The Harmful Narrative of the Blonde Beauty

I AM DYEING MY HAIR! Let's talk about why I've felt weird about it.

I am going blonder, which is something I have always wanted to do, but I can't help but feel that the idea initially came from the influence of harmful beauty standards at a young age. I'm kinda making dyeing my hair into this huge thing, but as superficial as hair seems to be, it's something I've put a lot of thought into. I always went back to: do I really want to dye my hair or do I just want to fit into that blonde hair, blue eyes stereotype? We're getting SUPER ANALYTICAL today.

Grappling with the decision of whether to finally take the plunge and alter my outward appearance has reminded me of a piece that I wrote in college. At the time, it was written for a course in which we worked with Tectonic Theatre Project (the theatre company that wrote The Laramie Project) to devise a play that felt poignant to us. I became interested in the concept of perception of self vs. the way we are perceived. When we were encouraged to bring in personal narratives as fodder for our work, I wrote this. I wanted to share part of it here because I feel that it has only grown in poignancy, not only for my hair decision, but also for what is happening in the world at large.

---

An Education

One time in kindergarten, we were drawing self-portraits, and being the pale person that I am, I was looking for the yellow crayon to color in my skin (because we never had the box with the actual crayon light enough, so yellow it was). The vast majority of my class was white, and so, the yellow crayons had been monopolized. I reached for the brown crayon.

I thought that if I shaded lightly with the brown crayon, I could make my drawing look like my skin tone. Flash forward to my teacher receiving these self-portraits. She calls a meeting with my parents. She holds up my rendering, and asks my parents if they see a problem with it. My parents say no, however, she retorts with, “Does Nicolette see herself as Black?” My parents were like, “Ummm she probably just didn’t have a yellow crayon, but why would you ask that?” She did not know what to say. Now that I'm an adult, I know what Mrs. Moss was truly getting at, and it irks me to this day. I had liked her at the time though, because she had bright blonde hair and wore a black choker everyday, so she looked like a living Barbie. I don’t know whether that’s a commentary about the naivety of kids or about what girls are taught to prioritize.

---

So what is this story about and why am I sharing it? I think it touches on two concepts.

First, I want to address how questionable it was that she called a parent-teacher meeting over my drawing. She probably thought she was spotting a problem in my perception of myself. Yes, it is certainly problematic if white people consider themselves to be black, but I was six years old and I don't really think that's where she was coming from. This event came off as less of an opportunity to teach me the ills of appropriating black culture and more of an opportunity for a white teacher to further instill a clear separation between races. She saw my drawing of a deeper skin tone to be a problem.

Secondly, let's address one of the last statements I made in the story, the one about how much I liked Mrs. Moss. I liked Mrs. Moss because she was conventionally pretty. This may be oversimplifying the situation, but I was only six, so I assumed she was perfect because of the way she looked. (Meanwhile, she called that conference AND she went on to shame me and my family for my not being able to read in kindergarten.) I mentioned liking Mrs. Moss because she looked like Barbie, which gets into the importance of representation in media, toys (particularly dolls), etc. Part of why I loved Barbie was because she was blonde like I was. Barbie was considered pretty, and I wanted to be considered pretty. I watched a lot of Friends when I was younger, and I was CONVINCED that I would grow up to look just like Jennifer Aniston. And yet again, her character, Rachel, was known for her hair. What color was it? Blonde.

SO this all brings me to the hair topic. When I was really young, I had super light blonde hair. I really, really liked this about myself. I was that typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl; I easily fit into that box that society so clearly liked (please note my sarcasm and disgust with that idea 16 years later). As I got older, my hair color darkened and I panicked. People started to tell me that my hair was dirty-blonde (which is a horrible term and it should be eradicated from our vocabulary, but that's an argument for a different day). Then, they started questioning me when I considered myself to be blonde. I felt like my conception of myself was being tampered with, which made me cling to it even more. Being blonde had become so ingrained in my identity that I was experiencing an identity crisis when people considered me brunette. That's RIDICULOUS. So ridiculous that it has led me to question why I was/am so connected to this idea of blondeness.

I mean, the problem is that blonde hair doesn't corner the market on beauty and yet, it seems as though blonde is commonly considered the "beautiful" or "desirable" hair color (in the United States, at least). How many girls do you know that dye their hair blonde? Of course, I am not insinuating that every person that dyes their hair blonde is actively buying into the beauty stereotype, but I am saying that there is a subconscious influence. It should be something fun, lighthearted, a crazy change, but instead it sometimes feels like this attempt to live up to a hackneyed conception of the perfect woman.

As one can see, I have developed a complicated relationship with my blondeness, or lack of blondeness. For years, I would hesitate to look at photos of myself because my hair almost always looks far darker in photos than it does in person. It's just absurd that I have been so deeply affected by my hair color. This served as the inspiration for the photos I have attached to this post. My hair looks darkest when I have just gotten out of the shower, and I wanted to capture that moment of peak insecurity.

So why am I still doing it? Why am I seemingly buying into this standard and dyeing my hair? As much as I have been influenced by these overly-idealized appearances, I have worked through my thoughts on them and I am confident that I would no longer be dyeing my hair just to achieve that one "perfect" look. I feel more in control of my choice at this point in my life. I understand how the beauty standard has impacted me, and I no longer want to look blonder to fit into the blonde-haired, blue-eyed box. In fact, I really want to go more icy-platinum/grey (à la Victoria from @inthefrow), but I don't want my hair to break off from overdoing it in one session. I just want to lighten up my hair to give a brighter look, especially around my face. So, here goes nothing. 16 years later, I can't wait to feel blonde again!