Blond

Naturally blond hair.

Blond (or blonde, see below) is a hair color found in certain mammals characterized by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. From degrees of almost light brown, to pale, almost white yellow, the various hues of blondness are found in a little less than 1.8% of the world's human population.

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. True blonds have the thinnest strands of hair while the strands of red hair are the thickest.

Etymology, spelling, and grammar

The word blond 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 faeger. The French (and thus also the English) word blond has two possible origins. Some linguists say it comes from Middle Latin Blundus, meaning yellow, others say it comes 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 dying their hair. The linguists who support the Latin origins however say that Middle Latin blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flavus, also meaning yellow. The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was until recently still felt as French, hence blonde for females and blond for males. 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.)

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 - nearly white; found naturally almost exclusively in children, but occurring rarely among some adults
• Sandy blond - similar to sand in color
• Ash blond - usually quite fair, with some ashen (grey) tones
• Dirty blond or dishwater blond - dark blond; note that the latter term may be considered offensive
• Golden blond or honey blond - lighter, with a gold cast
• Bottle blond - artificially dyed blond hair
• Strawberry blond - reddish blond
• Pool blond - with green undertones, from habitual use of a chlorinated pool
• Hazy blond or zebra blond - streaked blond and brunette

Origins

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

Lighter hair colors occur naturally in humans of all ethnicities, as rare mutations, but at such low rates that it is hardly noticeable in most populations, or is only found in children. In certain European populations, however, the occurrence of blond hair is more frequent, and often remains throughout adulthood, leading to misinterpretation that blondness is a European trait. Based on recent genetic information, it is probable that humans with blond hair became distinctly numerous in Europe about 11,000 to 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Before then, Europeans mostly had black hair and dark 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. 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

A child with light blond hair.

Blond hair is common in 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 from anything between a light brown to dark brown before or during their teenage years.

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

Blonde hair is most common in Europe, with the Nordic countries being where most of the population has blonde hair. In other parts of Europe they tend to be a very large minority. Apart from Europe, blond hair is present in various regions in the world, although they tend to appear less frequently.

Generally, blond hair in Europeans is associated with paler eye color (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 blond-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 sometimes the hair turns to a darker brown color as they age.

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. 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.

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

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.

Changeling of legend depicted as a blonde.

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.

Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Two notable sex icons of twentieth-century America who helped popularize the blond image were Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe, who was pale blond as a child though her hair darkened to a dark reddish blond, and Harlow, a natural ash blonde, both frequently portrayed stereotypical dumb blondes in their films.

Blonde jokes are a class of joke based on a stereotype of blonde women (or rarely, blond men) being unintelligent, sexually promiscuous, or both (though, in reality, blondes have the same ability in intellect as red-heads and brunettes). However, the jokes have been embedded into cultures to the point where blondes are frequently looked down upon and/or judged as being a "dumb blonde".

In the early twentieth century, blond hair was sometimes 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.

There is an all-female subculture called Aristasia where the two "sexes", both female, are blonde and brunette.

In the 21th century it's no longer just women, who bleach their hair. In certain countries it often occurs, that darkhaired men have (part of) their head bleached. A well known example is soccerplayer David Beckham, who since early 2007 is as good as white-haired, allthough he's playing in Spain. In other European countries there are negroe soccerplayers in the highest division, who are (still) dark skinned, but wearing bleached, as good as white, hair.

See also

• Miss Martindale