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SMNTY Classics: Do blondes really have more fun? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Danny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I've never told you a protection of I heart radio. Okay, okay,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I have a series of quick fire questions for you. Okay,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: here we go for this one. Who's your favorite witch
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: in Hocus Focus. I don't know any of their names.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: You've got Winnifred, Bette Midler, You've got Sarah, Sarah, Jessica Parker,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and then you've got the other one. Keep thinking of Winnie,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: but that's Winter Fred, Sarah, Mary, It's Mary. Sorry. I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: mean I think I will prefer Mary because she's the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: duffiest one. And I've always felt like if I was
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a trio, I would be the doofy one. Definitely wouldn't
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: be the leader. I definitely wouldn't be the Disney pretty one.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So probably that one. Okay, Okay, I don't know. I
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: think I feel like my feelings are muddled on it
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: because I have my I feel like I could do
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Sarah the best when I think of cosplay, so I
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: get mixed up. I have to think about these things, Samantha,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: to think about who is the one you want to be?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Why do you want to be them? Is it because
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you look like them is because you are like them?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: M well, yeah, I also remember I'm also very Asian
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: and so no as like, I automatically knew I couldn't
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: fit in with any of that, So it has to
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: be personality wise, right right, Well, that is unfortunately the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: truth for a lot of these quick fire questions. So
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: did you ever watch the Powerpuff Girls? No? Okay, sorry, no,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: no worries. That was you know, different time. I loved it.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I Bubbles was my favorite, which we talked about in
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the Redhead episode, which is kind of what why we're
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: bringing back this class because I feel like a lot
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of these things where and we we talked about this
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: with is it which is of Eastwick? Yes, yeah, I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: don't know. We didn't watch it, and we did talk
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: about it. You've got your red head, your brawnd, and
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: your darker haired person and they do often embody this
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: stereotype or either they play against it, but like the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: stereotype is sort of understood, and you've got those Okay, Um,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: so in Power Buff Girls, like Bubbles is the Dits
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: like Ultimate Dits blonde, but I did love her. Uh,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and then you've got Blossom, you know, the Redhead take control,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: pretty fiery, and then you've got Buttercup, who is dark haired, aggressive, angry.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I just I feel like I see this playing
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: out a lot. Okay, so Sex in the City already
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: know the answer. Who's your favorite? Ah, Miranda is actually
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: my favorite us M. Yeah, So I just I find
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: this interesting that we do rely on these stereotypes around
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: hair color so much in our media, and a lot
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of times it is that where there's like three or
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: four women and they're the you know, different air colors,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: but they are either the stereotype or going against the stereotype.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: So based on that, based on the episode we recently did,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: we wanted to bring back this classic on those stereotypes
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: around hair. So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Told You from House Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: we're tackling the question do blonds have more fun? And
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about all hair colors, especially because well
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: we're not going to talk about gray I take that back. Yeah,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: we did an episode a while ago focusing on gray
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: hair and Melano site activity. Yes, and for this episode,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: we're really hounding in on what's the deal with blonde
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: hair hair color stereotypes? Why we associate different characteristics with
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: different hair colors, especially on women, and talking about brunettes
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and redheads as well. Yeah, because because you and I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: are a bunch of dark hair gals. We you were
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: your hair is really dark, and mine I've been fighting it.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I've been trying for years to join the ranks of
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the gingers that God read. The hair dye fades fast,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: does it? Yeah? I did a maroon hair dye in
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: high school early high school. Allah, angela chase for my
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: so called life. Huh, but that's the most adventurous. Oh,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and I got highlights. I got blonde high lights in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: tenth grade. Really, yes, I will never do blonde highlights
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in my dark hair. I've I've been a blonde. Well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I was born with white blonde hair. Like I had
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: white blonde hair until I was about ten, and then
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: it started to fade to a brown. And so then
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: in high school I was blonde. I was my normal color,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and then I was a redhead. But I've never gone
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: black because my hair stylus told me it would wash
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: me out. Now, the fact, though, Caroline, that you were
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: born with that really, really blonde hair and had it
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: when you were a kid is one of the reasons
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: why we might value blonde hair differently than we value
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: brunette hair. And just to kick things off, I've got
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: a quote from Victoria's Sharrow, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Hair,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a Cultural History, and she writes, throughout most of human history,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: blonde hair has been considered attractive and alluring, possibly because
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: this color is associated with gold and light, two things
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that people consider valuable and desirable. And blonds are statistically
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a lot less common than brunettes, right, and so are redheads,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: but people just don't seem to trust redheads for some reason.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: But for millennia, people have been changing up their hair
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: colors because clearly we put so much value in this
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: color of our hair. Yeah, this goes back, as it
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: typically does, all the way to the ancient Egyptians and
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Middle Eastern folks. So those women colored their hair with hinna,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a practice that is still pursued now, and hannah is
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: derived from the dried leaves and stems of the hinna shrub.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: That sounds so fancy coloring your hair with a shrub
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and to cover gray hair. Hold on for it, Egyptians
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: mixed oil with the blood of a black cat. Oh dear,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Oh dear, I glad that technology has improved for hair dyeing.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: M In ancient Rome, hair dyes were also very popular,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and historians have found more than one hundred different recipes
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: for dying and bleaching hair. For instance, there was a
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Slate article from two thousand and ten that offered this
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Roman concoction of goat's fat mixed with beechwood, ashes and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: vinegar and a little bit of saffron to get their
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: hair all blonde. Well, men were doing this to the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Celts and the Vikings. Those dudes used bleach to create
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: pale blonde beards. In Babylonian, Abyssinian, and Assyrian cultures, men
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: dyed their facial hair black, I guess to look more youthful, strong,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: strong men black beard uh and men in ancient Persia
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: used hanna as well. And since we're really focusing a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: lot on the blonde hair thing in this episode, the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Greeks were the first to praise bleaching techniques and to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: record their strong beliefs that lighter hair color signified here
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: we go in a sense, superior social standing and set
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: should desirability, and that sexual desirability thing is takes on
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a couple of different positive and more negative connotations for
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the Romans. Yeah, because you mean the Romans thought blondes
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: or prostitutes. Yeah, well they actually were, because prostitutes in
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the Roman Empire either dyed their hair or wore wigs,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: although blonde hair later became a respectable marker of upper
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: class women. So it's interesting to me how blonde hair
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: has been cy cyclical since the very beginning. You're either
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: upper class and rich, or you're a prostitute, or maybe
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: you're out of fashion, but then you're in fashion again
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: and then you're a prostitute. Yes, some people actually think
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: that there was a Roman law at one point that
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: decreed that prostitutes had to wear blonde wigs, and so
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: some wonder whether or not that's where the whole idea
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: of blonde's quote unquote having more fun came from. Although
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's taking a little bit of creative license
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: with history. Well, because it also had something to do
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: with slavery. Light hair became fashionable after Greek culture reached
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Italy and the Roman legionnaires began bringing back fair haired
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: slaves from gaul with you know, those those frenchy people. Um,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: wealthier people sprinkled gold dust on their hair, as did
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the ancient Phoenicians, and to color gray hair, Romans used
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: a mixture of ashes, boiled walnut shells and earthworms. I
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: wonder what would happen. You know how YouTube has all
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of those those vloggers that will do the you know,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: like this is how you do your hair. I think
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: that we should do a show taking finding those one
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: d plus different recipes for dyeing bleaching hair from ancient
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Rome and make them and put them, maybe not on
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: our hair, maybe on the mannequin hair, yeah, mannequin hair barbies,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and see if it works. Because I think that ashes,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: boiled walnut shells and earthworms would be pretty easy to
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: come by. Caroline, I'll let you crush the earthworms. We
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: could call it ancient Roman salon hair. I'll think of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: a better name, okay. Um, blonde and medieval Europe couldn't
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: get a break. Really. The Roman Catholic Church condemned women
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: in this time period who bleached their hair, and up
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: until the late fourteenth century, many Europeans regarded blonde hair
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: as provocative and a symbol of female seductive move see
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: here where you go back again from the oh your
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: prostitute if you have blonde hair, No, you're a fashionable
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: upper class woman. No you are a witch. No you
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: are too seductive. Meanwhile, though in China and Japan, dark
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: hair was highly exalted. Um, in seventeenth century England, dark
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: hair became more desirable than blonde hair for women. And
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: this trend start in the early seventeenth century when French
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: artists were painting in classical styles and if you look
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: at a lot of those paintings, they depict darker haired
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: women rather than blonds, and women who bleached your hair
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: or use blonde wigs were Here we go again for
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: the flip. Now seen as low class us or unfashionable.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Can you win as a blonde you can win for
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: about a hundred years. That sounds one hundred years at
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: a time. I think, I think we're in a pretty
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: neutral blonde hair period. It's pretty acceptable to have blonde hair,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: as we will discuss indeed, um. But as far as
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: coloring your hair and the way that women did it.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: We move forward to the early twentieth century when we
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: start getting a lot more technology and granted it was.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It tended to be a little painful at times, the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: way that they used chemicals and heating and all that stuff.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventeen, the double process technique to create
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: blonde hair hair was developed, and this is where people
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: who color their hair will be familiar with it. The
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: natural color is stripped and then the new color is applied.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And then in the nineteen twenties, a small French company, Murray,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: created a formula that enabled color it to penetrate the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: hairshaft rather than just coating the outside. So we're getting
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: more of these technological hair development and in the nineteen fifties,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: women are really able to take hair coloring for better
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: or for worse into their own hands, with home hair
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: color kits to become more popular. Claial, for instance, develop
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: new products that helped change these attitudes. And it's interesting
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: that in the earliest ad campaigns for clar A they
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: really emphasize the value of blonde hair for women. For instance,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: in some of their nineteen fifties campaigns, UH they had
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: taglines such as is it true blonds have more fun?
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: If I only have one life to live, let me
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: live it as a blonde And as you know, the
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: new blonde woman is probably pushing a vacuum cleaner, finding
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: lots of fulfillment and our new hair color. Well yeah,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, all these ads served to try to make
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: coloring your hair a more acceptable, socially acceptable practice, because
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: how are companies like Claire All gonna make any money
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: if women and men still perceive coloring your hair to
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: be sort of a taboo topic. And it's interesting considering
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: that Dicey Street of blonde hair that they really did
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: use the value in attractiveness of being a blonde to
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: sell that. But this also is coinciding in the nineteen
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: fifties with the popularity, for instance, of Marilyn Monroe and
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Jane Mansfield, these blonde bombshells who are setting screens on
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: fire all around the country and the world really um
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and moving on in the nineteen seventies, more women are
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: becoming more open about using hair color. They start getting
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: highlights like I did and I was in tenth grade,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and an increasing number of men start doing it as well.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: So might remember the old school Grecian formula, and now
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: there's just for men. Yeah, got yeah, it's just for men,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: although still more taboo for men to admit to coloring
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: their hair. Yeah, because guys can become silver foxes stately,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you know, whereas women just become old old gray heads. Well,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: speaking of old gray heads, about fift of the people
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: who use hair color ince today do so to conceal
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: gray hairs associated with aging. I'm not there yet. My
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: melana site activity is still strong, all right. Yeah, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: so I color my hair just because of vanity. Turns
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: out also that baby boomers are more likely to dye
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: their hair than any previous generation. So clearly those advertisements
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties from Claral and Loreal did wonders
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: for making it socially acceptable. And speaking of the nineteen fifties,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: we have had hair color habits rise each decade. So
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, about four to six percent of
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: American women admitted to doing it. I guess that's just
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: admitted to doing it. We don't know it self reporting
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: he knows, Okay. In the nineteen seventies, that number jumped
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to more than forty percent, and moving up to two thousand,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: four of American women had color heard their hair at
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: least once, and as of two thousand, hair coloring products
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: have become a one billion dollar per year industry, and uh,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you know, men contribute a lot to this as well.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: In two thousand two, for instance, sales of men home
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: hair coloring products reached almost one million dollars, and about
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: one in every twelve American men was coloring his hair,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: most of them thirty to fifty years old, either single
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: or divorced. And of course we have the rise of
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: teens like myself coloring their hair. About thirty of US
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: teens started using hair color by the twenty one century.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: But getting back to the whole blonde thing, because now
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: we have with this hair color technology, it's so easy
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: for us to choose whatever hair color we want and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: just go with it. And when it comes so to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: um the popularity of blonde hair in the US in particular,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: we got to talk for just a second about Ms
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Norma Jean All. Marilyn Monroe was, as many people probably know,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: not a natural born blonde. Yeah. In as the story goes,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: she went into the Salonda have her hair done for
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a modeling shoot, and the tent technician straightened what she
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: called Marylyn's brown and kinky hair, and the strong solution
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: lightened her hair, making it a reddish blonde, and so
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you'll see in some of those early Maryland modeling shots
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: that her hair actually has a nice reddish tint to it.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people who say a lot
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of lore that says, you know, she didn't want to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: do it. They made her do it, but she came
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: back and wanted to become a blonde, and over the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: next four to five months, that same technician lightened her
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: hair to her trademark Golden Honey blonde. Another random tidbit
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: about a bottle blonde I was not aware of, and
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: this is coming from Joanna Pittman's book on Blonde. Princess
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Diana reportedly spent thirty six hundred pounds per year to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: stay blonde. Is she brunette? Was she? I think she
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: had had darker hair. But the woman that we can
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: probably thank for the popularity of redheads right now. I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: don't know if she was your inspiration, Caroline, but I
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: know that Christina Hendrix, star of Mad Men, had really
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: ignited a red hair craze. But she was originally a blonde.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: She was she started coloring her hair at the age
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: of ten. And you know why, listeners, because she was
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of Anne of green Gables. As if
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: we needed another reason to love Christina Hendrix, she dyed
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: her hair because of Anna green Gables. Now, I'll take
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: pictures of Christina Hendrix to my colorist and she's like,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you realize your hair is not that light. If you
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: want to become the carrot top Christina Hendrix color, you've
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: got to like completely strip. And I'm like, oh my god,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that's so much upkeep. And then i just see dollar
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: signs everywhere, and I'm like, you know what, let's just
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: let's just color on top of my hair. And this
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is why I argue that wigs should be more socially acceptable. Sure,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: then you wouldn't even know how to worry about it.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But now let's get into more of the sociology of hair.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Why hair color it makes such a difference, and these
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: stereotypes and perceptions that we have about the color of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: people's hair, especially of women's hair. Yeah. Jodie Manning of
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Western Connecticut State University in September put forth the idea
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: that our culture, American culture, puts focus on the individual,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: emphasizing that appearance is a public display of one's values
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: and beliefs, and that includes your hair. So what women
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: do to their hair, how they color it sends a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: message out to the universe, and researchers began studying what
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: that message might be in the nineteen seventies, which coincidentally
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: was when we really saw that big up to uh
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: in women coloring their hair at home. But yeah, researchers
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: first began investigating our perceptions of hair color on women,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and the initial findings suggested that people found brown hair
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: the most appealing, and that's among men and women alike,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: followed by blonde than red, than artificial blonde. And in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the study that Jodie Manning did in two thousand eleven,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: she showed students pictures to judge of women with different
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: colors of hair and also different links like a brunette
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: with long hair versus brunette with short hair, et cetera.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And she found similarly that brunettes with long hair were
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: considered to be higher maintenance than brunette's with shorter hair,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: who were perceived to be smarter. So short brunette hair
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: smarter than long brunette hair, okay, yeah, And then red
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: heads with short hair were judged to be heavier than
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: redheads with long hair, So I guess after I come
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: home from the colorist, I am on happy looking, but
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: going on. Blonds with long hair are perceived to be
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: also higher maintenance, but more attractive than blonds with short hair,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, they also asked about femininity and African
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: American women with black hair. Both those with natural curly
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: hair and those with straightened hair were perceived as the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: most feminine, followed by blonds, who are perceived as less intelligent. Yeah,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the whole stereotyping of blondes as incompetent, the whole dumb
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: blonde meme um, is something that's really persistent in a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: lot of studies on hair color and perceptions um. For instance,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Jodie Manning in her study sites a two thousand six
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: study called Hair color Stereotyping and CEO Selection in the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: United Kingdom, and those researchers found that blondes were under
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: represented in corporate leadership, possibly due to stereotyping of blondes
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: as incompetent. And that is something that affects women not
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: so surprisingly, even more so than men in the workplace
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of just seeing a blond woman in the workplace and
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: assuming just right off the bad she's not going to
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: be great at her job. Well, just as they're underrepresented
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: in the boardroom, they are overrepresented in magazines. And Manning
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: also cited a study that examined hair color of models
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: in Ladies, Home Journal, Vogue, and Playboy from the nineteen
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: fifties all the way to nine nine and came to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the conclusion because blondes were so overrepresented that society's beauty
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: standards didn't actually represent the population. Are you surprised, Christin Conga? Yeah?
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, though it puts, it still
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: puts blondes as this kind of feminine ideal, and that
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: heateronormative construct of blonds being more sexually desirable is driven
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: home again and again and again, as demonstrated by this
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: series of articles from the past three years, starting with
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: blonds out at clubs. So let's say you're a guy
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: who is into women and you go out to the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: club and a woman approaches you. If she's blonde, brunette,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: or redhead, does the hair color make a difference. Well,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: according to Veran Swammy's study published in December and the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, oh yes it does. Yeah, they
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: looked at women who went to clubs with their hair
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: dyed blonde, brown, or red, and the blonde was approached
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the most often. The second part of the study, though,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: had men looking at pictures of the same woman with
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: different hair colors, and in this case they said that
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the brunette was rated as more physically attractive, intelligent, approachable, competent,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and arrogant, whereas the blonde was rated as needier, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: yet the blonde was the most approached, which is kind
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: of an interesting twist. Also, though, men rated redheads as
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the most promiscuous. Oh dear. Now moving on, though, blonde
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: hair could literally pay off in the service industry. This
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: is coming from in August twelve study published in the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Journal of socio Economics looking at how a woman's hair
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: color might influence customers tipping behavior in restaurants, and essentially,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: they had a model weight on tables and switch out
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: her hair color via wigs, and waitresses wearing blonde wigs
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: received more tips, but only from mail and I'm assuming
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: heterosexual patrons. Waitress's hair color had no effect on women's
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: tipping behavior. Yeah. Women also were not influenced by blonde
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: fundraisers the same way that men were or blonde hitchhikers
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that I just love how all of these studies say
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the exact same thing, but they're just putting blondes in
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: different scenarios all over the world. So in a December
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: two thous nine study and perceptual and motor skills in France,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: women with blonde hair on the side of the road
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: sticking their thumb up were picked up way more often
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: women with black or brown hair when the drivers were men.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Women wearing blonde wigs in France managed to raise more
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: money for the French telethon banded women in brown or
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: dark colored wigs, but surprised just from men, just just
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: from the men. But you know, hair color discrimination actually
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: works both ways. We've talked about what men prefer, but
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: what about what women think? Uh. In a study in
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: December twelve, blonde women were more frequently approached by men
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: in a nightclub. So this is some of the same
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: people that were involved in the other nightclub study. So
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: blonde women were approached more followed by brunette, black than
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: redheads when men with wigs approached women asking for a dance,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: though women said yes most often to men with black
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: hair than brown, than blonde, than redhead people looked wrong
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: with you. Come on, Yeah, there's a lot of redhead
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: discrimination that we'll talk about in a second. But okay,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So the theory because this and this ties in with
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: our previous nightclub study that we mentioned. But the theory
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: is that men said that blonde hair looked the neediest,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: So perhaps they had the greatest confidence approaching a blonde woman,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and you know, the red head being perceived as the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: LEAs shy and most promiscuous. Maybe they think they thought
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that they didn't have a chance and that more contemporary
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: research also drives with a nineteen study which found that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: men prefer blonde women whereas women prefer dark haired men.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: But the thing about a lot of this research too
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: is that it focuses so much on you know, essentially
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: ask you the question, do gentlemen prefer blonds? Over and
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: over and over again and tip to hitchhikers out there
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and buy a blonde wig um, but also maybe don't
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: hitchhike dangerous over But I could not find very much
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: at all focusing on women's preferences to in. I mean,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: there's kind of a general assumption that we just want
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: darker hair. And also, of course, no research whatsoever testing
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: these same kinds of things among gay populations. So because
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I was curious to see whether or not different colors
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: of hair or valued like based on sexual orientation, maybe
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: that could be a variable. Who knows. But this kind
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of hard hitting research of interchanging wigs and such at
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the diner has not caught up to the LGBT population. Um.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: But digging even more into the blonde thing, especially this
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: idea that blonde women were approached more often because they
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: appeared needier, I feel ties directly into the whole blondes
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: are less intelligent than brunette women, the whole dumb blonde
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: meme and Caroline. I was astounded to find that this
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: goes back, way, way way beyond Marilyn Monroe to Paris
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: sent there's this famous French courtesan, Rosalie Duth, who is
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: so popular in her day that she essentially spawns the
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: dumb blonde meme when a playwright takes a shine to
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: her and features her character and a one act play
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and sort of satirizes this habit that Rosalie had of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: taking very long pauses in conversation, and I kind of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: think of her as like the blonde Kim Kardashian of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: her day, because she was super famous in Paris at
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the time for rubbing elbows with the royals. Obviously she
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: was a courtesan, and uh was just kind of famous
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: for being famous and for being dumb because the play
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: took off and now she's referred to as history's original
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: dumb blonde. Wow, what a legacy, I know. And I
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: guess you could say, though, in the same way that
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Marilyn Monrose character and gentlemen prefer blondes, is intentional with
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: her uh, let's say, lack of intelligence because she rides
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: her beauty to the arms of wealthy men, which I'm
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: not going to advocate for, but you could say, you know,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: maybe she's I don't know, playing to her strengths or
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: something in a in a why am I arguing for this,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Well. She is included on Grant McCracken's
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: breakdown of the six categories of blondes. This is from
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Big Hair, A Journey into the Transformation of Self. He says,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: we've got a couple of different types of blondes. Marilyn
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Monroe is up first, along with May West, as a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: bombshell blonde We've got the sunny blonde whose Doris Day
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and Goldie Hawn, Candice Bergen's brassy blonde, Sharon Stone's dangerous blonde,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: cz Guest Society blond, and Marlene Dietrick and Grace Kelly's
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: cool blonde. So what kind of blonde do you want
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: to be? Just just choose your choice. Um, I did
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: want to make. The one note about gentlemen prefer blondes
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: is that before it was a film starring Marilyn Monroe,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: it started out as a novel that was published in
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: by Harper's writer and screenwriter Anita Loose, and it was
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: this huge bestseller and it was all about this blonde
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: obviously protagonists whom Loose wanted to represent the nation's lowest
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: possible mentality. So yeah, that that horrible dumb blonde meme
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: just running through through history. It's really unfortunate, though I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like it's because it's obviously like
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's directed at men, but overwhelmingly it's directed at women,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and it usually is horribly sexist. And I'm friends with
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: plenty of smart blonde people. Yes, I'm aware of some
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: as well. Yes, But on a more serious note, though,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: to kind of close things off on this Hair Color
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Perceptions podcast, we want to talk about redhead discrimination because
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: while blonds are perceived a lot of times unfortunately as
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: more incompetent and brunettes were just kind of like, well
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: whatever and maybe too smart for their own good. Uh,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that's speaking in stereotype, not saying that's actually possible. Um,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: redheads get the shortest end of the stick. Yeah. I
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: had no idea before reading stuff for this episode that
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: there were actual, physical, violent attacks against redheads. I seriously
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: thought it was just like a joke coming from a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: South Park episode. No idea that there was actual violence.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And a lot of it is in the UK. It
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: seems to be a very British phenomenon, and the head
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: of Kids Scape, which is a UK bullying prevention initiatives,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: says that there's no logic to it. It's ingrained in
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: some part of our folklore. She says, yeah, and that
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: was coming from a Telegraph article from the past year
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: or two, for porting on an incident when a couple
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of redheads were beaten up apparently just because they're redheads. Yeah.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Dr Lisa Wade said that this could be related to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the long standing antagonism between Britain and Ireland, that the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: discrimination against Irish people, who are typically the percentage of
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: redheads is higher. That this discrimination then crossed the Atlantic
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: with early Americans, so that it's just like you know
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: ingrained in everything. Yeah. And Robert Bartlett, who's a medieval
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: history expert who was interviewed for that Telegraph article, UM
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: says that the discrimination against redhead actually dates back to
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, where the gods Set, who was associated with earthquakes,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: thunderstorms and eclipses, was depicted with pale skin and reddish hair.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And um, there's also some redhead discrimination in ancient Rome
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: when the gaels who were captured by Caesar were forced
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: to dye their hair red and learned German in order
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: to signify lass rank. And in the fifteenth century, we
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: can't leave out which witchcraft redheads were accused of being
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: which isn't burned at the steak. Oh no, so we're
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: obviously evil. I say weak is I really want to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: be one of you? And let's not forget though, something
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: that could be perceived as a benefit. Kristen a University
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: at Hamburg study found the redheads have more active sex
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: lives than brunettes and blonds. So redheads get the last
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: laugh or the last orgasm. There you go. Perhaps perhaps
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the redhead discrimination, though, does break my heart. I was
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: telling Caroline before we started recording this podcast that I
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: have a couple of young redhead nephews, and even at
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: ten years old, they're aware that being a redhead is
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: not cool. I think it is cool. And then I
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: responded to Kristen by saying, one of my first loves
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: was a ginger, so I have a very soft spot
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: for redheaded boys. Yeah. So I mean we need, maybe
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: should advocate for isn't there a hugged ginger day? Although
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: you know what I bet? I bet gingers don't want
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to be pandered too. They don't want your pity, Kristen. Yeah,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: they get called out for their their hair colors so often. Um,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: but let's go though, wrap things up to our question
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that we posed in the podcast title, do blonds have
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: more fun? Caroline? Certainly get more stereotypes, it certainly have
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: better luck hitch shiking. Yeah, I would say that. No,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think blonds do have more fun because they're
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: having to battle usually negative stereotypes about their intelligence. So no, no,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say the answer is no. Well, I mean,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I guess it depends on your definition, Like if if
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you want, I mean, look at all these studies and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: my papers that I'm jostling about men paying more attention
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: to blonds. So if that's your definition a more fun
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: maybe you should bleach your hair. But is it problematic
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: though that they're reason why, at least according to those studies,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that they're being approached more often is because they're perceived
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: as needier. Yes, but right, you know, to each his own. Yeah,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And also where are the studies on on burnette perceptions?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I guess it's just like you're everybody. You're all over
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the world, everybody's got your hair. You're just You're just
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: another person. They're not just another person to me. Thank you,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Well blondes out there, we especially want to
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: hear from you or people who are perhaps bottle blondes.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Did going blonde change your life in any way? I
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: don't know? What do you? What do you think are
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the hair color stereotypes real redheads out there? Have you
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: been unfairly discriminated against? Let us know all of your
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: hair color related thoughts, mom stuff at Discovery Dot com
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is where you can send your letters, and you can
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: also message us on Facebook and tweet us at mom
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Stuff podcast. And now back to our letters. Well, Kristen,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I have a letter here from MICHAELA about our kids
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: at the Workplace episode. She says, I found it rather
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: ironic to see your most recent podcast title because my
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: husband just dropped my five year old off in my
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: office for the afternoon while I work. I am fortunate
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: enough to work for a flexible company that allows pretty
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: much whatever reasonable concession necessary when dealing with parenting. Today,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: my son is here just to enjoy stamping envelopes and
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: playing with my stapler. You watch out, MICHAELA. I I
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: remember in third grade my my classmates stapling her finger,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: and she was not five, she was. However, you old
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: you are in third grade anyway, MICHAELA says. My husband
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and I are so looking forward to this fall when
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: our daycare bill will be cut in half thanks to
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: that five year old of mine entering the school force.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: We've been through four or five different daycares of various
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: quality before finding our current which is the most expensive
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: but definitely the best option we've found for our five
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: year old and two year old. Our daycare bill is
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: higher than our monthly mortgage payment. I would definitely pay
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of this for the convenience of on site childcare.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: It would have been amazing after having my kids and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: spending countless hours pumping bottles for the baby's I was missing.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: So thanks MICHAELA and watch out for the Stapler. Well.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I've got an email here from Zara and she wanted
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: to another perspective on that podcast on childcare at work
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and about how Quebec handles things. She writes, since nine seven,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Quebec has had a subsidized daycare system that is seven
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: dollars per day per child. Not everyone can get a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: spot in subsidized daycare, which has led to some employers
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: building a daycare on the premises or taking an arrangement
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: with existing daycares to give priorities to their employers over
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the general population. People on social Security also get priority
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, so they can go back to
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the workforce. If you don't get a place in subsidized daycare,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: you can get a refund at tax time if you
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: go to a non subsidized daycare. Non subsidized daycare is
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: usually charge about twenty to thirty dollars per day, though
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: some are more expensive. There's no sliding scale depending on
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: your child's age. It's the same fee for everybody. A
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: study published in two thousand twelve showed that subsidized daycare
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is actually profitable for the government. Around seventy thousand women
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: went back to the workforce since the subsidized daycare program started,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: for a proportion of seventy of women aged fifteen to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: sixty four now working, up from sixty three in nine.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: As a result, for each one hundred dollars that the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: provincial government invested in the program, they received one hundred
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and four dollars and the government received forty three dollars.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: So apparently subsized daycare can be good not only for
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: businesses bottom lines, but also for Canadian provinces or Quebec specifically.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: But yeah, no, that's a that's interesting to see how
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: it can profit the government as well. So thanks for
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: that insight to Zara and everyone else who is written
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: into mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: find us on Facebook of course, follow us on Twitter
• 38:05
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• 38:08
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• 38:11
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• 38:14
  Speaker 1: on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash stuff mom never
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: told you. We're coming at you three times a week
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: on YouTube, so check it out there, and if you're
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: not already busy enough, head over to our website, it's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com for more on this and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Doesn't how stuff Works dot com