Two Blondes Walk Into a Bar

I was 21 years old before I ever made a mistake. True story.

I had started a new job waiting tables at a local fine dining establishment and after a week of shadowing a veteran server, had finally been let loose (sans training wheels) on my first lunch shift. I greeted an elderly couple sitting at a two top near the window and after a few moments of chit chat, took their order. Whistling with confidence, I punched their order into the restaurant computer system that sent our tickets back to the kitchen. Easy peasy. However, a millisecond after pressing "send" I realized that I had ordered the appetizer, rather than the entree, of one of our menu items that was offered in two sizes. I hustled back to the kitchen and shouted at the sou chef,

"Yo, table 7 is the entree, not the app. Sorry,"

And then I did what I always did in these situations. Familiar with the trope that was generally delivered by whomever had witnessed my fuck up, I opened my mouth to beat them to the punch with "you gotta take it easy on the blonde girl on her first day." But before I could speak even the first word of this oft repeated phrase, the sou chef replied,

"No problem, don't worry about it" and went on about his day.

And that was it. Not, "Did ya have blonde moment?" Or " Peroxide got to the brain, huh?" Just, "no problem, don't worry about it".

As I wandered back to the dining room bewildered, it slowly dawned on me that it had been just about a month since I had dyed my hair jet black for the first time in my entire life. I interviewed for the position with black hair, met the entire staff with black hair, had begun my training with black hair, and was standing there in that moment with black hair. The slip of the finger that had resulted in the wrong order was the first mistake I had ever made because prior to that moment every mistake I had ever made had been made by a blonde. And because those mistakes had been made by a blonde, they were not chalked up to the fact that I was learning in real time like everyone else and was therefore subject to error.

They had been made because I was stupid.

I spent the next 3 years with my tresses in varying shades of brown and in the process collected an enormous amount of comparative data. As a brunette, I was not only treated as an intellectual equal by my peers (fancy that!) I found that making mistakes was apparently an allowable offence that struck no one as particularly interesting or unusual. I began to realize just how frequently the little jokes about my intellect had been snuck in to even the most innocuous conversations and always to the great amusement of whomever had delivered the zinger.

And there's more! I was also subject to a LOT fewer cat calls, inappropriate advances and what I like to call "the three b's". Whenever I met a man as a blonde, I would inevitably fall victim to the compulsory eyeball bounce - blonde, boobs, butt. You could set your watch by that 'ish, and I'm not kidding. It was as if every man I had ever met suffered from some kinda weird sexaul tourettes. They saw the blonde hair, couldn't help but picture EVERY SINGLE STEREOTYPE perpetuated by popular media, and followed by scanning the rest of the goods within seconds. As a brunette, the triplet was not executed nearly as frequently. Eye contact from interested parties lingered, as if what were special and important about me could be discerned from there rather than from my measurements. It was fascinating, but also heartbreaking. Like dirty water from a sponge, I wrung years of misguided self imagery from my own head.

Blondes are dumb.

Blondes are slutty.

Blondes have more fun (cause of the slutty, obvs).

Gentlemen "prefer blondes".

As if "gentlemen" is the word one uses for a man who chooses a mate based on her bra size rather than the contents of her soul.

You see, we live in a world that has hundreds of cultural scripts running in the background at all times. These scripts are used to maintain the status quo and we are constantly being bombarded by them on a subconscious level via media. Television, radio, movies, magazines, all visual advertising, etc. No one ever came right out and declared, "you guys, ok, so from now on, blondes are just DUMB ok? Now we know it, and it's just true and that's that." No, they did it in the way Marilyn Monroe was typecast or the way Phoebe was the vapid ditzy one on Friends, or the way the intelligent brunette who uses tide pods is juxtaposed against the silly blonde coed who uses that "other" brand. Ya get what I'm saying here folks? It's because REPRESENTATION MATTERS, and it matters on all levels. It matters how Black people, Trans people, Queer People, Indigenous people, Differently abled people, Neurodiverse people, are represented; and it's not just because it skews the interpretation of those identities by society at large, but because it skews how the human beings, the God made human beings, living inside those identities interpret themselves.

But ya'll know that, so why make this post?

Because on August 2nd, 2020, God almighty blessed me with a sweet little blue eyed baby girl that has hair the color of a copper penny. And the bullshit has already started.

Oh she's gonna be a feisty one.

Watch out for her, she'll have a temper.

No one better cross her, I bet they'll regret it!

So my 10 month old baby is vindictive, emotionally unstable, and prone to outbursts of anger. Cool. Glad ya'll could discern that based solely on her hair color. That seems reasonable.

And I know what some of you are thinking. "It's just a joke, come on!"

So was Black face. Yet it was a pervasive, racist trope that for years infected the minds of young Blacks in America, working on their self esteem and self identity utilizing a sociological phenomenon called "the looking glass self". Developed by Charles Horton Cooley in 1902, the looking glass self phenomenon explains that human beings derive their sense of self, in part, from information gathered through social interactions (including media). Think of it this way - say you leave the house feeling super fly. As you're chugging along, minding your own buisness, you notice people seem to be reacting to you in an unusual way. Some people look away quickly and avoid eye contact with you, some people seem to look at you then immediately whisper to their companion, and at one point, a mother chides her toddler who straight up points at you and starts laughing. All this social feedback may lead you to believe there is something about you that stands out in a negative way, which may in turn lead to an alarming feeling of self consciousness, which may in turn lead to you high tailing it back to your house with a quickness to find a mirror and see just what in the world everyone seems to be reacting too. Once you get back home you may find that your fly is down and you aren't wearing underpants. You may find that there's a big 'ol booger on your face. The point is, until you figure out what the world is going on, you are likely to feel some type of way about yourself based on the feedback. Now if you're lucky, when you get home and can't find what's wrong, you may have a friend or loved one that sits you down and says, "Baby, it's not you. It's got nothing to do with you. You are perfect just the way that you are, and if others can't take the heat, well then I suggest they get outta the kitchen. You don't have to change a thing, you just keep being you".

But what if you don't? What if you're left believing there is something fundamentally wrong with you based on the social feedback? What if no one ever told you that you weren't stupid just because of your haircolor?

Well then, I supposed you'd find yourself at 40 years old telling the internet to not say that dumb shit to your daughter because it took you YEARS to erase the imagery from your own damn head.

Make your jokes. Make your silly little comments. Make your judgments based on race, gender, ability, whatever. I'm not saying it makes you an asshole, but if I have to sit my kid down at any point and correct that garbage, I'm coming for you.

And being a blonde will not have a thing to do with it.