Blond derision

“If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a blond.” — 1960s Clairol commercial

Did you hear the one about how you make a blond laugh on Monday? Tell her a joke on Friday.

Two decades after Suzanne Somers’s classic ditzy blond of Three’s Company fame left the airwaves, “dumb blond” jokes continue to proliferate. Don’t believe me? Hang around a high school or surf the web.

As illustrated in The Blonde Mystique, airing Sunday at 7 p.m. (ET/PT) on W Network, stereotypes persist about the archetypal blond — a head-turner as envied as she is ridiculed, lusted after and, in Hollywood, put on a pedestal.

She can be perceived as hot, seductive, slutty, evil, a bimbo, fun-loving, fertile or glamorous.

It has been 50 years since Marilyn Monroe, having had her light brown hair dyed to become a blond bombshell, sizzled alongside Jane Russell as a diamond-loving showgirl in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Indeed, the musical-comedy classic’s title reflects an ongoing reality in an industry that has long exploited blonds.

Alfred Hitchcock famously loved casting actresses of a certain hair colour as elegant or icy blonds — gorgeous Grace Kelly in Rear Window, for instance, and Eva-Marie Saint in North by Northwest.

Platinum-tressed screen goddesses ruled in Hollywood’s heyday with the likes of Mae West, Jean Harlow and Jayne Mansfield before Monroe moved into the limelight — most memorably as blond bimbo Sugar Kane in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot.

Stereotypes have since been perpetuated in movies like Victor, Victoria through Lesley Anne Warren’s scene-stealing portrayal of a dumb blond moll; L.A. Confidential, featuring Kim Basinger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of a femme fatale; and Chicago, with Renee Zellweger’s portrayal of Roxie Hart, the homicidal blond who exploits her ditzy charms.

Hollywood’s blond ambition continues unabated with a profusion of hot blonds — Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Simpson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Pamela Anderson, etc. Many have parlayed their tresses into lucrative franchises like Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, starring Witherspoon as a pink-loving, not-so-ditzy legal eagle.

Then there are the golden-haired comediennes who got the last laugh. Goldie Hawn evolved from a bubbly TV sketch-show bimbo to an A-list actress-turned-producer; Lisa Kudrow made a fortune playing ditzy Phoebe on Friends.

Why does hair colour matter so much, and why should we care? It seems like a trivial topic but The Blonde Mystique — narrated and directed by Sally Aitken — playfully reveals there’s more to being blond than meets the eye.

Her one-hour documentary, co-written with James Dunnison, is a fascinating, fact-studded and inventively crafted exploration of whether there is such a thing as a “blond mystique.”

Framed by colourful comic-strip imagery, it’s an engaging blend of humour, factoids — most amusingly in History of the Blonde, a faux retro recap — and interviews on why we perceive blondness, a double-edged sword, a certain way.

There’s no question colouring your hair can affect how others perceive you.

Notes Hugh Hefner, editor-in-chief of Playboy: “I think the fact blonds want to be blond by choice is probably an indication of how they want to have more fun.”

There’s a downside to becoming a blond for the obvious “perks” because of false appearance-based preconceptions, however.

“When they sign up to be pretty they also sign up to be dumb,” says Natalie Ilyan, author of Blonde Like Me.

Brunettes Angela Case and Karen Holness, and blond Aubrey Arnason — a Charlie’s Angels-type trio of intrepid sleuths — gamely prove such preconceptions through on-the-street interviews and in field tests at bars and on the side of a highway.

“I’m not blond. They’re not stopping,” laments Angela during a sequence where each poses as a damsel-in-distress with a broken-down car to determine how hair colour affects how many offers of help they’ll get.

Amazingly, only two cars stop to help Angela and Karen. Blond Aubrey attracts seven offers.

“Maybe because I’m a blond I don’t understand it,” quips Aubrey, questioning why blonds get so much attention.

For the ultimate test, Angela and Karen change their hair colour to become blonds; and Aubrey becomes a brunette.

“People want to explain things more thoroughly to me,” observes Karen, while Aubrey is now taken more seriously.

Remarkably, average guesses of their ages drop to 26 for newly blond Karen, 33, and to 24 for Angela, 28.

Within this colourful collage of vintage hair care ads, pop culture icons, archival film footage and opinion, we’re reminded that Cleopatra, a brunette, was often portrayed as a blond until Elizabeth Taylor played her; that fairy tale heroines Goldilocks, Rapunzel and Cinderella were fair-haired; and that a blond covergirl can sell twice as many magazines as a brunette.

It’s way more than Aitken imagined when she embarked on her quest into the heart of blondness.

“Once you scratch the surface you realize we’re all subscribing to this mythology and behaviour deeply embedded in our evolution,” she says. “You start off thinking it’s just about hair colour, but there’s so much more meaning.”

Oh — and one more thing.

“Everyone’s got a good blond joke.”

written by merid