When you are little the adults in your life told you that you can be anything you want and achieve any dream you want to. You absolutely believe them and start dreaming of a life where you are the head surgeon in the hospital, a successful lawyer, a credible teacher, or even running your own restaurant. You walk into your school years believing all your dreams will come true and no one can get in your way. As you grow up, you find you are correct. People aren’t the ones standing in your way. The thing that is in your way is how they see you. In your eyes, you are a determined, smart, beautiful girl with her whole life ahead of her. To them, all you are is a blonde.

It seems out of all the jokes in the world, blonde jokes are the ones that are simply always the funniest. They make people with blonde hair out to be without common sense or just plain stupid. To the jokesters and the people listening to these jokes, they are a simple past time. To be the blonde in the group listening, these jokes roll of your back the first couple times you hear them. But as you see all your friends laughing you start to question, “is this really how they see me?” Growing up being a blonde is seen as a joke. They assume you won’t understand their jokes, you aren’t as smart as everyone else, and people never fail to ask if that is your real hair color.

You start to see yourself differently. Suddenly the one feature you really love about yourself you start to question. You wonder if you will ever be able to prove people wrong. You wonder if you will ever be taken seriously. You wonder if when you are older you will be given opportunities based on your skill and merit or if it will be based solely off your physical appearance.

Entertainment has made it seem that when you are a blonde, you aren’t able to achieve much. Sure, Legally Blonde shows Elle Woods succeeding in law school. But in order to get into law school, her admissions tape was in a bikini and the council let her in to have diversity. Was that really a “win” for all the blondes out there? I think not. All the movie shows is how rare it is that a sorority girl was able to work her way through law school.

It wasn’t until one of my college professors brought a different view into my eyes about blondes in the media. Think about some of the most successful women in our world. Taylor Swift, Anne Hathaway, Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lawrence; the list goes on and on. What do all these women have in common? They all went blonde. In popular society, being blonde is seen as successful. Often times when a celebrity has reached a high point in their career, they go blonde. Society takes notice and has a new respect for them. What can we learn from this? Growing up blonde is a blessing. Blonde is beautiful. Blonde is strong. Blonde is you, and don’t ever change it.