In Which Tropes are rather hard on Blondes (pun removed due to poor taste)

I watched something the other day which drew my attention to a rather distressing trope. (I won’t tell you what it was in case it spoils it, but obviously it could’ve been practically anything except Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Archie, for which the only difference is a hair colour reversal). It’s something I’ve noticed before in all sorts of movies and books and Broadway shows and whatnot, but it struck me afresh over the weekend as being just a smidgin reprehensible.

The story, in its simplest form, goes like this: the audience is introduced to three people (either a trio of friends or a dude and two ladies who interact exclusively as rivals), a dude (whom we’ll call Dude), and blonde, and a brunette (hereinafter known as Blonde and Brunette, respectively). Both ladies dig Dude, and he dithers (sometimes for series after series) before choosing the Blonde. Later, he leaves Blonde for Brunette, whom he has always known, in his heart of hearts, is his True Love, and the two of them live happily ever after.

Taking the obvious issues in order, more or less, we begin with the Choice, which we might also view as being essential to the characterisation. A choice between a Blonde and a Brunette is always presented as Style versus Substance. Redheads are rare, since the hair colour is crucial, but if they’re around at all, it’s odds-on that they’ll be in some way “fiery”. Blondes are a bit silly or flighty, shallow, either mean or just stupid, and are generally held to be the “cheaper” choice. It’s easy to want a beautiful Blonde, but they’re either shrewish or just generally lacking in Worth, is the point here. Conversely, the bookish, funny (or more often “funny”) Brunette is sweet and patient and good and smart and very probably talks to puppies and kittens and what have you, but she’s not really that attractive, due to her serious lack of blondeness. She always likes the Dude’s pet, if he has one, or Interest if he has one of those instead. The Blonde, naturally, abominates these things, considering them smelly or silly or just generally annoying (depending on whether it’s a dog or white water rafting or weak puns).

Speaking (well, typing) as a flighty brunette who’s allergic to cats, I’ve always felt that there was some considerable undue pressure happening here. Clearly, though, it’s worse for blondes, and I’ve known several blondes dye their hair to escape this whole business, or else somehow tragically internalise the message, convince themselves that they really are somehow cheap, and that whatever Dude is in their life is just constantly waiting to abandon them for a smarter, secretly-prettier (lurking, traditionally, behind glasses, a ponytail, and in extreme cases, unattractive but easily fixed eyebrows) generally Higher Quality Brunette. That’s... that’s pretty bad, you guys. Plus, I’m pretty sure that this caused actual problems in my childhood: I was (and am, obviously) a brunette and my little sister was a blonde, when we were children, and people were always treating us as a smart one and a beautiful one (not my family, though, naturally, because of how they’re really pretty great), which I’m sure must’ve had weird impacts on our interactions and sibling rivalry and stuff. Plus, she’s grown up to have brown hair, so where does that leave her, trope-wise? Honestly, if I were a Blonde, I’d be pretty pissed about this sort of thing.

Next, we have the “choice”. That’s less problematic, but it’s still a bit weird. Have you ever really seen a situation where a guy had an actual “choice” between two girls, as if they were two canapés on a platter being handed out by obsequious waitstaff at some function or other? As if all he had to do was choose between the vol-au-vent and the little skewer? As if he was the only person who had any volition? I mean, this is a pretty common thing, what if this is being internalised by dudes and Dudes everywhere, and they come to actually think that way? What’s even going on there? Is it that the people who wrote this sort of thing originally had never ever been rejected by a lady whom they “chose”, so that it didn’t occur to them that it could happen? Or is it that they were rejected so consistently (especially, presumably, by ladies privy to their scripts-in-progress) that they needed to imagine the sort of world where two whole chicks at once might really dig them? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it happens, although I’ve never seen a real example. I mean, shear statistics says that there must sometimes be two people digging the same third person at exactly the same time. But even then, surely it’s weird to have a set-up like this. Those two people are going to be a “good” and “bad” choice pretty rarely, surely?

The way it’s set up is handy for the Dude, though, who never seems to have thought his choice through thoroughly in the first place. Also, mysteriously, unlike every other major choice made in such movies (where the difference between a Coke and a Strawberry Milkshke can be portrayed as being so telling as to make every snack fraught) his decision to go with the beautiful but vapid option does not apparently reflect on his character at all. He hasn’t chosen Blonde because of being a shallow jerk who just wants to get laid, it’s because of Feminine Wiles or something. When he inevitably breaks up with the Blonde for the Brunette, this always seems to work out too. Regarding which: as if. If the girls are set up as friends in the first place, then the Blonde always just has to lump it, with no right to be peeved for more than just a scene. If she’s lucky she’ll get an explanation along the lines of “it wasn’t like that”, but that’s usually it.

The Brunette is even more complicated here. First of all, despite being good and decent and funny/smart, she sees no apparent problem with hijacking her best friend’s boyfriend (and they’re never just sort-of-friends, either; if it’s not full-on cheerleader/nerd rivalry, then they’re bosom buddies who’re going to have to resolve their BFF situation before the end of the film, usually by means of the Blonde just “getting over it”, as if the Brunette was perfectly in the clear, morally, and the Blonde should stop kicking up such a fuss and learn to accept that she’s not really good enough). Secondly, and really this has always seemed stranger to me, Brunette has no problem with someone who, having had the free choice between her and someone else, didn’t pick her. Because she wasn’t the “beautiful” one, or whatever.

Really? Have you ever known a chick like that? One who wouldn’t then spend the rest of the story secretly angsting about what it was about her that made her so much less pretty? One who wouldn’t be in the least fazed by the fact that this allegedly perfect dude, given the choice between what’s set up as Cheap Tackiness and Real Quality, picks the former first? What sort of women are these? Do you reckon any of them have equally gullible and un-shakeable hot brothers, who might like to be chosen between? Because I would way rather be the Dude(tte) in this scenario than either of these strangely over-focussed women.

At this point it strikes me as being necessary to state again that I’m ranting about a fiction trope here. I’ve had many reasonably close male friends date blonde girls, and I would hate any of them to think that I thought them cheap or arrogant, or that I was pining for them, or any of those things. That would be really quite unthinkably frightful. (Especially since, whoa, the more I think about it, the more I realise that there must’ve been nigh on ten such couples with whom I’ve been friends. I can only imagine the sort of awkwardness which would be unleashed if everyone went about trying to find poorly-hidden meaning in my blog).

In fact, there’s really only one weirdness left to point out. In one particularly notable example, which featured Uma Thurman as Blonde, some reasonably attractive young man with a British accent as Dude, and Janeane Should-Seriously-Know-Better Garofalo as Brunette, one of the scenes toward the end has a weirdly telling bit of dialogue. Dude speaks to the chicks and says something like “You’re beautiful and dumb, and you’re brilliant and...” whereupon he trails of significantly. As if (leaving aside the fact that I’ve never noticed Janeane Garofalo being unattractive) saying that a girl is unattractive is somehow so much worse than saying that she’s dumb that even in the heat of his anger, no gentleman could ever do so. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be a long way from relishing feedback like that myself, but seriously? We should both, at the same time, admit to ourselves that we’re better off being unattractive and clever than vice versa, and also agree that it’s ok to slight a girl’s intelligence but never, ever, her looks? What the hell is that? How 1950s do we need to be? This isn’t just that movie, the same thing is implied in every “the brunette becomes beautiful so it’s ok to find her attractive really” scenes since well before The Breakfast Club to well after She’s All That. If attractiveness really isn’t important, why is it a Beauty in Beauty and the Beast rather than just Nice Girl and the Beast (alliteration is not the answer, I’m pretty sure it’s originally French, that story)? This trope wants to have it both ways: unattractive Brunettes are better than shallowly pretty Blondes, but only if they’re still pretty bangin’. You don’t cast Rachel Leigh Cook or Anne Hathaway if you’re really talking about Plain Janes. For all it’s distressing I-won’t-say-such-a-terrible-thing posturing, at least the Truth about Cats and Dogs didn’t add bonus points to the Quality Brunette to make her more appealing (as far as I remember? I’m beginning to worry about this too). That’s just cheating on what’s already a pretty dodgy basic message.