Blond

For other uses, see Blond (disambiguation).

"Blonde" redirects here. For other uses, see Blonde (disambiguation).

Blond (or blonde, see below) is a hair color found in certain people characterized by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some sort of yellowish color, going from the very pale blond caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment, to reddish "strawberry" blond colors or golden brownish blond colors, the latter with more eumelanin.

Etymology, spelling, and grammar

The word blonde was first attested in English in 1481 and derives from Old French blont and meant "a colour midway between golden and light chestnut". It largely replaced the native term fair, from Old English fæger. The French (and thus also the English) word blond has two possible origins. Some linguists say it comes from Middle Latin blundus, meaning yellow, from Old Frankish *blund which would relate it to Old English blonden-feax meaning grey-haired, from blondan/blandan meaning to mix. Also, Old English beblonden meant dyed as ancient Germanic warriors were noted for dyeing their hair. However, other linguists who desire a Latin origin for the word say that Middle Latin blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flavus, also meaning yellow. Most authorities, especially French, attest the Frankish origin. The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was for some time considered French, hence blonde for females/noun and blond for males/adjective.

Writers of English will still distinguish between the masculine blond and the feminine blonde and, as such, it is one of the few adjectives in English with separate masculine and feminine forms. However, many writers use only one of the spellings without regard to gender, and without a clear majority usage one way or another. The word is also often used as a noun to refer to a woman with blond hair, but some speakers see this usage as sexist and reject it. (Another hair color word of French origin, brunet(te), also functions in the same way in orthodox English.)

A woman with platinum blonde hair.

The word is also occasionally used, with either spelling, to refer to objects that have a color reminiscent of fair hair. Examples include pale wood and lager beer.

Many sub-categories of blond hair have also been invented to describe someone with blond hair more accurately. Examples include the following:

• Platinum blond and towhead - Pale blond, nearly white; found naturally almost exclusively in children, but occurring rarely among some adults
• Ash blond - usually quite fair, with some ashen (grey) tones
• Sunny blond - Very bright, ranging from almost yellow to light yellow.
• Sandy blond - similar to sand in color
• Golden blond or honey blond - lighter, with a gold cast
• Strawberry blond - reddish blond
• Bottle blond or bleach blond - artificially dyed blond hair
• Hazy blond or zebra blond - streaked blond and brunette
• Dirty blond or dishwater blond - dark blond
• Golden brown - darkest shade of blond which sometimes looks light brown and other times dark blond.
• Pool blond - Blond tinted with green due to exposure to copper in swimming pools. There are many terms for this form of blond.

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Origins

Dark blonde hair on Natalie Clifford Barney at age ten, painted by Carolus-Duran (1837-1917)

Lighter hair colors occur naturally in Europeans, and as rare mutation in other ethnicities. In certain European populations, however, the occurrence of blond hair is very frequent, and often remains throughout adulthood. The hair color gene MC1R has at least seven variants in Europe and the continent has an unusually wide range of hair and eye shades. Based on recent genetic information carried out at three Japanese universities, the date of the genetic mutation that resulted in blond hair in Europe has been isolated to about 11,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Before then, Europeans mostly had darker hair and eyes, which is predominant in the rest of the world.

A long standing question has been why certain populations in Europe evolved to have such high incidences of blond hair (and wide varieties of eye color) so relatively recently and quickly in the human evolution timescale. If the changes had occurred by the usual processes of evolution (natural selection), they would have taken about 850,000 years. But modern humans, emigrating from Africa, reached Europe only 35,000-40,000 years ago. A number of theories have been proposed, as follows.

Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, under the aegis of University of St Andrews, published a study in March 2006 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that says blond hair evolved very quickly at the end of the last Ice Age by means of sexual selection. According to the study, the appearance of blond hair and blue eyes in some northern European women made them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair was produced higher in the Cro-Magnon descended population of the European region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago following the last glacial period when the most of it was covered by steppe-tundra. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses and finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men. This hypothesis argues that women with blond hair posed an alternative that helped them mate and thus increased the number of blonds.

According to the authors of The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994), blond hair became predominant in Europe in about 3000 BC, in the area now known as Lithuania, among the recently arrived Proto-Indo-European settlers though the trait spread quickly through sexual selection into Scandinavia when that area was settled because men found women with blond hair attractive.

Relation to age and distribution on body

Blond hair is common in Caucasian infants and children, so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light-colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair, although such natal hair usually falls out quickly. Blond hair tends to turn darker with age, and many children born blond turn light, medium, or dark brunette before or during their teenage years.

Young man with blond hair.

True blonds often have platinum blond hair as children, pale skin with little pigment, pale eye-lashes and grey eyes. If their hair darkens with age it tends to turn a darker ash-blond, not the rich brown of a brunette. Eyelashes and eyebrows remain fair. (Eyelash color is probably the best marker for prediction of adult hair color.)

Those who turn brunette as teens usually have more pigment to begin with; a slightly golden skin tone that tans a little more easily than the paler skin of true blonds, often (but not always) a richer, more golden-blond hair color, dark eye-lashes and bright blue, green, hazel or brown eyes.

The body hair of blonds is also blond, although terminal hair elsewhere on the body may be darker than hair on the head, and even brown. Facial hair is often reddish. Vellus, on the other hand, may be very light or even transparent. Hair that grows from a mole or from a birthmark may be dark.

Distribution

Pacific Islander boy

Blonde hair is at the highest frequency in countries of Northern Europe. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Iceland have the highest frequencies in the world. At least 50% of the native populations of all these countries are blonde. In Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands, the rate generally ranges from 45-70%. In some parts of Sweden, Iceland, Finland, the rate is even as high as 80% or more. Generally, blond hair in Europeans is associated with paler eye color (gray, blue, green and light brown) and pale (sometimes freckled) skin tone. Strong sunlight also lightens hair of any pigmentation, to varying degrees, and causes many blond people to freckle, especially during childhood. Aboriginal Australians, especially in the west-central parts of the continent, also have a fairly high instance of natural bright yellow blond-to-brown hair, with as many as 90-100% of children having blond hair in some areas. The trait among Indigenous Australians is primarily associated with children and women and the hair turns more often to a darker brown color, rather than black, as they age. Blondness is also found in some other parts of the South Pacific such as the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Again there are higher incidences in children but here many adults too carry this indigenous blond mutation.

Some Guanches populations, particularly the now extinct aboriginal population of Tenerife, one of the Canary islands of the African Atlantic coast, were said by 14th century Spanish explorers to exhibit blond hair and blue eyes. Blondness was also reported among South American Indians. In Central and South Asia the same types of features were exhibited by certain groups. It is still found in higher frequency among some populations of Central Asia, particularly among the Kalash of Pakistan and the Nuristani people of Afghanistan. Blonds are found in North Africa in Morocco, Tunisia and northern Algeria, and in South West Asia as well. The Iranians and their related groups have a higher frequency of blonds in the Middle East (there's a significant incidence of blondness among the people of northern Iran, especially in Azerbaijan, and also to some degree in Gilan and Golestan near the Turkmenistan border), which includes the Kalash of Pakistan and Nuristani of Afghanistan.

In 2002 there was a worldwide hoax that scientists predicted blonds were eventually going to become extinct. The hoax cited WHO as the source of the scientific study. See recessive alleles for more information on the genetic basis of blond hair.

Culturally-related ideas

An 1893 depiction of the Norse goddess Sif. In surviving sources, Sif is particularly noted for her golden hair.

A painting by John Bauer of two trolls with a human child they have raised.

Although not all of the gods exhibited the trait, blond hair was seen as a sign of divinity in ancient Greece. This perspective was likely developed due to the fact that blondes were seen as exotic and otherworldly, when compared to the primarily dark-haired, dark-eyed population of Greece. In Norse mythology, both the goddess Sif, wife of Thor, and the major goddess Freyja are described as blonde.

In northern Europe fairy lore, fairies value blond hair in humans. Blond babies are more likely to be stolen and replaced with changelings, and young blond women are more likely to be lured away to the land of the fairies.

Blond hair was commonly ascribed to the heroes and heroines of European fairy tales. This may occur in the text, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's La Belle aux cheveux d'or or The Beauty with Golden Hair, or in illustrations depicting the scenes. Only Snow White, because of her mother's wish for a child "as red as blood, as white as snow, as black as ebony," has dark hair. This tendency appears also in more formal literature; in Milton's "Paradise Lost" the noble and innocent Adam and Eve have "golden tresses", while near the end of J. R. R. Tolkien's monumental Lord of the Rings, the especially favourable year following the War of the Ring was signified in the Shire by an exceptional number of blond-haired children.

It is often stereotyped that men find blonde women more attractive than women with other hair colors. Alfred Hitchcock preferred to cast blonde women for major roles in his films as he believed that the audience would suspect them the least, hence the term "Hitchcock blonde".

In the media and in culture, blonde women are often portrayed as "promiscuous." Because of this, many believe that blondes "have more fun." Blonde jokes are a class of derogatory jokes based on a "dumb blonde" stereotype of blonde women (or blonde men) being unintelligent, sexually promiscuous, or both.

Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Two notable bleached sex icons of twentieth-century America, who started causing an unrealistic, more or less scandalous and otherwise negative image of real blond hair, were Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe, who was pale blond as a child though her hair darkened to brown and Harlow, a natural ash blonde, both frequently portrayed stereotypical dumb blondes in their films.

In the early-mid twentieth century, blond hair was associated with a Nordic race, promoted by Nordicists such as Madison Grant and Alfred Rosenberg, while the "Aryan race" was conceived as a larger group, including the non-blond "Alpine race," During World War II, blond hair was one of the traits used by Nazis to select Slavic children for Germanization.

See also

• Disappearing blonde gene
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

External links

• "United Blondes" (A dating site exclusively dedicated to blonde women)