I am a natural blonde. Not by choice, not from dying my hair, not anything other than that's what my DNA codes for. However, my whole life I have always been treated as if I'm of lesser intelligence because of my appearance and let me tell you, it's EXTREMELY frustrating. Growing up, I was always told not to judge someone based off of how they look, but yet everyone around me tends to make microaggressive remarks based off of how I look. Guess what? There's research to prove you wrong.
Based off of a study done at The Ohio State University, blonde women actually had an average IQ score within 3 points of brunettes. This statistic means that blondes are no dumber or smarter than their other haired color counterparts but yet still the concept exists that I am dumb because I am blonde.
Just yesterday, a 50 something year old woman was filling in for one of my co-workers. She asked me what I major in at school and when I replied "neuroscience/pre-med' her response absolutely floored me. This woman had half a century on this earth encountering all different kinds of people and you'd think she'd know something about judging people considering she was a minority as well, but instead she said "Oh, isn't that too hard for you?" My jaw dropped. For a second, I was absolutely speechless. This wasn't the typical "Wow I can't believe you did better on the exam than me" or the "I had no idea you were actually smart!" this actually hurt me. Since I refused to stoop to her level of rude, all I did was defend myself by giving her my GPA and how long this has been my major for. But you know what, I shouldn't have to do that.
Commonly, there has been complete biases made by the mainstream media. Phoebe of "Friends", Penny of "The Big Bang Theory", and Karen of "Mean Girls" were all depicted as stupid based off of their hair color. Even Marilyn Monroe in the 1950's was considered 'dumb' because of her hair color and good looks. There needs to be more empowering blonde women in the media such as Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde" where the protagonist works her a** off to get into Harvard Law School just to prove to her ex-boyfriend she's "smart enough" but then realizes that anyone that downplays her intelligence just based off of looks, isn't worth her time and that being a lawyer was her calling.
Since people appear to have a tendency towards believing all that they see or hear from the media, it's important that there are different perspectives presented. As my senior quote read, "Don't judge a book by it's hair color."
