We’ve all heard every blonde joke in the book and then some. Growing up with golden hair, I’ve received an equal amount of compliments as jokes about it. Usually males are the people who deliver the latter and usually said delivery is moments after meeting them. After listening to something I’ve probably heard thrice before, I’ll give a polite half-laugh to show I can be a good sport and excuse myself from the conversation, wondering why my hair color is almost always seen as a direct reflection of my potential.

I’ve had this scenario happen to me many times. When I was younger, the blonde joke didn’t really bother me; in middle school and even high school, it was just another tasteless thing a boy did, like using the word “gay” to inappropriately describe something, or disrespect a teacher in class. However, as I’ve matured I’ve expected the male peers of my class to progress in taste, so it came as a complete disappointment to me to have this scenario reoccur many times in college. Don’t get me wrong, not every guy I meet does this. I guestimate that only a fifth of the introductions I’ve had in my life with guys the same age as me have happened like my aforementioned example. But what I don’t understand is how society today now accepts a hair color to be a hint as to what a person’s IQ is (and why it almost always only applies to a girl’s hair color). Why is being blonde automatically given a negative connotation?

There was the fleeting craze of gingers and their lack of a soul, as started by a meme, but it has been left in the past as another has-been, overused fad that gets old after the third telling. For some reason, though, the blonde joke still lives on.

I haven’t really felt much annoyance towards it until recently when people started asking me about my major and what I want to do with it. After stating that I’m an English major, whoever I’m speaking to will usually reply “oh that’s great, so you want to be a teacher, right?” and I’ll tell them that no, I actually plan to go to law school. Five times out of 10, their comment will be something about the movie “Legally Blonde.”

While she’s a great protagonist, I would rather not have Elle Woods be the basis for the future working-woman I aspire to be. In addition, whenever hearing of how I am a student in the honors college at Clemson, a shocked look may appear on someone listening before they can disguise it. Neither of these two happenings would have bothered me if it happened to other girls in similar positions as myself, but that’s just not the case. I’ve noticed that my darker-haired peers somehow do not warrant the same surprised reaction; they are taken more seriously than I am by the same new acquaintance, right off the bat.

Besides being a thing guys my age like to laugh about, my blondness is also noticed by others. In academia, the blonde joke seems to be a steadfast persistence in someone’s consciousness when he/she addresses me and, try as I might, I cannot shake the feeling that professors do not take me as seriously as they would if I was born brunette or redheaded.

Just a few days ago, I answered a question that my Philosophy teacher asked and, instead of saying I was correct, he gave me a patronizing look, and almost looked content (even smug, if that’s not going too far) in correcting me. As a rebuttal, I read the answer that I had given, right out of the book, and even directed him to the page number. Though he consented that he was wrong, I still do not understand what went through his mind to almost automatically think that whatever answer I was about to give would be wrong.

While I refuse to alter how I am physically, in order to have another person change their view of me, it still never disappoints me to hear someone refer to their “blonde moment of the day,” because in doing so she unknowingly perpetuates a problem I face daily. Honestly, blonde jokes can be funny, and I’m not saying that you need to censor your humor so that I don’t have to deal with being stereotyped. My real problem lies with society itself and why it allows hair appearance, of all things, to be in direct correlation with intelligence when studies such as: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/06/02/science-shatters-the-blondes-are-dumb-stereotype/ this one, and: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2645779/Blondes-not-dumb-Scientists-disprove-negative-stereotype-proving-hair-colour-completely-unrelated-traits.html this one show that there is no link between the two. Perhaps blondes deserve a bit more credit than they’re given. And, as Elle Woods puts it:

https://www.pinterest.com/courtnysauer/legally-blo...GIFs source: http://sewcutestyle.blogspot.com/2015/05/college-series-finals-week-according-to.html here:

http://www.playbuzz.com/cutie210/which-legally-blonde-character-are-you Headline picture here