to ask what is so special about blond hair

[pocpocpoc]

My husband is white and English, I am not white and foreign. I have dark hair and my genetics pretty much guarantee that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are almost 100% likely to have dark hair too.

DH's brother is married to a white English woman and their daughter is the same age as DD. She is taller than DD and has blond hair. Both are nice young ladies, reasonably attractive, but in different ways.

Something that bothered me for a long time, but I could only put a finger on recently, is how MIL (and others in the family) talk about DD's cousin's blond hair and height, almost as a counter-point to anything DD does that is of mention. For instance: "Well done for getting 12 A* GCSEs (saving a child from fire, winning Olympics, getting a Nobel prize), so proud of you being so academic/brave/athletic/hard-working and also of your cousin, who is a tall blond". I find it strange that DD is typically praised for something she has done and worked hard for, while her cousin is praised only for her looks.

Where it is getting ridiculous is that I noticed DH's sister doing the same thing, this time with our boys. Not long ago she said to me "aren't you lucky that your son has such a good friend to play with, with his beautiful head of blond hair" - the sentence really didn't make sense to me. Thinking back I realised that the blond hair has been brought up every time we met in the last couple of years.

In my culture we don't attribute any special value to blond hair. It is very rare, usually means that the blond person is of another ethnicity. Some people get their hair bleached, but it does not confer any superiority or praise. So help me to understand: what is so special about blond hair? AIBU to be bothered? AIBU to detect a hint of racism?

I am blonde (although my hair has got slightly darker over the years) and have one blonde child. My husband and other children are white but with brown hair.
My blonde child has definitely had more attention and been complimented more. He is seen as ‘the cute one’ and gets lots of comments about his blonde hair.
It’s definitely ‘a thing’ in my experience and it does frustrate me as their mum.

I am a naturally light blonde adult and my hair was white blonde as a child. I absolutely HATED it. I was painfully shy and it brought a lot of very much unwanted attention to me so YANBU. I would have much rather been recognized for an academic or sporting achievement or even just being a nice person or literally anything other than the way I looked. It must be extremely annoying for your daughter and probably your niece too.

@eachtigertires

I am a naturally light blonde adult and my hair was white blonde as a child. I absolutely HATED it. I was painfully shy and it brought a lot of very much unwanted attention to me so YANBU. I would have much rather been recognized for an academic or sporting achievement or even just being a nice person or literally anything other than the way I looked. It must be extremely annoying for your daughter and probably your niece too.

Yes, I can see how it is horrible for both of them.

Yes! It's a strange thing. I am dark haired and was always highly academic whereas my cousin is blonde and not at all academic.

I did really well at school, got a good career and have never messed up. Got married and have just worked hard. I'm apparently a really nice, kind person and I'm not money-orientated at all. My cousin had a disaster at school, has failed at every career path she's attempted (bless her) and has had relationship disasters of the highest levels you could imagine. She comes across as a huge bitch (she's not really) and is very money-orientated..

But - all of our lives certain older members of our family would always put her on a pedestal as she was blonde. We found it really strange and a bit creepy and couldn't understand it at all. I was constantly put down and even got encouraged to dye my hair. WTAF?!

I’m white in a historically white country. I can remember clearly as a child the girls with long blonde hair getting special treatment all the time above the other white kids with brown hair, and god forbid the horrible treatment you got if you had red hair. I’m not saying it’s at all right, I’m just saying I think YABU to try and sneak the racism card in with this issue. Height is also something that has been traditionally valued. Guessing it goes back to primitive days when it gave you an advantage jumping over stuff or whatever? The ‘aren’t you a beautiful tall girl/boy’ thing has also been around forever. I’m a short person with brown hair btw.

I think it's a leftover from christianity. Angels are blonde, because blonde is the colour of gold and the sun and halos. Blonde catches the light and light comes from above, like heaven. In northern Europe lots of children are born blonde and then it fades - in that sense it can be a symbol of youth and innocence, both of which fade, and theres a religious undertone to that too, in the sense that blondeness becomes a kind of artistic shorthand for spiritual purity.

I'm not at all religious by the way, and I dont believe for a second that people consciously think all of this when they see blonde hair - but the idea inevitably is incorporated into imagery over the centuries and becomes kind of like something an entire culture is collectively but subconsciously aware of.

I’m naturally blonde with blue eyes but more of an ash blonde than the eye-catching white blonde, although I am still blonde/have never coloured my hair in my late 40s, which I’m grateful for. However, my skin is a very pale almost blue white that refuses to tan, so I never felt attractive in the summer in my teens/20s. The girls that seemed to attract the attention were white blonde with darker skin, which I think is more Scandinavian colouring - or with bleached dark hair.

I have a relative who is a tall blonde and it’s essentially the way she has made it through life. She failed her way through school but was always a teacher favourite. Was given a reception role by a family friend in leaving school. Couldn’t manage that so they got someone else to do reception duties and she was told not to worry she could sit there and read a magazine. This led to meeting a successful client of the business, high earner which enabled her to be a stay at home mum for years as that’s what she wanted. When kids became teens and independent she became bored and left her DH for a really high earner who put her as head of an arm of his company to give her something to do. Obviously she does nothing and everyone else runs it and her claim to fame still is ‘the nice tall blonde’. She is nice. I’m not envious, never have been as have never wanted her life at any point but being blonde and tall has always gotten her through life.

My son has white blond hair and blue eyes. People have commented on his hair since he was tiny. It was strange how people just adored him because of his hair. Especially older women. He’s almost a teenager and it’s still very blond but not as white anymore.

I think it’s prized because it signifies youth. Lots of blonde children but very rare in adults. We all on some unconscious level highly worship the cult of youth apparently. Personally I am a lover of dark hair. I was blonde as a child and I am now a mousy grey colour so i have the inevitable blonde highlights .

[quote pocpocpoc]@2LostSoulsSwimmingInAFishBowl

As an aside, it must be tiresome for your niece to have her hair colour keep being mentioned over and over. Does anyone have anything positive to say about her actual achievements?

Not sure how she feels about it, but it is quite undermining for DD to see that her hard work and achievements are compared as equal in value to something others are born with.
There is also an implied message that DD is not as attractive - again, wrong on so many levels. Both are pretty in the young person type of way. Neither is a stand-out 'cover of a magazine' /model beauty. Just your average teenagers, probably with an equal number of admirers.[/quote]
I disagree. I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

I think the way it comes across is that your DD has so much more about her, whereas all MIL can summon up about DN is that she's got "nice" hair.

I haven't read the full thread but I'd certainly start commenting in response like "yes having blond hair really does help pay the mortgage when you're older" or "yes, e-on often give blue eyed customers a discount so doesn't that work out well?"

But then I can be a bit of a sarky bitch when niggled

When I was a child some friends of ours went to China (1980s) they travelled somewhere rural and apparently people came up in the street and pulled out stands of their hair because they were fascinated because they had never seen it before. Apparently they got quite upset

I think blonde hair has historical 'mythical' and cultural connotations of 'purity' - which is bollocks, obviously (Boris Johnson being proof that being blonde is no measure of any sort of purity). It could also be one of those Disney-esque creations that's been assimilated into our consciousness as modern myth - many of the princesses in Disney films being blonde (even though Snow 'White' had dark hair, her name suggested that same purity).

I do think it's rooted in racism on the whole, though. Just as anything 'black' or 'dark' (black humour, dark mood, Africa being labelled as the 'dark continent' by British imperialism etc) is perceived as negative and anything 'white' (a 'white lie' being an acceptable form of deceit, something/someone being 'whiter-than-white' considered blameless or of high moral value, for example) is held to be 'good'.

The global industry in hair lightening products and the billions of pounds women spend to lessen or eliminate altogether dark hair (both on our heads and bodies) speaks volumes about how darker hair is considered as something to be managed or curtailed, whilst fairer hair just doesn't require such arduous attention.

I have always had very light long blonde hair, I have found it a blessing and a curse. On the one hand people always comment on it, like it is the defining factor of who I am. When I was younger I'd get described as blonde before anything else. It also means I get attention, whether I want it or not and I've always felt I've needed to prove myself more at work, school etc. I hate blonde jokes, to me assuming someone is stupid because of hair colour is completely offensive. However, I would never change it

I am learning so much today. I had no idea on quite how much fascination blonde hair holds in this culture.

Where I come from, fair/lighter skin is regarded as beautiful, but only in combination with very dark hair - the darker the better.

We also regard it as an absolute taboo to comment on children's looks.

You relatives sound weird, thoughtless and unkind but I don’t think it’s racist to find some blond hair striking. Natural and very fair hair is relatively unusual so it’s not surprising that some people really like it.

I've just been reading though the rest of your comments and it makes me heart so happy to read the comments on how you love your hair and there's lots of hair positivity!

DS is mixed race. My partner is Black, I am White. DS's hair is the most beautiful hair I have ever seen. I know I am completely biased because I adore him, but he's got the most gorgeous tight 4c curls, and a mix of his dad's dark colouring and my ginger colouring. The majority of his hair is dark but in the sunlight, you see the red tinge it has to it.

I've spent so long researching how to care for mixed afro hair to make sure that he grows up to love his hair and be proud of it, in the way you speak of yours ❤️

My body hair is blonde, hardly visible on my arms or legs and my eyebrows seem to have got lighter over the years. In lightening my hair on my head (naturally sort of hazelnut colour) it seems to suit the rest of my colouring more than my natural colour, these days, and also means any greys are less visible. I intend to go from blonde to silver when the greys are plentiful.

This is such an interesting thread. I had honestly never given this any thought. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that blond hair being thought superior was even a thing!

I'm white, but most of my family have very dark hair. I don't think the topic of hair colour ever really arose. DD is mixed race and has very dark hair too. It's also thick, shiny and curly, so she gets lots of comments.

I get that some people prefer blond hair and blue eyes. Personally, I find dark skin and dark eyes much more attractive. I just assumed that it was personal preference tbh. But clearly it is actually a thing. How odd! I can only assume that it must be associated with racism and western ideas of beauty etc, but I can't pretend to understand it at all. As far as I'm concerned, blond hair can be very pretty but there is nothing special about it at all!

I'm sorry that your dd has to deal with the constant comments about her cousin, OP. That can't be good for her self esteem at all. It sounds pretty shit for the cousin as well!

Middle son had almost white hair, blue eyes. Parents grandparents all dark. He was fussed over as a child especially when we went to Portugal the women in the marketplace marvelled at it. Now a dad himself the youngest has the same hair. But brown eyes.

No idea where this hair came from genetically

I am learning so much today. I had no idea on quite how much fascination blonde hair holds in this culture.

Me neither, and I grew up here! It's bizarre!

I have naturally fair but mousy hair. In my early twenties I started to get it lightened. I definitely feel like I started to receive more attention and compliments since then.

@Wheatfromchaff

You seem to be determined to make this about race. It's not about race. The vast majority of white people do not have blond hair. Your mixed race children are not being discriminated against in the beauty pageant comments by your MIL because they are mixed race. She just has a thing about blond hair. It's weird, but not uncommon and I have no answer why blond hair is considered to be so attractive.

Putting myself in your shoes I would be delighted if my MIL commented on my dcs achievements rather than their appearance. I think it is very very sad for your DN that the only thing people notice about her is her looks. That's not great for all manner of reasons.

Bang on!

There is a preference for blondes - I have noticed it throughout my life.

I don’t personally find blondes particularly striking, and often find that “beautiful blondes” are considered so because of their hair colour rather than because they are actually beautiful facially.

I understand your frustration at your MIL’s weird obsession with your nieces blonde hair. My grandmother, a red head, had a red head and a blond child. The blond child went on to have blonde children and the red head had dark haired children. She comments often, always has done, that she feels “more related” to the blonde grandchildren