Reflection Letter

Instead of posting my entire reflection letter, I decided to only post my reflection on this assignment. Overall, I really enjoyed writing this paper and learning about cultural myths and stereotypes. I think that it is really important to understand who we are rather than who we think we should be or how society defines us because we are the ones who dictate how we live our life and the choices that we make. While parts of our identity such as gender, race, religion, etc. can serve to define us in some ways, it is up to us to decide how we want people to view us and how we want to be perceived. The issue of identity is something that fascinates me because identity is so multifaceted and how we define ourselves is constantly changing. Writing this paper helped me delve deeper into what it means to have an identity and what it means to be aligned with a certain group. I never realized that there could be so much research and information about blondes in society and the historical roots of blonde myths, but I enjoyed learning about the roots of the contemporary blonde identity. It is incredibly rewarding to produce a paper of this magnitude and although it sounds cheesy, I enjoyed my topic so much that writing it didn't really seem like an assignment. The sources that I found were very relatable and interesting to read and as nerdy as it sounds this is a topic that I may further explore. It's crazy how much one stereotype can be exploited and how relevant stereotypes are in the American society. While we are much more open than decades ago, it is still human nature to judge people by appearances and I think the conclusion that we all made in writing these papers is that generalizations don't apply to each individual of a certain group or population. Therefore, I ended my paper by saying that when it comes to the roots of what it really means to be blonde, it is not up to society to dictate, but rather it is up to each individual woman to decide.

Interview with Professor Meredith Banasiack

The last piece of research that I did for my paper was conducting an interview. I chose to interview one of my professors because like me, she is blonde but does not fit into the dumb blonde stereotype. She is a successful architect, professor, and researcher and I was interested to see how stereotyping affected her experience in any or all of these fields. Surprisingly, her answers aligned exactly with the views expressed in my paper and the interview was extremely valuable to finishing up my draft. One thing that I was interested to learn was that she believes that she is stereotyped every day. This is shocking to me because it seems that after establishing yourself in the beginning of any position people would stop judging you simply off of your looks. One of my favorite answers of hers was her response to blondes in the media. She recognized that there is a difference between being misperceived and intentionally aligning yourself with a particular stereotype for self-promotion. This distinction is what I had already written in my conclusion so I was excited to see that she agreed with me and had the same views on blonde stereotypes. She also recognized that today's cultural stereotypes associate blondes with sex and beauty which is exactly what I proved in my paper. For this reason, she feels that blondes in sales positions have an advantage because they can be more successful if people are attracted to them. However, she believes that in job positions which require a greater level of intelligence, it is disadvantageous to be blonde. As a teacher, she admitted that she does feel stereotyped and that people underestimate her abilities because she is a blonde female. She teaches Social Factors in Design which is largely based on psychology so she loves challenging this common misperception that students have of her. I feel the same way when it comes to being stereotyped based off of hair color because I love seeing how people react when they realize I am much more intelligent than I look.

Summer Blonde Clairol TV Commercial

After exploring more about the history behind blonde empowerment and women's desire to be blonde I found this hair dye ad from the 1960s. During this time, hair dye sales rose from $25 million to $200 million, with most women dying their hair lighter. I enjoyed this commercial because it associates being blonde with summer, or having fun. This is a common perception, that blondes have more fun so the marketeres are exploiting this stereotype. The music is very upbeat and it makes viewers want to be just like the blonde woman who is laying on the beach. I find it funny how she is laying in some shots because even though she's just having fun on the beach she's laying in a very suggestive position. This subliminally reinforces the sexual blonde stereotype without expressly objectifying the model which advertisers do in commericals today. Also, she is with two men who lift her up over their heads which suggests that as a blonde, you will easily win the hearts of men because you will be more physically appealing to them. Overall, this ad is letting women know that if they want to have fun all year long and look as fresh and beautiful as they do in summer they can do so in a few easy steps by dying their hair blonde. This message is still used in hair dye advertisements today although modern commercials are not as upbeat or entertaining.

Blonde Empowerment

This past week I discovered two extremely valuable sources in my research. They were both books that I checked out from the library which focused on the fascination with being blonde and the roots of the blonde myths. After reading through several chapters of each book I realized there is so much more to being blonde than simply being dumb or sexual. Being blonde can actually be incredibly empowering: just like Marilyn Monroe showed us in the 1950s. In one of the books, On Blondes, an entire chapter was devoted to Marilyn Monroe and I was captivated to learn how her entire persona was changed simply by dying her hair blonde. She did blonde better than almost anyone and made millions doing it. In Blonde Like Me, by Natalia Ilyin she explores her constant desire to have blonde hair and wonders why so many women continuously resort to peroxide and hair dye. These questions really turned my way of thinking about blonde stereotypes and I now see them as empowering rather than restricting. Jessica Simpson is the classic example of this. Her dumb blonde image on the TV show Newlyweds skyrocketed her appeal as well of the show's and whether or not she is actually as dumb as she appeared on TV is still a mystery. Either way, she has made millions in what she does and she was actually paid by Chicken of the Sea to endorse the tuna that she once questioned to be chicken. Basically, blonde women can take the myths and stereotypes surrounding them as oppressive or they can use them to manipulate others. The logic is as follows: Sex sells, blondes are sexy, therefore blonde sells.

The blonde stereotypes defined by Barbie

For my visual piece, I made an image in Photoshop which shows the effect of Barbie on development of the blonde stereotype. The Barbie image has enforced most people's conception of blondes as being fake, plastic, airheaded, and simply sexually objects. I took a picture of me and combined it with a picture of a Barbie to satirize society's desire for blondes to fit into the perfect "Barbie" image. The combination of these two images creates an almost eery, doll like, lifeless girl; esssentially what many actresses and Hollywood models now look like. I titled this image Barbie's Tricks to being your best blonde self and included six ridiculous things to remember for every blonde to really drive home the idea that Barbie is teaching girls, specifically blondes, inappropriate and absurd values.