Brown haired white kids never in photos

Just looked at my kids school website. Just the front page... Filipino girl hair tied back, below that white, light brown hair boy blue eyes, below that red haired boy, green eyes, below that black girl with braids, below that white, dark brown hair boy with brown eyes. That's just scrolling down the front page!

Same. I remember being cast as a troll and a skeleton 🙄 but never anything nice or girly. Never an angel, or fairy.

There is definitely a bias and always has been.

YABU, all dark-haired kids in ours! It's random. Honestly, staff haven't got time. I think you're overthinking it tbh. If anything they're so careful now to be inclusive of all cultures. It isn't the 90s.

I have a fair haired daughter and a dark haired daughter. The amount of fuss blonde kids get for their hair is silly. They subsequently sometimes struggle when they get older and it turns brown. I know 3 girls who really hated it when their hair darkened at puberty and begged for bleach. My fair daughter got loads of fuss and was told she was beautiful by complete strangers when she was small. No one has ever said that about my dark haired daughter and she is stunning.

The Catholic schools I know (in London) have a high proportion of Irish, Southern Europe, South American, and African families due to the geopolitical history of Catholicism. So a lot of brown haired kids. There was only one blond child in our daughter's class.

Taking photos of children for the prospectus to avoid brown hair would have been really hard.

At our local school it is the kids whose parents are PTA or governors. It’s the same with the kids chosen each year to play lead roles in school shows. Always the same kiddies

Thick, dark hair for a male is a desired aesthetic though isn't it? That's where the phrase "tall, dark and handsome" comes from. It's a cliche but it's true that this is widely considered to be attractive. I know you're talking about children not adults, but I think it also applies to boys.

All pale skinned with brown or blonde hair. Roughly 50/50. No obvious ginger hair at all.

I've just looked at my closest two schools - both have far more dark haired white children than blonde haired.

I suspect this is a personal bias, or an issue with your specific school.

I just checked out my old school and there is a mix of hair colours in all pictures. What there aren't, are photos of non-white children, but the school is in an area where there are few non-white people living, so I think it is probably more a representation of the school as it actually is rather than a deliberate oversight.

As a (very!) blonde person I have spent a lot of my life having the piss taken out of me for my hair. Not so much now as an adult, although called a ‘dumb blonde’ a lot in my twenties, bullied for it as a teen.
It’s nothing compared to what red heads get though I know

In our school it's the nepo babies that are featured in every PR exercise. My stunningly beautiful blonde, blue eyed dc has never, ever been on any of these photos or videos. Nepo baby in dc's class on the other hand is featured all the time. Harumph.

Every picture on the website of my DS’s high school is a white kit with brown hair 😂

Well said!

I've never heard anyone question a blonde person if they have a soul.

There is a photogenic bias which for the subject may just have the luck of the genetic draw, e.g good facial features, bone structure, eye colour, swishy hair, athletic build etc.

Take a look at mainstream movies, TV etc at the casting for the heroes & sometimes villains, you will find a disproportionate number of people with blue or green eyes with skin & hair colour secondary/discretionary.

Recently mass media & commercials have featured a disproportionate number of people of mixed race &/or ethic variation. This works because consumers like to buy that lifestyle or that representation of society. Should this no longer ‘sell’ the ideas, goods &/or services, then the format will adapt to what consumers prefer & that may be something entirely new. Nothing is fixed.

I'm blonde - never noticed any difference in how I was treated vs friends with brown hair.

My dd12 has brown hair and brown eyes and never noticed her being treated differently to blonde kids either.

This is your issue, not "an issue".

I've just checked my child's school prospectus and loads of brown haired white kids🤷‍♀️.
It looks like they picked the kids that were dressed in full school logo uniform and were nicely presented 🤣

👏

Well thank the lord they're actually starting to represent mine.

Instead of the ones that represent myself.

Any images would need parental permission to be used. I always used to deny permission when mine were at school ( blond and brown haired) perhaps the schools just work with whatever images they are allowed to use.

Just checked the prospectuses for my DC's schools out of curiosity.

Definitely not a thing at either of their schools.

What was surprising was that they both only featured thin kids, even though I know DD's school got the drama students to pose for the last set of photos and as a group they are a diverse-sized bunch.

As someone with black kids in a very white school, we have the opposite problem. Racism is swept under the rug by the teachers and staff but they then want to push our children on all the school promotional material to show diversity. What matters more than the photos is how your children are treated at school - do they discriminate against darker haired/skinned children? Do they respond adequately to complaints or pretend that racist comments / bullying never happened? Do they automatically believe the white blonde child over your darker haired child without question?

That said, I don't doubt you that the person selecting the prospectus photographs may have had a blonde bias that day. But if your children are otherwise happy and treated well at the school, it doesn't seem to me that this is the hill to die on.

It's something I enjoy and work hard at, but it does always amaze me the way (some) parents will find any reason why their child has been unfairly penalised by not being cast in a lead role, rather than the usual reasons:

• They are painfully shy and will clam up on stage
• They can't remember what they had for breakfast, let alone lines
• They/the parents have a track record of not turning up on time or at all for various things
• Another child was better than them.

And it's definitely not because of their hair colour.