As a natural blonde, I always heard lots of blonde jokes since day one and noone ever presumed me as being smart (which is why I was in the gifted program but never got labelled a smart girl). One day, tired of the blonde jokes, I dyed my hair red. Amazingly enough, the blonde jokes stopped but I don't think I was treated much different. A month or so later, I decided to go back to blonde. Red hair dye + natural blonde hair though is a really bad mix so it took over 5 hours of chemical processing to "get the red out". Throwing in the towel after 5 hours, I was platinum blonde. All that chemical processing had a really bad effect--brain damage. I did some of the stupidest things (like running into walls, poles, you name it) over the next few days. This is where I believe "dumb blonde jokes" originate.

In the end, I had my hair dyed brunette for a bit. What was shocking was that was the first time in my life that I was ever taken seriously with any consistency and many friends and acquaintances realized that gosh, I was actually smart!

I'm back to blonde again but the way I counteract blonde jokes now is by knowing all of them (from hearing them 1000 times over) and saying the punchline for myself with a "har har" afterwards...

Stephanie


In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson