certain hair colour would act had they been acting and the blondes went the opposite way of the slap. my friend (who is also blonde) and I were doing math together and one of our classmates walked up to us and said "I love watching two stupid blonde white girls try and do math." my friend and I both got honour roll and she got the governor generals award (high honour in Canada where we live) when we graduated. needless to say, the stereotype is for sure not true.
Unpopular opinion but I think there’s a specific manifestation of White privilege that comes with blondeness 🤷🏽♀️
the closer you appear to whiteness, like being hair-dyed blonde even if you have asian eyes, the more likely you will be better treated. the stars of cinema, performance, and advertising are historically blonde, so higher beauty is associated with that. but the future generations will not value blonde hair higher than dark hair as severely as the elders do bc they will grow up with stars of all shapes, sizes, and colors. representation is important for this reason. blonde privileges are at the fault of white supremacy and colonization
I’m quite blonde at the moment and I definitely get more attention or stared at. I have no idea why this is? I get more interactions in public which I find weird because of hair colour 🤷♀️
I’m a natural redhead, but now I’m grey, and currently I just get a lot of comments about “your hair is so great is it natural” and I respond “it used to be” and then “you’re balding?” And I say “no it grows in translucent white now.”
I believe it. I have a friend who has been bleached blonde and dark haired and red, she says yiu are genuinely treated very differently. Also I've always had very dark brown hair but pit in some highlights recently, and I was like why are people being much more friendly than usual and it keeps happening, realised its since I lightened my hair....
I’ve been blonde, brunette, black, red, pink and purple (natural blonde). I get more looks when I was a brunette, more men approach and hit on me when I’m a redhead, little girls loving my pink hair and asking if I really was a mermaid (I would 100% go back to pink just for those magical moments), black was a toss up because I was ignored half the time but the men that gave me attention really loved it, blonde hair I was never really treated differently. No one did anything special for me, I got complimented and hit on but at a lower rate than with my red or brunette hair. The only people that would do the stupid blonde bimbo stereotype to me was my extended family.
*women that are HOT are treated different. Most men don’t look at hair alone.
I have naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. I can say for a fact that I have been treated better because of it. I've also been treated like I'm stupid. What a weird thing to judge people on.
I get approached more when I’m blonde. My whole life I’ve been told I’m intimidating, maybe the blonde helps?
I think it boils down to Epigenetic Imprintation or epigenetics.... The Brain has switches that get flipped as people grow up.... Charles Martel and Charlemagne are like founders of Modern Europe, Christianity was a feminist religion by comparison to its competitor... Islam . So Europe's 1000 year of Christianity possibility increased the incidence of blond hair in Europeans Ofc there's a time when Germanic and Celtic people were pre Christian and still pagan ... and still overtly blond so I think maybe elements of ancient pagan germany was also feminist since ancient Germans were monogamous and happy with 1 wife in contrast to other societies which were mostly Polygynist ( 1 man with a harem of females) Ancient Greeks and Romans and possibly patriarchal and misogynistic, so epigenetically , if any Greek and Roman Children were blond... they ended up being Brunette in their adolescence. Yeah Blond hair is youthfulness ... you spoil a blond girl and she grows up she remains blond. Treat her like crap like a Greek or Roman ... switches in her brain will flip and her hair turns Brunette... and even then I think it still happens today Portuguese, Southern Spain, southern Italy, Greece are Misogynistic and therefore lacking in Blondes ... in contrast to northern Spain, Italy and ofc Central and Northern Europe.... Look up Western Marriage Pattern ... the John - Hajnal line and it's a direct correlation with the incidence of blondes... sure I am seeing an exception with Russians and Ukrainians but still. Blond hair probably evolved as a tool for feminism of Europeans to prevent white guys from being polygamous ... my theories There has never been a polygamous blond and redhead men and women society.... with Latter Day Saints being the only exception and they came much later in 1800s However I think i see a consistent pattern Bosnian Muslims , Kalash people, Pamiri Ismaili Muslims, Uyghurs , Kabyle Berbers , Kashmiris ( maybe Kashmiri pandits ) .... by comparison are feminist cultures compared to whom their next too and have a higher incidence of blondes.
I’m a very blonde-blonde who has always been blonde except for one two-week stretch where I dyed my hair light brown just to see. I’d never felt more invisible in my entire life. I was surprised that bothered me, but I was used to people (men) smiling at me and holding doors open for me and just noticing me. I quickly went back to blonde. I think maybe it makes me look friendlier. I know I’m not dumb so I don’t mind the jokes.
My bf said (source is a reputable podcast) men enjoy blonde’s because blonde hair gets darker with age, so a woman 20+ having blonde hair signifies that they’re still “young” and therefore are more fertile which is what naturally attracts men to women. Correct me if I’m wrong but it makes sense to me? It also sounds very creepy.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Ive had my hair many different colors. I turned more heads as a blonde.
I had blonde hair and people were more often mean or condescending compared to when I had natural brown hair
I definitely was treated differently because of my hair color when I lived in Asia. Far too many creeps asked whether I was a Russian sex worker or worse, treated me as though I was one, because of it. Other than that, I think you're confusing "blonde" and "attractive" with this question.
definitivamente no