the "natural blonde" debate & hair color politics | Internet Analysis
blondeness as a phenomenon! let's discuss!! // Download Love & Pies here: pixly.go2cloud.org/SH4GG. Thanks to Love & Pies for sponsoring!
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TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - intro
2:58 - love and pies
4:16 - my personal connection to blonde
5:12 - natural vs unnatural blonde, distinctions
7:30 - blondes don't want to admit they lighten their hair
9:05 - our perception of blonde has been warped
11:09 - blondes need some introspection
11:47 - blonde as a status symbol
15:02 - political implications of blondeness
16:32 - blondeness and whiteness
19:33 - blonde vs brunette hierarchy
23:25 - blondeness outside of white womanhood
RESOURCES & REFERENCES:
The Pursuit of Blondness, by J. Clara Chan - www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
Why Going Blonde Has Never Been Just About Hair Color, by Arabelle Sicardi - www.allure.com/story/history-...
Political Peroxide Blonde Privilege, by Amy Larocca - www.thecut.com/2017/08/politi...
The Enduring, Invisible Power of Blond, by Tressie McMillan Cottom - www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/op...
TIKTOKS BY:
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www.tiktok.com/@alixearle?is_...
www.tiktok.com/@tallblonde/vi...
www.tiktok.com/@thehistoricst...
www.tiktok.com/@pattilynn13?i...
www.tiktok.com/@aliajaded?is_...
www.tiktok.com/@black_was_gen...
www.tiktok.com/@berryandco?is...
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Tiffany Ferguson (she/her), 28 years old. #internetanalysis #blonde #bleach
Business Inquiries: tiffanyferguson@select.co
Captions / video transcription by: / slowxmoxpanda (She is looking for more caption work, so feel free to reach out to her on Twitter!)
ok but seriously... what would you call my natural hair color? 👀 LMAO. // Download Love & Pies here: pixly.go2cloud.org/SH4GG. Thanks to Love & Pies for sponsoring!
i have the same colour hair! mousy brown is better than “dirty blond” hahaha
in my contry we have a separate name for this "not blond and not brunette" color. it's русявий (rysiavyi/rusyi), and we consider it to be light-brown. this is pretty much the most common hair color here
it's light brown baby
it's light brown but im sure it looks dark blonde in the summer and under the sun
i have your haircolor in a family of blondes and i am considered a brunette. then again ive been dyeing it jet black since highschool to settle the debate that nature began
As a bald man, I never would have imagined this was a thing. I just wish I had hair man
I'm sure you rock your baldness 💜
Imagine how much money youre saving tho
😭 The grass will forever be greener on the other side. But honestly, have you thought about trying wigs? It might be a fun way to "have hair" and try out styles/colors. But there is nothing wrong with being bald! (This is coming from someone losing their hair and will be bald soon, too, and still trying to come to grips with that.)
My dad is an interesting looking guy. My grandma was from Hungry but was Roma (gypsy). Grandpa was was Scots/Irish and very blonde. My dad has blonde hair (going grey now) but VERY dark skin. His eyes have a ring of blue and yellow- but they usually look green. But he's going bald and rocks The Homer Simpson Combover lol. It's weird because my mom's side has dark hair and eyes- so my brother and I are much darker than the rest of my family- at least skinwise. I have darker hair/eyes and my bro has darker skin but we both get tan super easily & fast. When people see us all together I'll get weird comments like 'Where are y'all from?' that we don't get alone lol. But my Dad still calls his remaining hairs blonde lol. If he can pull that off you can too!!
yeah this mostly seems like a woman thing. As a guy we never discussed hair color. it was more about "damn I'm jealous of that guys hair not thinning in their 20s/30s"
I also think part of society obsession with blonde hair is the weird fetishisation of youth. Even in this video she talked about how she was blonde as a kid and couldn’t let it go.
Good point! Reading the comments, it wasn’t always this blonde craze (being seen as barbaric, poor people coming to other countries that are blonde and work in prostitution) that wasn’t that long ago, so might have started with colored movies and such? I never got the blonde craze, every hair colour can be pretty Most dyed blondes also don’t look that good imo, it looks artificial in most cases and often clashes with their undertones, also the constant upkeep with blonde shampoo and other products
@@salsadip7453 wasn't that a belief held in ancient Rome but it backfired on them (by them I mean the elites ruling the empire) because women in ancient Rome loved the hair colour and were trying to replicate it
Great point!
@@Genesisorgin There actually is a poem by Ovid about his girlfriend and how she tried to bleach her hair and went bald in the attempt. Also Nero's second wife seems to have had a kind of auburn hair color which got really popular. When the majority is probably really dark/black-haired, auburn already is very light to them. Nero himself is said to have been light-haired which might translate to a reddish brown in our modern European understanding.
@@cherusiderea1330 thanks for the info! I’ve read the “Neapolitan novels” by elena ferrante, contemporary stuff taking place from the 50s to today and they also have some blonde craze going on On of the characters is mentioned to be blonde, but then a character gets married to a German woman which is “even more blonde” than that one character gets during the summer months So it seems to be really subjective what is considered blonde Idk if it was on this thread or somewhere else, but foreigners in Japan that are light haired get called a word that means blonde, even if they aren’t blonde
I cant help but feel like blondes wanting to stay blonde is tied into ageism too.. ive had two people who have known me for a long time ask me if i dyed my hair darker when i hadnt, it just naturally got darker with age. Consciously or not, i think blondes seeing their hair get darker also feel like they are losing their youth
Wow. I just came to this realization and you described it perfectly
I disagree, atleast culturally....in my country all women in their 30's and 40's go really dark, or more liek some shade of black for some reason... Most people here are born blondes, dark blondes or brunettes, so dark is seen as exotic and 'fiery' in comparison to the nordic bland-ness. And aging women perhaps want to show off their 'fieryness' as related to youth and vitality? Go figure...
I'm a strawberry blonde, my mom was blonde, but I don't even know what my moms natural hair color is anymore because she's dyed it my whole life. I suspect it's darker or grey now.
Before hair dyes became mainstream, blondeness was definitely seen as a sign of youthfulness! Blonde hair usually begins to grow in darker at the point of puberty.😊
I admit, I definitely felt that as a natural blonde. My hair went from very light blonde to dark blonde by the time I was a teenager. I still saw myself as being obviously blonde, and was surprised when I moved to university that some of my friends assumed I was brunette. My hair was naturally a darker blonde at the roots and got lighter down the length of the hair, turning into a golden blonde (almost like a natural balayage). This realisation led me to get a bleach balayage. My hairdresser looked shocked when I told her I wanted a blonde balayage and said “but you’re already blonde”. I replied that I know, but I want my hair to look like it did when I was younger. When she asked what shade of blonde I wanted, I showed her a picture of me when I was a child. It sounds stupid but i genuinely felt a loss of identity when I realised some people perceived me as having a different natural hair colour. I’ve had the blonde balayage for over a year now and I plan on keeping it for the foreseeable future. Luckily, it doesn’t need much upkeep because due to my natural hair undertones, my desired shade of blonde was achieved with just bleach and no toner. I acknowledge that the “blonde dysphoria” or whatever people call it is rather silly but I still feel it all the same.
In Germany mousy brown ist called Straßenköterblond which directly translates to stray dog blond but in the most insulting way possible :)
Yikes
Interesting In Polish it's called mousy blonde, like this colour is still in blonde category 😂 And it sounds degrading
In the NL kids stated brown hair is boring and brown eyes are poop-colored….. Blonde and blue eyes are the ideal. Even in the shampoo section here almost all the brunette shampoos are gone now, only the Blonde and get blonder shampoos have stayed. Also for Andrelon you payed more for a brunette shampoo than the blond….. All the teenage boys wanted rather an ugly blonde than a beautifull brunnette I’ve heard them saying. Blondes were everything to men Nowadays I noticed more men dare to speak out other preferences. Even brown hair and… shock… Brown eyes!!!! Didn’t know what happened, but I’m relieved things have changed a little. In stead of always the blonde big breasted bombshell alone, now Exotic features are considered beautifull too❤
It's a me-thing, but I also call dull blue eyes Straßenköter-Blau, lol. Becaus it's so common around here.
@HhhhgftrVvvvjjh …poop eyes? Fucking yikes. Smh, one guy had a genetic mutation and then had a bunch of kids and now a bunch of people really be having superiority complexes because they’ve got… a different pigment in their eyes… if any of them could comprehend how complex our eyes are then maybe they’d learn to appreciate all eyes. Though that might be too much for their tiny brains.
As a faux redhead who looks natural, I often get asked if it’s my natural colour. The interesting thing is whenever women find out I colour it myself, they are impressed and compliment me. However, many men have acted upset when they find out I’m not a natural redhead.
Almost literally me, although I get my faux redhead done in a hair salon bc I'm too afraid of messing up my hair... If I don't have any roots (I'm naturally a brunette), ppl really assume I'm a natural redhead and get shocked when I tell I'm actually not... Especially men (that I feel it's so weird)
The shock and feeling of betrayal about being not a natural redhead is WILD! More men than women, but women too. I have to apologize? Ppl say I lied to them! Then I ask, how is this different than women who dye their hair blonde!? Answer: fetishization, “rarity”.
That's cos women know how difficult it is to keep red shades looking good 😂
That's because they are upset the carpet doesn't match the drapes.
@@LawnBunny777 right so fetishization…
this was so interesting. i've seen asian people who dye their hair blonde accused of "trying to look white". blondeness is definitely racially coded and not just a hair color
Totally-I even see people online yelling at people of color for “appropriating” white people’s blonde hair, while they themselves are white people with dyed blonde hair.
I have heard of this too!
Unfortunately, black women too 🫤
Any WOC that dares to dye their hair any color near blonde is immediately met with hostility and awkwardness :(
The thing is that there is a shade of blond for pretty much anyone regardless of natural skin tones. But this subverts the inherent "whiteness" of being blond and that only white people can and should be able to pull it off. But if that were the case, why then does platinum blonde Kim Namjoon live rent free in my head 😂
Yes! What a great video! As a Black 24 year old man, I gotta say I have been waiting for a White person to make a video about this. I was about 12 years old when I witnessed this blond vs brunette phenomenon in action. I had a classmate in 6th grade named Makenzie who was tall, thin, had blonde straight hair, dark blue eyes, and a peachy (yet tanned) complexion. She looked just like her mother except her mother clearly dyed her own hair to be blonde. One day after school another White woman (another student's mother) happened to walk by Makenzie, her little sister, and her mom. The woman says "oh my goodness your daughter is so pretty...she could be model--omg her hair is so beautiful". Makenzie's mom stroked her daughter's hair and was clearly very pleased and responded with something like "I know! I wish my hair was like this still" the woman replied with "I know I have to keep dying mine as well" I immediately noticed that Makenzie's sister was kinda just standing alone looking awkward with a blank expression in her face. In that moment, I at 12 years old realized that being blond was a very real White symbol of beauty. Not something only pedestalized on tv or with fictional characters. It had real life meaning & real life impact. 12 year old me was like "they are really sulking over Makenzie because shes...blonde". Made me feel icky like the way a black mother will tell another black mother "oh your daughter is so pretty and has good hair". Translation your light skinned daughter is pretty with her loosely curled hair (as opposed to Afro textured hair). The gag is Makenzie's sister, Ashley, looked just like her. If not for the 3-4 year age gap they could've been twins. Ashley was pretty, thin, tall for her age, had brown/ darker colored eyes (from what I remember), had very pale skin, and thick wavy dark brown hair. I remember thinking a pretty Blond White woman in the white community as an archetype is very similar to the beautiful Light Skinned (or Mixed [Biracial]) Woman in the Black community. Both have pedestalized features, both possess features considered fair or lighter than others in the community, both have racially coded higher social status due to these features, and both can and do weaponize this status against other women. Thanks again for the video!
Thank you for sharing!
@@burpie3258 of course! This is a very interesting conversation as im glad she made this video
I have recently come to the conclusion about this myself. For a while, I thought the blonde thing was always just associated with being sexy, like being born with bigger boobs or a bigger butt. But it definitely took a while to click to see how even in white communities, there’s an implicit bias and privilege towards blonde women, regardless of whether some other women may be more physically attractive (I use that term to mean conventional beauty standards in white communities). This perspective was only further cemented when I read something saying that most white women in American dye their hair blonde and aren’t that way naturally. Then it clicked as being a wider social phenomenon. It’s interesting to think how status is also stratified that way in white communities. Anyways I’m glad Tiffany’s talking about it. As a brunette who likes her own hair color, I never really felt like it was my place to articulate this sort of experience because I thought it might’ve been too out of place or anecdotal.
@@AnnieSloan123I have alot of blonde highlights because I have so much gray now, but I am naturally dark auburn and I miss it! I love being a brunette but I know trying to maintain my roots would drive me crazy😅
@@AnnieSloan123 yeah thanks for reading and sharing your experience. I definitely think it's worth talking about. A lot of these social hierarchies are linked together and influence eachother. For instance, after years of learning and hearing different points of view I see that lighter features in just about all societies are praised over darker ones. It's like regardless if it was a result of colonialism or the country's own social construction, we often arrive at the same practice: lighter skin, hair, and eyes is somehow "better". I'm glad ALL people are realizing and discussing this.
As a Black woman I find the blonde debate so interesting. Ive always thought darker blonde was such a gorgeous color and never understood why people would go lighter or brown. Exploring the politics from the outside is so fascinating
Interesting. I'm a natural dark blond who has been coloring my hair red/auburn for nearly 20 years. Can't stand the sight or thought of myself as a blond. Especially now that misspent youth and genetics have conspired to make me prematurely gray.
This is so sweet
Surely you understand. We wouldn’t have our bleached blonde Beyoncé if we didn’t understand how hair color is related to featurism.
It’s white womans version of colourism fr
@@WilliamsPinch no thats not the point they’re making. This black woman is watching white women discuss blonde in the context of white women. Two different things happening and she has the broadness of mind to understand and you clearly do not.
as a black person, im gonna be SO real, i CANNOT expend the energy to care about blonde-brunette discourse, even as a kid, i thought it was so fucking stupid.
Then why are you here watching this
@@gabbyfringette7250 To boost engagement... Why else?
@@gabbyfringette7250 maybe because you don't have to care about an issue to be educated on the topic
It’s their colorism
Exactly me stepping into this video as a black person already knowing what to expect loll
Watching this as a Finn is actually very funny. Growing up a lot of people complimented me because I have dark hair -- which is notable because about 80% of Finnish people are blonde. Sort of goes to show how people tend to value "rare" traits (at least as long as they're palletable)
100% this 🙌
I grew up in a pretty homogenous white community where almost all the kids had blonde hair that darkened a bit over time. I so badly wanted black hair, and still to this day I find it prettier. Same reason, it was the thing almost no one had.
All my cousins on my dad’s side of the family have blonde hair, blue eyes, and very pale skin due to our northern European roots, but then my sister and I have very dark brown indigenous hair, brown eyes, and tan skin from our mom (she’s Mexican) and it looks so funny in family pictures. Just this little clump of brown people in a sea of blondes.
but do they? I can't figure out for the life of me why red heads are talked about so badly.
Same with brown eyes! Although I got most compliments about dark features like eyelashes and eyebrows, because it meant I didn't "need to" dye them darker. These things are so weird.
As a Latina I feel like our version of this is having naturally dark hair but still dying it jet black 😅
Haha I have dark brown hair and so wanted black hair as a kid. Also, when Latinas "go blonde" its often actually light orange because of bleaching difficulties with dark hair (at least in my family, growing up 😅).
As a natural redhead that can never go blonde, I understand this deeply. I always go for jet black. There's something special about it
We do this here in Greece too, its either platinum blonde or jet black hair with us, nothing in between 😂😂
But in Brazil a lot of women love to dye their hair blondem like a lot
I think it depends on the region you live in and the times really. In the Cono Sur (or at least in Argentina, Brasil and Uruguay) there was indeed a fashion about women dyeing their hair blonde. Here in Argentina, it used to be that women would dye their hair blonde no matter their natural hair because a few years ago it was trendy and it seemed upper-class-like to have blonde hair, now I see a lot of teens dyeing their hair darker to match their favourite singers' for example. There's also a class division when it comes to hair dye colours too, "milipilis" always seem to go for some kind of blonde shade, but whom am I to judge, I myself dye my hair ginger, if only because my dark auburn made me look too sickly lol.
I too, was born blonde. I was also born a baby. At 36 years old, I am no longer a blonde, nor a baby.
You went from Baby to babes.
Underrated 😂
As someone who was born naturally blonde, I constantly got told by people that my hair was SO PRETTY, but that it would turn brown when I grew up. Implying that brown hair wasn't pretty, and that like, I would be less pretty??? It was so fucked up and such a weird thing to constantly tell a child., My hair ended up staying blonde but yeesh.
And as a side note, this is a spectacular video. Obviously from my UN, you can see being blonde is an important part of how I see myself, and over the years I've become more aware that there may be some social and cultural biases tangled into why I love my hair so much, not just liking how I look with this hair color. I'm plainly aware that I look like Hitler's wet dream.
so glad this wasn’t just a me experience
Yup!!! I was totally prepared for my hair to change when I grew up and to suddenly be perceived as less pretty but it stayed blonde and I like my face regardless, but the mind fuckery is real
honestly I wonder if the beauty standard isn't just based in white supremacy but also ped0phIia, since even most white adults don't have naturally (bright) blonde hair, most natural blondes are children and teenagers?
Everyone was like “you’ll know your ‘real’ hair color when you’re a teenager” shocker it’s still blonde. But I was dreading my hair suddenly changing as a child, because of how much people complimented it.
Not only is it a racial thing, its also a gendered thing. Not one guy is mentioned in this video on what is considered a "blond." He might have blond hair if asked, but no one would ever refer to him "a blond."
!!!!! This
i've actually had the exact opposite experience, but it might be a cultural thing. I've often heard dark blonde girls called brunnets but if a guy had this haircolor he'd immediatelly be called blonde... as if the bar of standarts is a lot lower with guys
@@spntageous5249 You kind of missed the point here about being called blonde-haired vs a blonde.
There is a definite difference in calling a guy blonde vs. "a" blonde. Men and especially boys are much less likely to be called "a blonde," though they can still have blonde hair.
@@psygaud it’s like the term “a blonde” is sexualized in the way women are a lot
fun fact: here in the southeast of brasil where i live there is a term for really light cool balayage styles: it’s called “loira odonto” (dentist blonde) because it’s comically prevalent amongst young upper class university students, specially odontology students. if you put loira odonto on google or pinterest you see an army of identical girls. it’s the closest we have of a sorority blonde girl homogenous look.
I looked it up and you're right! I find this so interesting, thanks for taking the time to type it out because I don't know if I would have gotten to learn about it otherwise
Nem fale kkk, sou loira (natural) e faço engenharia elétrica, sempre q me falam “nossa, vc n tem cara de engenheira” tenho certeza q tão querendo dizer q tenho cara de odontologia kkkk
This is the same with light eyes. Blue, green, hazel eyes. People are obsessed with eye color. I've seen POC make their entire personality having green eyes.
Light skinned for their race/white passing poc are almost ALWAYS obsessed with their white passing/lighter features. They have been complimented by the world and by society for them, therefore they are obsessed with them. I knew a girl who was half Malay, half Chinese, and half white, but who was very white passing, with pale skin, freckles, and light brown eyes. She was obsessed with people "guessing her ethnicity." Same thing with my ex best friend, she was a light skinned pakistani, she looked more mixed but was still very pale (and very, very racist and colourist.) She would say things like, "I just don't find dark skinned men attractive," and "I could never date dark skinned men." Honey, in another gene pool, YOU would be dark skinned 😂😂😂
@@geminimoonmadness "half Malay, half Chinese, and half white" - So she was one and a half person?
Because blue and green eyes are rare and exotic. Only 8% of the world are blue eyed and 2% are green. Everyone else looks common.
@@darrellm9915Lol I'm guessing you have coloured eyes
@@Lime9611 Lol, I'm guessing you don't.
As a natural redhead, some of the first interactions I had with strangers in public were about my hair color. Starting around 4 years old being told how pretty my hair was. A lot of my identity and ideas around my self image came from my hair color for a long time.
Seconding. Also getting made fun of as a child and then se.ualized as a teen and adult and people formerly bullying you dyeing their hair red all of a sudden It’s a wild ride
The first question: Is it natural?
I was also a very ginger child and had similar experiences. My grandma gave me hair lightening products when I was a preteen to try and get the copper color back. It can really hurt when you start losing the characteristics the adults around you found favorable.
Thank you for sharing. My baby has some sort of mix between me (dark brown hair) and my partner (red hair). I love his hair, but I love all of him. I'll try my hardest to be mindful of how much people comment on his hair.
Same-ish here. My mom is a natural redhead, mine is more auburn, so I was always lumped in with redheads. As I’ve gotten older my hair has gotten more “mousy brown” and it does feel frustrating. Like it changed my identity somehow.
The growing “your natural color actually probably looks best on you” movement is my fave beauty trend to date! Doesn’t mean you can’t go to the salon and get some high/low lights for some dimensionality and ✨spice✨ but it lessens the pressure for sure
I wish this was true for me... My natural hair color makes me look like I'm sick. 😢
It's actually more expensive to get highlights than it is to get your hair dyed one solid color, though. Also a lot harder to do highlights at home compared to dying it all one color.
It definitely varies from person to person. A lot of Asian girls like me look better in medium brown hair (or other medium colours) than our natural black hair.
@@M123Xoxo I do balayage maybe once a year (I think the recommendation is every 6 months), which lessens the overall price vs. traditional highlights which might have more noticeable roots & need touch-ups. I also choose this style because it grows out nicely if I want to get rid of it or save some money.
that probably helps some people but i don't think it will help everyone. it's good to explore hair colors if you want to and settle on whichever you like best. to me it's like clothing styles.
Really cool video! Just wanted to pop in as a French and clarify: "Châtain does NOT mean blonde, it means light brown, and in a more literal sense "chestnut-brown"!
look it up on google translate, it says dark blond
@@Alice-st6lz I know, I did look up, and it does say dark blond, but google translate is often incorrect, and if you check on other translators such as Wordreference or Deepl, it does say brown. Google translate is not a reference in terms of translation, far from that.
Merci 🤩 j’apprends français et j’adore apprendre mots nouveaux. (Feel free to correct me ☺️ I’m in the infancy stages, if I got my point across that’s a win and always happy to learn from a native speaker.)
For us "châtain" does not fit into the "blonde" category, it's a specific category, not blond and not brunette
in Polish we say "szatynowy" which is derived from châtain, and it also generally refers to hair that is kind of between blonde and brunette, so usually different shades of brown.
22:52 this is the whole Rue controversy in Hunger Games. There are many context clues that indicate Rue is black (or at the very least possibility of being black), but since white is the default, dark hair means brunette and dark skin means tan. This meant Rue’s casting in the live action started fan wars
Bro the Ruse discourse is so crazy to me because when books say ''dark skin'' i think black, when they say TAN i'd think okay they're tan, etc. Like if you read ''dark skin'' and think tan that must be some DEEP racial biases...
@@brigc7755 I mean full transparency here. I read Hunger Games when I was 12 and also assumed Rue was white. Now I didn't have a full on moral panic when the movie came out later and she was very much not white. I'm POC myself and it just made me realize how deep our unconscious biases are
As a black person who rarely envisioned characters as black because I mostly grew up reading old English books with white characters, Rue was absolutely black in the books. It was as clear as day to 11 year old me. Based on how they described other characters, the descriptions of her, Thresh and of her family were all of BLACK people. Katniss and Gale's "olive skin" descriptions were what annoyed me when watching the films. They really casted the whitest people who don't look like they spend any amount of time outside. I envisioned them both with significantly deeper skin tones, but Rue was a black girl with light brown eyes.
i was a hunger games reader when the book first came out and i never heard of this discourse!! I feel like suzanne collins made it pretty clear that Rue and Thresh were both black. I was shocked they cast so many very white people for most of district 12 and thought Jennifer Lawrence looked nothing like the Katniss in my head lol
You could also throw in the Hermione controversy in Harry Potter and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play.
As a child who was basically a monochromatic palette of dark brown, I was acutely made aware the blonde hair blue eyed children were just inherently cuter because those particular features were prettier and softer. I am not surprised that people would feel sad to lose it. You were made to feel special.
I remember feeling like I was less special than my blonde peers as a kids because I had dark hair. But damn I didn’t realize that as adults, there are blonde women out here that still have some sort of superiority over others because of their hair color? Idk, some of the TikTok’s shown here made me feel really icky and kinda bad.
Cue families being openly jealous of other families that had blonde blue eyed kids and expecting their own kids to just take it in stride
Dark babies are so beautiful, though. I remember going to work and seeing the most beautiful family I have ever seen with the cutest twins to ever walk on this earth haha. The parents looked like walking statues, very tall and stoic. The two boys were breathtakingly cute. They had the biggest roundest eyes and a full set of thick dark curls on their head that just looked unbendable and beautiful. Hopefully, one time we can simply appreciate how diverse humans are and be in awe about it, like my 5 ft oompa loompa looking ass seeing this family of chiseled parfume commercial gods on their way to slay. Also based on your picture I have to say I would be shocked if you weren't just adorable as a baby, you are at least very beautiful now!
I think the only thing that softened being pasty and the darkest hair and eyes of my generation was...blessed Bambi. On a toddler brown eyes can be cute "oh she looks like Bambi!' less so...when you grow older.
When I was a kid my best friends were a girl with sunlight blond hair and blue eyes, and a girl with very dark brown hair and eyes the colour of dark chocolate. I felt so dull beside them lol
Alix's friend saying her hair is naturally bleached blond while she clearly has brown roots and eyebrows i can'ttttt
the eyebrows are whatever bc that can be tinted-but those roots. girllll
It gives me massive "fresh frozen" vibes 😂
Her color’s so FLAT, too. Like the stylist clearly didn’t try to add lowlights/highlights to give the depth that natural color has - also it could use another round of toner…
the eyebrows are absolutely not a tell, it depends on what kind of genetical mix you end up with. the roots are a different story.
@@FruitsChinpoSamuraiG true, her brown roots and eyebrows match though which is a dead giveaway. i have naturally dark blond hair and my eyebrows are much lighter than hers, i dye my hair dark and have to tint them so they don't look weird
As a hairstylist, I frequently get the question: "What colour is my hair?" I wish people would understand that we are the worst one to answer. As we quickly stop perceiving hair colour in categories, we start seeing is it as numbers on a continuous spectrum which cuts back on the subjectivity of each one involve. To us, you’re not a "strawberry blonde"; you're a 8.21. We’ll gladly agree with whatever you wish it is tho. That's why we prioritize pictures and charts over trendy social media names like biscuit blonde, mushroom brown, beige blonde or any name for that matter (auburn, mahogany, moka) which are simply marketing terms to please the algorithms or the client. Even photos carries a piece of subjectivity; the black&blue/white&gold dress all showed us well. New tools, apps, ai will likely allow us to more accurately understand and deliver clients expectations, which hopefully will adopt a more neutral approach to universally uncategorizable hair colours.
Really interesting to hear that hair stylists have learned to be careful about their language, as to not offend people by stating their actual hair color... or using the offensive (mushroom? lol) color name listed on the dye box. It reminds me of people in the black community splitting hairs about how light/dark their skin is. I once had a girl tell me that she was not dark-skinned because "you can see her veins." I hadn't said a word about her skin. Strange how we attach so much subjective meaning to coloring [genetics] that literally no one can control.
I've never understood the obsession with Barbie blond/yellow hair. The darker "mousy", "dishwasher" blond has always seemed like the prettiest color to me, it's so calm and elegant. I'm glad Taylor Swift popularized it somewhat, though I still see so many women with that color trade it for the garish yellowish light blond.
I think because it can feel so drab in comparison to what we’re used to growing up. It feels like a negative change and downgrade. It also doesn’t help that the only sought after and popular blondes are artificial. There is no appreciation for natural blonde tones when that is the case.
@@Aliciae411 it really is a matter of fashion though. Someone in the comments already mentioned that in some Slavic languages there is even a special name for this colour and it's considered beautiful in a traditional way. The obsession with artificial blonde bombshell seems more like an American thing to me
@@actually_curious4773 possibly, I live in the U.K. and I honestly never see natural blondes, only very bleached. Most women with bleached hair will then protest and call themselves natural blondes because they were born blonde even though they’re now brunette.
I find it to be the prettiest hair colour, not the kind of artificial bottle blonde that most adults have, but most natural blonde-haired people have that warm shade which is associated with gold, the sun and youth before it darkens which is why people find it attractive like taylor was born with bright blonde hair
The platinum blonde that is so popular looks so harsh and often goes poorly with the person's skin tone. I echo Stella's sentiments about the warmth of the darker blonde shades. My friend said that my hair looked golden once when we were out for a walk on a sunny day. You can't say that about a platinum blonde.
Interesting 🤔 This reminds me of Love Island. Whenever someone is asked for their "type" and they say "blondes" or "brunettes" or even "tall, dark and handsome", it always means "white".
Yeah, I always thought that tall, dark, and handsome meant someone with a darker skin tone who was taller than average and you found attractive. I still personally use that in my definition of the term but find it weird to prefer one race over another. Those superficial terms in general really annoy me. Talk about putting people into boxes.
YES! I read a lot of romance and romantasy books, and when I see fan art of “tall dark and handsome” characters I see a lot of very pale white dudes with dark hair and blue eyes. I usually envision Mediterranean, (like Greek, Italian, etc.) or Arabic guys, or like, Pacific Islanders such as native Hawaiians or Māori. But… I grew up in a very Whyte Supremacist type of neighborhood. (They literally had triple K rallies about 8 blocks from my home growing up) and I was seen as a “rebel” because I listened to punk like the Dead Kennedys. I literally didn’t MEET a Black adult until I was in 9th grade, and it was my ROTC teacher, so I never envisioned Black individuals as the hero of the story, and I would like to think that if I had grown up somewhere more culturally diverse, I would.
Literally, when a new islander, usually a man, enters, everyone will immediately ask if he prefers blondes or brunettes. What they really mean by that is does he prefer (mostly artificially) blonde white women, or brown haired women. Nowhere are women of colour, or even redheads, considered to be a possible preferred 'type.'
@@restingwitchfacetarot605why did you need to share this? like what does the fact that you’re racist have to do with blonde hair?
You're right. "Tall, dark, and handsome" definitely reads more like Italian or Mediterranean vs. a person of color culturally.
In college I had a waitressing job. My mom talked me into a medium brown from my normal dark blonde with highlights. My tips dropped about 70% immediately. I went back to blonde.
that’s crazy
Jeezus. I hate it here.
Whoa.
Yup! Same thing happened to me. I got low lights after hating being super blonde and people didn’t even look my way.
bc blonde is a halo effect. you have to actually be HOT to be perceived as hot with a darker hair color. You cant tell me jennifer anniston and megan fox/angeline jolie have same level faces. even sydney sweeny gets by on blonde hair
I’m British. This is such an American thing. Many English and Irish novels, fairytales, poems and songs have lyrics about Raven-haired beauties, most notably Du Maurier’s novel ‘Rebecca’. Possibly because they were more rare. Actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons, Vivien Leigh, Joan Collins, Audrey Hepburn, Olivia Hussey, more recent examples being Rachel Weisz, Michelle Dockery, Cheryl Cole, Michelle Keegan (the list is endless) were/are the epitome of beauty. There were a lot of negative stereotypes around bleach blonde women like Marilyn monroe (which I would imagine was unfortunately rooted in classism) and many women would actually dye their hair darker to create a more exotic look.
As a dark skinned person I always loved to read old british novels where they obsessed about hazel eyes and dark hair. I felt so appreciated.
raven hair is different than mousy brown. it has its own smokiness
Thank you for this 😊 I have jet black hair but both my sisters are blonde and redheads and I was always ignored growing up in the USA. It’s cool to see that we also have a place. I used to always get asked if my hair was natural or dyed and never understood why… as a kid I would have never dyed it black knowing that my sisters got way more attention.
i do always find these conversations with americans fascinating because they seem to have such different experiences with blondness. i mean, British people are also a lot more likely to be blonde and blue eyed so it makes sense.
the lighter eyes and dark hair combo i love it , i find it splendid, like a queen. it is so interesting how things are viewed differently here in the u.s. than in other places like the uk
I definitely felt that I was "less than" by being a brunette. I just always felt that my medium brown hair was so "boring". Unfortunately, it felt like men had a type and I would never be it. Some men like blondes, some like redheads, some like pitch black hair. But no one ever thought that regular brown hair was sexy or attractive. In my teen years I started dying it. I did it black for awhile (and yes, got much more attention from "the boys" for having long, shiny black hair). Then I was dying it a red/auburn, and everyone complimented it more. I got tired of trying to achieve the reddish look, as it's quite difficult to get right, so I went back to my natural color. I actually don't hate it, and it suits my skin tone well (not to mention, matches my eyebrows, the red never matched). But it's still hard not to feel not good enough. When I told my (male) best friend that I was going to just be natural brown for awhile, he was actually disappointed! It's hard to ignore that. I saw the fervor and desire for blonde at work last Halloween. One of the girls dressed up for Halloween and was wearing a blonde wig (she normally has black hair), and oh my gosh... the men at work were practically DROOLING at her with the blonde wig. And they just couldn't stop complimenting her on how great she looked as a blonde. It was pretty disturbing to see. Just putting on a blonde wig apparently turned her into a "bombshell".
I guess many men of all ages just feel attracted to youthfulness (no idea if it's "evolutional" or societal) and blonde hair is more common among children so it is associated with youth 🤷🏽♀️
This is pretty sad example of our society and some men. 😬
i feel you 😅 im invisible especially since im white with dark eyes, because I don’t fit into any of the “fetishised stereotypes”. Im in the invisible middle ground. It’s not about colour itself as much as it is about those fetishied stereotypes like blonde, redhead, petite asian, et cetera. there’s no sexualised category for white woman with brown eyes and medium brown hair 😂
watching this as a southeast asian with jet black hair like 👁️👄👁️
same, when I was younger I was delusional enough to convince myself that it's actually just really really dark brown 😭
@@rontanamo_bae not that you asked but jet black hair is so absolutely gorgeous, trust me. i have really really dark brown hair and i always wish it was jet black instead!
but jett black hair is so gorgeous. In my opinion its the prettiest hair color
@@erinsymone1645 no I agree, it's great like a natural black clothing accessory, kind of goes with everything. I've come to terms with it with my only gripe being that it really does not help with heat especially the harsh southeastern sun. Luckily don't have to deal with that anymore
When I was a kid, I thought all white women just had naturally blonde hair 😂
my on going observation that is always proven right is that men who were blond and now have light brown hair will still be labeled blond by people but for women with the same exact hair color they are told it’s brown
This is an excellent point.
Agreed. It feels like some people's way of taking a woman down a peg.
And I think the rarity of blondeness can truly be seen by how rare blonde men are. I know men dye their hair too, it's just far less common for them to do so than women.
I agree with you, I think it's less gated for them but to me blonde also has undertones (^^) of feminity and it's less desirable colour for men.
wtf that’s so true, I had never thought about it like that. my 3 male cousins and myself were all blondes as babies/children (my hair was platinum as a baby) and now we’ve all turned mousy. somehow people still qualify them as blondes while I’m mostly regarded as a brunette. strange
"yes its all natural" meanwhile the darker roots are clearly visible 💀
No because the sun geting it light. I knew the friend that went almost albino in the summer. Mousy Blond is wery sun orinted.
Same.. the sun lightens my hair .. the inside of my is darker… my hair color is not uniform either.. each individual hair is different..
Photobleaching is real for many people so it's pretty normal for the roots to be darker than the lengths, which have been exposed to the sun for longer. That being said, if the roots are like 4 shade darker then it's clearly not natural
@@IzabellaRequiemwhile that's true that sun can sometimes quite drastically bleach naturally dark or mid blonde hair, it doesn't tend to leave roots on that sort of drastic straight line fashion, they're more blended. The ends would be lighter than the mid section due to having had more summers shining on them and the roots wouldn't look that dark. Darker roots can often be natural, but they don't usually look like that if they are.
Every person in my extended family who was blonde in childhood--and I mean towheaded or light ash blond--developed dark brown to almost black hair after adolescence. It was considered a normal occurrence--that didn't "invalidate" one's hair--everywhere outside deepest Scandinavia once upon a time, before social media made everyone insane. Thanks for posting!
in a lot of slavic languages the "dark blonde" is it's own color category and is called русий (rusiy). probably because this color is very common among us slavs. we don't perceive it as a shade or blonde or a shade of brown, it's just rusiy. in the same way red hair is not blonde nor brown. i was kinda surprised when i learned there's no word for rusiy in english, even more surprised that people call it "dirty blonde" as if this is something bad
I feel like even us slavs do the blonde debate thing though, rusiy will often encompass natural golden etc blondes whose hair isn't the brightest or lightest, like level 8 while others will call it blonde, especially in the hair industry. But some people only seem to consider it blonde if it's dyed or naturally platinum, while rusiy will be anything from level 5-6 to 8. My hair is a level 8 ish probably, looks golden and I rarely call it anything but people will either generally see me and another girl I know whose hair is similar as a blonde or make it a point to say that it's rusiy, not blonde. Same way people seem to do it in English with blonde vs brown
In Poland we usually call it "Mysi blond" like it's from Mouse 🐭 But to be honest I've never seen blonde mouse in my life
It can be called blonette, portmanteau of blond and brunette.
"Dirty" is used to describe color shades which are "dusty" or contain a large amount of it's opposite color, it doesn't come from filthy -dirty, but a way color shades are typically described by artists. There isn't a negative connotation if you're speaking to a person of culture 😅
In Finnish we have a separate word for this too, maantienharmaa, "dirt road grey". Not the most flattering term, but a very very common colour here (I have this colour too). You wouldn't call someone with this hair colour as blondi, here blonde means a very fair and more yellow tone. A lot of Finnish people who never thought of themselves as blonde are surprised to hear that in English people will call them as blondes! Laughing so hard at the comment that Estonians call it potato colour :')
Great video! I also think it's important to note how blondeness implies youth. For most people who were blonde as a child, their hair darkens over time, so dyeing their hair lighter associates them more with youth. This idea intersects with the idea that women are valued in american society primarily for their beauty, and the hegemonic american beauty standard is young and white, so this clinging to blondeness has a dual approach of being closer to both youth and whiteness
🎯
Oh, so this might be the reason so many American women dye their hair to whitish baby blond even when a darker mature blond could look better with their complexion and hair texture. I've always thought it must be something symbolic, cultural, because it looks like it's done not to enhance, but to be a singular dominant feature.
The "there's no such thing as an adult natural blonde" woman seems the most offended one tbh. People were correcting her because she said something wrong, she is the one acting defensively
As a white brunette with brown eyes. My ethnicity is questioned all the time. I got curious one day, and I'm telling you that there are pages on reddit, and quora of people saying that people with brown eyes and brown hair arent white, or asking if we are white. I got a good laugh from some of the comments.
That's ridiculous, considering most white people have always had brown hair 😂 and nearly half of Europe has brown eyes. I'm a dark brunette myself, but with blue eyes and very pale skin Lol.
Europeans have a very diverse color palette. But even then, skin color does not solely defy someone’s race. Facial structure, head shape, eye shape, type of nose or shape etc. are better classifications of race or specific ethnicities than hair or eye color, too.
@@darrellm9915 I know but people are very judgemental. It's the weirdest thing. Just saying. I am jealous that you have blue eyes. 💙
It’s an american thing. In europe that’s unimaginable😂
@@grandduchessc Brown eyes are gorgeous. Please don't be jelly. :(
As a Native American/Latino person with naturally black hair (granted, it’s currently bright pink) this whole discussion is so interesting to me.
As a Latina with natural black hair currently dyed purple same
Same (latino with naturally very dark brown hair who often dyes it rainbow colors)
same, mixed indigenous and polish/ruska roma mine is still mostly naturally dark brown or black depending on how light hits it but some parts of it are dyed bright red in a money-piece and peekaboo underlight style that i settled on after dying my hair different colours for so long. i have to go to my hairdresser and get the dye part redone though it’s been a couple months and my hair looks like wolverines fur now because the red washed out and it’s just blonde in those areas now
lol same. The only days when I worry about my hair color this much is when the blue is fading 😂
Frr
I ADORE your Internet Analysis commentaries. I was "born blonde" and have never touched or dyed my hair so it's naturally darkened over time. I never really noticed my own perception didn't match that of others until one day one of the kids I worked with commented on my "brown" hair. It took me by surprise but then I was like "I guess this is my new identity?" but have still felt it hard to settle into. I guess that's where the societal warping of blonde comes in. Also, the racially charged implications of blondeness has never been lost on me, but the advertising example really got me. How many people are left out of the picture for things said unspoken? Amazing job as always Tiffany!!
Anytime i see blonde vs brunette hair discourse i cant help but laugh cause its literally a box dye or bleach away from looking like each other
Well the same can be said for the natural hair community and hair-typing. We gotta stop trivializing white women’s issues when we obsess about the same frivolous things.
@@WilliamsPinch Wow, appreciate this. It really is something that carries significance for us and affects our lives. I once had to explain to a black friend that being in an environment with white people didn't mean I felt like I belonged or felt part of a group. I still have to find sub-categories within that to feel like I belong. By being the majority/home to all the bullshit that created classism/racism, etc in our country, we are also segmented a lot within ourselves. Should caveat: still pretty easy to get around and feel safe. Definitely not whining about being white in the US, just saying there are nuances to experiences in this society as well.
Once I've met an Norwegian dude in Scotland. Apparently, at home he had brow hair. Scottish people considered him blond. For me, Polish person, he was ginger. Hair colour is a social construct, lol.
Hair colour is definitely not a social construct lol. It’s literally a physical existence. However how people interprete that can be deemed as social construct based on what their comparisons are.
@@VBoo459 Colour itself extist between physical, physiological and also linguistic. It's not so simple and objective. However, saying "Hair colour is a social construct, lol" is obviously a joke, based on simplification.
@VBoo459 Light waves are not a social construct. How we interpret them definitely is. Good example: colour brown doesn't really exist. It's just dark orange. And yet we see it as a completly different colour. When you look at dark green colour and light green colour you don't think about them as two seperate categories. They're subcategories of the same thing - colour green. When you look at dark orange and light orange you see two different colours
@@angelikaskoroszyn8495 I think that's what they were saying - we interpret color uniquely (to some extent) in different cultures. The same color may evoke different emotions and feelings
That opening made me think of that scene in one of the Dear Dumb Diary books where she was looking at her dye, and the hair color for the most popular girl in school was called "sunshine", meanwhile her hair was called "groundhog".
omg i LOVED those books i feel seen
Omggg I wanted to do the patch shampooing thing she claims the blonde girl does where she uses like five dif scented shampoos to make each hair flip smell different 😂
HAHAHA 😂
I go from groundhog to sunshine and back depending on the season and amount of time I spend outside. That's pretty funny honestly.
Ngl the main reason I think of a white woman when you ask me to think of a “brunette”, least in my opinion as a black woman, is that we don’t typically engage in the term and describe hair that way. Especially since the majority of us and other PoC are born with dark hair anyway. Not to do with internal bias
I think its worth mentioning the cultural impact of Barbies. As a blond child i loved playing with Barbies. I completely identified with Barbie because we had the same colour hair. Because she was seen as beautiful i felt beautiful. While the blonde/brunette discourse is a funny conversation I do think its deeply embedded in our culture. The whole "blonds have more fun". Its also interesting to me that when Beyonce wore a platinum wig she was accused of "wanting to be white".
I think people cling onto traits they are complemented for. People often notice my hair, so I felt fear at the idea of cutting it short. And when I did cut it down from hip to collarbone length.... the complements stopped. That's not a great thing to notice. Even if my head feels waaay cooler in summer 😅
If it's any consolation, I wouldn't necessarily say that hip-length hair is prettier than collarbone-length hair...but it is unusual enough for people to notice and remark upon.
This!! I always get compliments on my skin, and it’s given me a complex. I feel pressured to maintain that “prettiness” I also get compliments on my body a lot so I feel pressured to maintain it To contrast I don’t nearly get as many compliments on my hair, so I feel more freedom to do what I want with it
Really weird vibe when people mention a part of you that can't or won't ever change, but lucked out on. (Blue eyes) and never hearing about another part of you. It's never "you're so pretty", it's "your are eyes so pretty," and I noticed that distinction early on as a kid. Then, I would get no compliments when I had to start wearing glasses. I know people didn't mean to say I was ugly, but it feels backhanded when it's the only one hyper specific thing that people would mention or comment about you. Not my activities, other parts of my face or body, or even my personality. Just "your eyes are so pretty." Now clearly, this isn't like the end of the world or comparable to skin tone, but I'm sure there are similar feelings about repetitive, hyper specific comments. I'm still learning that while other people may only see my eye color, I can try to ignore them because those who do matter to me, see my other parts too. (Which, again, is why it's not comparable to racism lol)
@@AdaireKrickets this resonates with me so much! I also grew up fat, so it was extra telling when the compliments were never "you're so pretty" but specifically about my blue eyes or blonde curly hair. and then there were always people who spun it negatively, like I must have had a bad highlight job when really they were commenting on my natural hair colour, or that I wear coloured contacts because there's no way that eyes can have a darker ring around the iris, or that my hair isn't actually curly because I put some product in it to help prevent damage and help my curls hold their shapes evenly! and these negative comments are ALWAYS from people who aren't blonde/naturally blonde, with a different eye colour, or with straight or wavier hair. it's almost like society sees the beauty standards they set and believe that you can meet some, but if you don't meet all of them then there's no way you can meet any of them naturally! and yes, I do also acknowledge that none of this is comparable to racism/systemic oppression, from which I still benefit from solely existing as a white woman, but it speaks to another aspect of beauty and society's unattainable standards.
If it makes you feel any better I went from a bob above my shoulders to a pixie cut and every man in my life and strangers just had to tell me I looked better with “long” hair.
before I watch the video As a black person I think blonde hair is a conspiracy
What do you mean?
As an Indigenous person, I think so too, we're on to 'em .......
It definitely is an idea of 'acheiving a rare physical feature' (as very few have natural blond hair post puberty and most blonde is bought) that keeps many hair salons and hair color lines in business, as I would guess, more people dye their hair lighter colors than their natural as opposed to the opposite, often paying to achieve youth by trying to replicate a hair color (often white women but not always) they had when they were little, or whatever is is they associate with the hair color. So basically social media trying to make blonde cool, is often done so by beauty companies to keep them in business.
Almost every time I see a person that's blonde it turns out it's died@@kzvegansuperstar
Obviously nothing against people with these features 😅 I think there’s something about naturally having certain features E.g. blonde hair blue eyes that feels especially prized on a societal level cos it’s like distinctly/ unambiguously ‘white’. Could be overly reading into it due to personal experience but sometimes these sorts of conversations, ones pertaining to features, feels exclusionary in a kind of weird way. Obviously not all conversations are meant for all people which is totally cool but it’s like a certain type of intentionally negative off putting exclusionary vibe sometimes.
I think it’s interesting to note that in the Victorian era, the beauty ideal was having dark, raven hair, contrasted against pale skin, and big, dark “doe” eyes. Women would put belladonna drops in their eyes to dilate their pupils and make them look darker. And there was also a trend of women getting tuberculosis on purpose so they would look more pale, and their cheeks and lips would look more red. Beauty standards can be so wild and fascinating. I enjoyed this video! I too had light blonde hair when I was little that has darkened over time to a level 7 “blunette” or “bronde” colour. I just like to embrace my natural hair and can’t justify spending money to have lighter high-maintenance hair. It’s interesting to me that everyone who knew me when I was little still describes my hair as blonde, while my husband, who I met as an adult, remains adamant that my hair is “light brown” haha. This shade is such a chameleon colour. It looks absolutely ugly in dim, cold, blue-tinged lighting, but will look radiant in warm lighting, bright sunlight, and during golden hour.
As a mixed race person born and raised in Germany, I have observed the following: - A German friend of mine was deeply offended when someone described her as dark haired. Personally, I had always seen her as a brown haired girl, so I was surprised that the term “dark-haired” was bothering her so much. - In Germany, if you are blonde as a teen, you'd better not be too pale, because this can lead to similar bullying as being red haired. I wonder if this is a relict from the Middle Ages, where being pale could also mean you have the bubonic plague or some other serious illness and thus need to be ostracised from society. - The most popular blondes in Germany are the ones who have died their hair, at least this was my school experience. Natural blonde comes with features like light eyebrows, light lashes and pale skin, that many people don't fancy. I have a friend who has naturally light blonde hair, and she would rather die than be caught without black mascara. - Americans are very different in this aspect: They don't seem to make distinctions and seem to worship ALL blondes, no matter the facial features. I have noticed, that blond hair and blue eyes make you automatically attractive in the US, but this is NOT the case in Germany. In Germany, you need to bring way more to the table as to be perceived as attractive. - Blonde worship seems to be colourism amongst whites, esp. in the US. I suspect having blonde hair serves until this day as an antipode to despised blackness. - Blonde is also a sign of youth and thus deeply connected with patriarchy, where the youth of a woman is basically her value. No longer blond = no longer youthful = no longer valuable. - Why are people with yellow hair called blonde? We have no problem describing black hair as black and red hair as red, why do yellow haired people need this fancy term?
You hit the nail right on the head. Also, I remember being really confused by the blonde thing when I was a child 😂. Like as a poc who lived and grew up in Asia surrounded by other poc, white people are a rarity and are either tourists or rich people who moved here. I was obsessed with Barbie as a child, and I asked my mother, "why does she have yellow hair?" Just so confused. She told me, "It's called blonde, dear." I was like, "Blonde??? But it's yellow. Why should I call it blonde???"
I wonder if it's called blonde because of the fact most actually natural blonde hair colors are more of a light brown. Someone else in these comments mentioned that their language has a word for the dark blonde that only exists in their language, because to them that is its own color. So, like, maybe blonde actually means the lightbrown shades we see, and yellow is pretty much other the lighter end of that spectrum. I googled it lol: [The word blond is first documented in English in 1481 and derives from Old French blund, blont, meaning 'a colour midway between golden and light chestnut'] There is also a theory it comes from latin blundus which literally means yellow. So, like...it's just...a fancy way of saying yellow, like how brunette is a fancy way of saying a person with brown hair.
Well red-haired people aren't really red, they're orangey, but the name for the colour "orange" wasn't invented until fairly recently. It can also be called ginger or copper. Ironically, considering you're German, the origin of the word blonde is thought to be Germanic, and became used in Latin as a word for "yellow." So it is the word for yellow hair.
I'd say being pale probably is seen as less desirable because tan skin became associated with being able to afford fancy vacations lounging around in the sun in the 20th century, rather than because of an association with illness. A lot of medieval European texts highly praise women with a "fair" or "milk-white" skin for instance, so this shift to preferring tanned skin is pretty recent. Some blond people tan really well (usually the ones whose hair darkens with age) and some tan really badly, similar to red-haired people (usually the ones whose hair stays light as they get older). So, blondes who don't tan easily miss out on that association with wealth and luxury.
@@yltraviole Most western men still prefer pale women with dark hair. There's a lot of polls and statistics on it. Whereas, at least half of all western women prefer tanned men. Even in East Asia, pale skin is still more desired by most people, like it has been for thousands of years.
watching this as a central-europen is super interesting esp re: the "who do you picture when you hear brunette?" part. in our old folk songs "black girl" or "brown girl" literally just means a girl's hair color, as historically people of color have not lived here
Same. I also feel like us Europeans aren't as obsessive about "whiteness" as Americans are, so it's still really bizarre to me how much this term is mentioned here and how much significance its given. I was a blonde sheltered kid from Eastern Europe who didn't have Internet until 8th grade, didn't play with Barbies etc, I also don't remember ever being complimented about my hair as a baby, but I was still sad when my hair got darker and darker. It was (I think) because I'm not that unique looking anymore (my country is mostly brunette), not because of racism or whatever. I was content with being mousy brown in middle school (I actually love the term and color so much, mouses are cuteeeeee!), but THEN my hair turned almost jet black when I started uni. I will always be mad at nature for that 😂
@@Li_Tobler Not to mention that "white" is such a vast oversimplification anyway. You only have to look at countries like Bosnia where there are 3 main ethnic groups, yet they would all be boiled down to "white" by American standards.
@@Porcupine0fDoom exactly! I had a convo with an ignorant person like that a couple of days ago. Idk where they were from, but I'd assume Canada or the US... They said that being of English, Swedish and Russian descent wasn't diverse at all, and that this content creator of that descent got her genetic health issues because of inbreeding, because "they're all white anyway so". Huh?! I was flabbergasted 😂 It's scary when any political agenda starts to overshadow basic science and history. I gave them a friendly advice to at least learn about haplogroups and go from there to unlearn their backwards biases.
My mom often speaks that way about women. The "black one" means with black hair not black skin. Here in Poland in small towns you can't really see people with dark skin so the language is different.
Eastern European here (and Balkan, so unsurprisingly dark-haired and relatively dark-skinned). I am fully capable of thinking of Latinas or Middle Eastern women as brunettes, now are they "white"? Probably not by American standards! Now is Penelope Cruz "white" because she is from Europe? Oy!
I’m not sure if anyone else has this experience but growing up as an Asian in a western country, there was a HUGE thing about having dark brown vs true black hair in Asians, Italians, Greeks and other ethnicities with dark features + light skin. People would constantly be correcting others if they even suggested they have black hair. I remember telling people “I have DARK BROWN hair” anytime they asked if my hair was black. I would say that yes, it is dark brown but when I was younger it was definitely so dark that it was closer to black than brown and I would constantly try and make it lighter by swimming and leaving the chlorine in and not cutting the ends for ages since they lightened first. But thinking about it, I think it’s the same thing as this blonde thing. We all wanted so badly to be even just a few degrees closer to being the western beauty standard of bleach blonde hair with blue eyes and having true black hair was as far from that as possible. But it’s so odd because I think having true black hair is a lot more rare than having dark brown hair (most people with “black” hair really do have dark dark brown hair). Also yes, I have never heard a poc refer to themselves as a brunette. I feel that our hair colour, at least in the Asian community is not often tied to our identity. Myself and my friends have gone through so many hair colours that I don’t think we even think about it. It’s always “I have brown hair”, “I have red hair”, “I have black hair”. Never “I’m a brunette”. But also most of us just have dark brown or black hair naturally and there’s not really a word for that the same as “brunette” or “blonde”. It’s just black hair…
you know I never noticed that before, especially because my extended family doesn’t speak English- but you’re right. I’m Italian, and my mom’s sisters have had black hair for most of their life. Always corrected to say its dark brown. Added to the fact we are from the Southern half of the country, and my mom’s sisters are naturally darker- many people here have black eyes and hair but would say brown.
That's interesting. I'm black with dark brown hair but I always thought my hair was black. I mentioned it once to my sister and when she told me my hair was brown I got so angry lmao. I definitely would prefer to have darker hair, and I always thought it was stupid that the blond was the more popular one in movies when the brunette was just as pretty with the added bonus (in my mind) of having beautiful dark hair.
I am a "happa" - 1/2 Japanese. I do not pass as "white" and my last name is Nordic. My Japanese mother made it a point to always say my hair was brunette. My sister, who "passes" as "white," was always encouraged to lighten her hair and put in blonde highlights.
I'm Asian/Pakistani and in our culture true black hair considered extremely beautiful because it's rare. Majority have dark brown hair, some have light brown, but jet black hair which doesn't turn into brown in the sun is rare.
Me, an African, wanting blacker hair 😅
Something I find interesting about the blondeness conversation is how a lot of people feel the need to "humble" women who think they are blonde and maybe aren't, and how in doing that they are really just reinforcing this idea that being blonde makes you better and blondeness is something rare and special to be coveted instead of just a hair color
You're correct. It's very true that white people like to claim "blondhood" by claiming they were born that way or were as a child. HOWEVER, it's also true that about 8 out of 10 white people who make the claim that they were blond as a kid, really were NOT. Most just had lighter brown hair. But the desire to be a member of the very exclusive blond club is so strong, they'll believe a falsehood. I've had people try to point out their "blond" child or a picture of their "blond" self as a child, and, as a true natural blond myself, I'm like, "Where's the blond? All I can see are all varying shades of brown hair." The reason why a lot of white people get so vocal about POC dying their hair blond, it's because if the exclusive club gets too inclusive, it's not, and therefore you're not, "special" anymore. Also, if black and other POC dye their hair and get to join the club, who don't ever and can't have natural blond hair (if you deny this, you're part of the self-denial people who hide their blond-envy) then the "entrance fee" is too low, which implies maybe their own entrance fee (their dying their hair) was too low as well and what's the point of the club in the first place? If everyone is special... no one is.
For me, it's people like the one woman in the blonde hair at 40 video who are obviously lying about being natural blonde that is annoying. I can see her obvious dark roots and lack of ombre. Stop taking credit for work you didn't do! It's quite a different thing from coloring your hair blonde because you like it. I personally am a supporter of natural hair color, as there are so many that look nice. Why choose the unflattering platinum?
Btw, true blond hair IS rare. It's even far less than the oft quoted number of 1-2% (since many of those probably just claim blond but who really aren't). It's more like way less than 1%. So, is it "just a hair color?" Of course, but it still is extremely rare which makes is "special." The reason why many non-blonds like to claim they are is due to the human desire to be special (since rarity is one of the definitions of "special"). And, it's also true that true blonds will indeed often point out and "humble" women who color their hair or who claim blond, simply because if anyone (non blonds) are "allowed in the club," it's not as special anymore. Blond people will often feel that everyone coloring their hair blond, somehow diminished their uniqueness. Another problem is that it perpetuates the false stereotype of the dumb or loose blond. This stereotype has been perpetuated by those who dye their hair blond, not true blonds. And, it was created by those trying to exploit those who color their hair blond. As a result, all the rest of us true blonds have to pay the price.
Ahhh!! I've been writing this script in my head for a year, I'm so glad you're talking about this!! ☺
Dang, I thought European folks just did a number on POC and skin color. Turns out they did a number on themselves, too.
@hikikomori5 Since the very start of european civilizations. The greeks were one of the few european cultures that saw blonde hair as barbarian feature. Because at that time northern europeans were seen as unintelligent and savage,while north africa, the middle east and southern europe was thriving. It's all cultural.
It's insane to watch people with clearly brown hair cling onto a "blonde" title. White supremacy is WILD.
As someone from the middle east I personally low key never liked European features, I loved darker and more middle eastern features that I had. Although I admit thats not a common attitude where I am from, most people think whiter features are more desirable on average
@@botanicalitus4194as someone from westerner decent i never really liked the beauty standards i more fit into and resonate with korean/most asian ones
@@twothousandandchewYeah asian beauty standards are definitely more "in" right now, whats interesting is that many asian beauty standards are influenced by European ones. And european ones are being influenced by african and latino ones. Its pretty interesting
Growing up in austria as someone with brown hair and eyes, I remember SO vividly how in primary school, everyone would fawn over the girls with blonde hair and blue eyes as if they were literal angels from heaven. There was almost a cult started around this one girl with long blonde curls. I grew up associating blonde with feminine. And as a tall curvy woman I already felt not „petite and cute“ enough. I dont feel that way anymore, I personally prefer dark hair on both men and women and also on myself, but its insane to me how big of a thing this was back then.
@@Lainlein Okay so what is your point? Many more godly figures in ancient times as well as depictions of gods from the biggest religions these days have dark features.
Yeah, and Jesus was a middle eastern brown man, what's your point?
Or are you referring to why some people might put blonde hair on a pedestal?
Curvy.. so.. fat?
I don’t get the blonde thing either, as a natural blonde. I feel like i personally end up looking way more washed out without makeup. If you have darker brows and lashes, it’s just more contrast and overall looks better. And I am too lazy for makeup lol.
As a brunette, this was one of the first media messages I absorbed as a child. I am brunette, and not as desirable as a blonde. I loved the highlight on how exclusive these words are. I didn’t even realize that brunette extended to black hair as well until I watched this video and searched it up! I learned something today.
Same. Also not as good, kind-hearted... All the good cartoons characters were always blond and the bad ones had darker features
I miss my natural golden blonde hair but I’m learning to embrace the dark blonde that it turned into. If I look at it closely, it’s actually a mix of dark blonde, light brown and reddish tones and it’s really pretty in the sun. I don’t understand the obsession with platinum blonde. Warmer blonde shades are so pretty! Side note - Hair Buddha has talked about dark blonde vs light brown and often what people consider light brown is actually dark blonde. So if you were a natural lighter blonde that went dark when you got older, you can take comfort in the fact that most of us are probably still technically dark blondies. 💁🏼♀️
Lol
My natural hair is strawberry-blonde, and my whole adult life has included exhausting debates with redheads about how I’m not /really/ a redhead, and blondes about how I’m not /really/ blonde 😂
I was born blonde and my hair gradually got darker and redder as I grew up and now it's somewhere in the strawberry blond/warm brown/dull red range. Now when I meet new people they describe my hair as red so I go with that, but I'm always self conscious about how it's not a very vibrant shade and it wasn't the colour I was born with, so I never feel like a "real" redhead
My favorite color ever. Oh, to be blessed with Shiv Roy's coloring!
Redheads are horrific about gatekeeping that “red” label. It’s soooo enmeshed in their identities. I think adding the stigma around red hair would enhance the conversation about blondeness because if blondeness was purely a racial signifier or wealth (dye maintenance) signifier, then red hair would also be highly desirable yet it isn’t. Died red hair is harder to maintain than blonde. While I think some of it is racial, a lot of it is that blonde is just a pretty color that’s easy to wear from a color theory standpoint. Red is more complicated if you have a cooler skin tone and doesn’t play well with many wardrobe palettes. I have three little daughters on the blonde-red spectrum and that natural healthy hair shines like gold in the sun; they look like gilded angels. The eldest’s hair is already getting darker and it’s so heartbreaking because she identifies so strongly with her golden hair.
@@twoscoopz4944 My skin tone is neutral and I'm freckled, but yes, red was hard to wear (and I changed my makeup!) It also fades horribly when dyed, yes.
@@twoscoopz4944i definitely disagree about red hair. blonde hair isn’t a racial identifier solely bc it’s difficult to maintain. it relates to the ideas of purity and who historically has blonde hair. red hair is generally associated with irish descent which has a long storied history of NOT being considered white, ergo red hair is not associated with whiteness in the same way that blonde hair is. i also think the way you connect blonde hair to looking angelic here speaks to the idea of connecting blondness to purity and that purity to race. this is also just personal but i have natural blonde hair and i’ve always considered blonde to be the ugliest hair color (and more difficult to color match with makeup and clothes than brunette and black hair) and red to be the prettiest, so it’s difficult to entertain the idea that there’s just some inherent quality of blonde hair that humanity likes more. beauty standards are basically always rooted in culture rather than some genetic ideal. i think that different geopolitical history could absolutely have made red hair just as if not more coveted than blonde hair.
I still remember as a kid the moment i realized i held the belief blonde was objectively prettier than brunette, and it really surprised me because no-one had explicitly taught me that or said it out loud to me but it still had somehow found a way into my perception of the world. I realize now that that idea has just always been in the air around me,,, I was born blonde and then started turning brown when i was a toddler, I don't remember being blonde so I've never thought of myself as blonde but still so many times throughout my life people (women) would respond to me saying I have brown hair with "No!!! You're blonde!!" , it's the same tone as telling someone they've pretty when they share with you that they feel insecure, and that's so strange !! Like? no, my hair is definitely brown, I have seen myself, why are you lying to me
We grew up on Barbie for example, not only the doll but the movies, the protagonist was always blonde, the idea of the blonde pretty girl was also in many kid shows and such.
@@lug358 Absolutely
Being blonde, I always thought the prettiest hair color was black. Or deep brown. And blonde was kind of associated with being dumb.
@@tymondabrowski12 I often heard "dumb blonde" jokes from late childhood through adolescence. "A blonde moment" was, and might still be, a common term referring to briefly lacking intelligence or common sense. I was torn between my hair color/tone transitioning from blonde to light brown being a positive or a negative change during that time.
look at kids' media, at least when I was growing up 75% of the protagonists were blonde. And if it's an ensemble cast, there's a blonde girl, a redhead girl, and a dark-haired black or Asian girl, with blonde being the lead of course. Dark-haired white girls hardly exist. Then it makes a 180 turn in the teen media where your usual protagonist is a pale insecure brown-haired white girl lol.
My hair is also mousy brown in winter, dishwater (with a sunny sheen) in summer. For years, I lightened it. Then, I embraced the brown and loved it! I think it changed people's first impression of me - I felt smarter. I had it dyed a similar but richer-looking shade, and it looked thicker and healthier. You could try a medium ash brown, walnut/mocha shade. 5A color level. It will make your eyes pop.
one of my favorite videos you've made! so interesting!!
Blonde is a HUGE status and character symbol. Blondes are usually looked at as bright, cheery, sunshine and I understand because yellow vs brown color obviously yellow is a brighter color and stands out more. But it is so sad that we attribute it to PEOPLE because we never know who these individuals actually are and if these “traits” actually apply to them.
But it is also very cultural. In a lot of central European and Scandinavian countries where blond is more the norm it is not seen as great hair color. In my country there are countless jokes about blond women being dumb (just like the your mother jokes) so being blond was associated with being stupid while being brunette was associated with being classy and intelligent. Not to mention that most people don't have the "nice" light blond hair but some sort of dishwasher/dirty/mousy blond. A pretty brown was considered to be way better when I grew up. Rarer traits are usually the ones that people desire, (as long as they are still palatable of course).
status symbol is exactly it
"eating popcorn while having jet black hair" this is interesting 🍿
As a raven black woman, i agree
Jet black hair is so beautiful to me.
it is a question of being proud of what you have naturally. If you wear your hair proudly, it is attractive. If you question it, it influences your environment.
When I grew up in a German village, my brown hair was always referred to as black by the other kids at school, and I was asked frequently where I was from. Not being blond was considered unusual. I was totally proud of it
That’s interesting, More Germans have brown hair than blonde hair. Though demographics can vary in villages. And it’s generally true most children have blonde hair (who are northwestern European, like German, British etc), would you say this was mostly in the childhood?
@@KtT-sn8cy we are talking seventies here, the blond phenotype was definitely prevalent in my small town. That has definitely changed since Germany has become an immigration country 😊
@@user-nh9nl4rt8k I mean, outside of immigration it is still true that Germany has more people with darker hair than blonde hair. However like very country there are of course regional variations
@@KtT-sn8cy thanks for clearing that up 🥸
Turkish women exist in Germany 😅 Theyre curly and black hair mostly
not finished with the vid yet but omg, as a girl of color ive always noticed this from an outside perspective. and also with eye color too
Like someone saying that someone has Brown eyes and nobody thinks of anyone else in the 98% population in the world who are not white and have Brown eyes xd
yeees! like sweetheart those are brown eyes with a small ring of hazel, not actual green and who cares
I don’t even know my eye color 🥲 lighting be hard on me. But I am a dirty blonde haha
Seriously, the amount of time I wasted in my teens searching for a non-existent speck of green in my eyes so I could claim they're hazel is embarrassing 😂 Luckily, I grew to appreciate my lovely brown eyes eventually.
As a black woman with long dreadlocks, this is how I feel about people thinking my hair is extensions. 🤣🤣
I was born with auburn red hair but it started getting browner as I got older. It's more of a warm brown that looks coppery in the sun but deep down I still feel like a redhead. It was a pretty unique hair color and everyone commented on it as a child. Old ladies always accused me of dying my hair, sometimes they confronted my mom.
This was an excellent conversation. Thank you!
oooh another descripter i never gave much thought to was the "tall, dark and handsome" male in books. apparently the "dark" is in reference to them having dark hair, not dark skin - i always assumed that this description meant the character was of a darker complexion and would be confused when they eventually turned out to be white and brunette rather than of a different race. i always appreciate your video topics, thanks for making the content that you do!
No it means olive skin
@@purplelove3666No, not olive shin, it mean misterious, dark aura but definitely white white.
I heard it from my grandmother and considering Poland is 99.999 % white never got in my head anything but dark hair.
@@IzabellaRequiem When I visited Poland most people I saw were dark haired. I don't like blonde hair so maybe that's why I never really noticed any blondes.
@@IzabellaRequiem I always read it as olive-to-darker skin tones plus dark hair.
When I was in kindergarten we did a nativity play and I really wanted to play the angel but my teacher told me I couldn't be the angel because "angels are blond" (i have dark hair & eyes). And that stuck with me and I'm still bitter about it over twenty years later
I got told that too when I was little & it's messed up.
Now I am also bitter on your behalf
That’s insane and stupid. Sorry you went through that
Fun fact: In the bible the angels hair colour is never mentioned. Also all angels are described as very tall strong males. It was pedophile catholic artists who painted angels as fat blonde babys, thus the association of blonde = angelic.
I’m now tempted to show anyone who says that crap biblically accurate Angel memes to shut them up
Thank you for speaking on this topic. It was extremely eye opening to how I perceive things and why I’ve been struggling with accepting my own dark blonde/brown hair color. I appreciate the work that you’re doing!
i was one of those blonde children. when they put brown as my hair color on my first drivers license i was like OH
Fr
God the way the grass is always greener on the other side is truly wild. I have curly blonde hair and blue eyes and I spent my entire childhood and adolescence DESPERATELY wishing I had darker hair, eyes and skin (I'm the type of blonde with a PINK face, visible veins all over, and straight up clear eyebrows). I hated how I looked so much and I was so self conscious about it for years. My childhood best friend was also a blonde but she starting dying her hair brown when she was 13. It's insane how little any of this _should_ matter, none of us have a say in our genetics and the fact that physical traits get politicized is the actual dumbest thing ever.
I was a curly blonde kid who turned red as a teen, and I always wanted straight long jet black hair 😭
“The fact that physical traits get politicized…” was a BAR
Blue eyes with dark brown hair is the most attractive combo.
I've done a bit of reading into the experiences of Finnish immigrants in America in the early 20th century due to my family and a fact I find interesting, that also feels relevant, is that mining companies in the midwest campaigned to have Finns added to the Asian Exclusion Act. A lot of Finnish immigrants were socialists who had a tendency to unionize, and the way people decided to deal with that was by trying to _legally_ remove their status as white people. Ultimately, it was the fact that most of them were BLONDE that kept them from being turned away when trying to immigrate to the U.S.
The definition of “white” has changed so much over the years. Really makes white supremacists look even stupider
the american slur for finns was china swedes lol
Remember that the Irish (probably the most white of all Europeans) also weren't considered white at certain point because they were poor immigrants
Thank you for sharing that! As a blonde American due to my Finnish heritage, this is highly entertaining.
I would say that you are dark blond. And as a Scandinavian, I can tell you that you’re not alone - there are tons of us here where I grew up! I think it comes down to how the sun shines through your hair, and there is a huge difference between brown hair (this will have a dense brown colour in the sun, and it seems like the sunlight can’t shine through it - it’s opaque - makes sense?), and dark blonde, which seems kind of transparent in the sun - makes sense? Also, notice other hair on your body, which will often be a giveaway. Either way, your haircolour is beautiful; and I can tell you from personal experience that the ‘mousy grey’ you’re talking about transitions very nicely into grey - it’s awesome 🤩. Wear your colour with pride!
Here's an additional perspective from a naturally blond Scandinavian American. Starting at least hundreds of years ago, to be "blond" meant more than just a hair color. It also meant to be of a specific phenotype which included pale skin and light colored eyes as well. So, if someone was considered blond and even if their hair darkened as they aged, they were still considered a "blond." Another reason is that, and this may be difficult to explain, but even darkened blond hair is still of a specific "blond" type, which is different from brown hair type, even of the same "shade" or degree of shade.
I see so many white women posting on the color analysis subreddit asking if they should be blonde or their natural darker hair color... and without fail the darker natural color almost always looks so much better on their features 😭. The chokehold blonde has on y'all is such a disservice - obviously ppl should do what they like! But so much of it comes from social pressure and ideals of beauty/status/white supremacy rather than wondering what really will make them shine. At the end of the day blonde is just a light brown. All human hair colors EXCEPT RED are basically just variations of brown.
This was so interesting because it’s like the opposite of what’s happening with the natural hair community, how those with loose curls are being told they don’t have curly hair, and all the racial stuff that goes along with it
Wow, this made me reconsider how I describe my own hair color as a Latina. My hair is brown, no denying that, but it’d had always been emphasized by my parents that it’s not just “brown” but “golden brown”; they never wanted me to think it was a “dull brown” or god forbid “black hair.” Now as an adult and realizing how incredibly colorist my parents were (and still are), they likely didn’t want people to associate my hair with the black hair of indigenous Mexicans, but cling to the Spanish aka white parts of me as a Mestizo (Spanish-Indigenous mix) that makes my hair “lighter” and “golden brown”. I realize I at times don’t want people to call my hair black, but couldn’t figure out why… now I clearly see. It was practically trained in me and I’ve never questioned it until now, putting it together. :( Edit: typo
this video was really insightful and well made, thanks for making it! :)
I'm so glad that I found you! I was so shocked how differently people are treating me since I don't get any highlights anymore. Even my own cousin made a weird statement that Im no longer belong in the category blonde and Northern. And I was like "ah okay. If you say so?!" Im literally having green eyes and white pale skin but since Im no longer as blonde as I was at a child I'm no longer Northern. It is a little identical crisis but I genuinely love my current hair.
I didn't really see the point until I realized that no one ever asks for black hair in casting calls. They ask for blonds brunettes and redheads, but black hair? They'd more likely be specified by race, which definitely gives 'othering'.
Maybe it's because they mostly want white people and black hair is very rarely found in white people. The only white demographic I know of that sometimes has black hair is people with Irish or Celtic ancestry, like Katie McGrath, Ian Somerhalder, Aidan Turner, Matthew Goode, Henry Cavill. AFAIK anthropologists call(ed) it the North Atlantid phenotype and it's pretty specific to the regions in or around the British Isles. So - if you want a white actor but don't want to specify white, it's easier to just ask for a blonde or a brunette. (Though I did find it funny when the black girl in the video complained that she's not considered brunette by white people, I was like... Gurl it's because your hair is not brown, it's black.)
If I ask for someone naturally ginger, I dont have to mention that they're white. If i ask u to bring me a black haired person, but you know i envision someone specific for a role, you're gonna wanna know more, cause black-haired people can be of any decent. Like 96% of the time, other-haired people can't.
@@pengcodes there are naturally black gingers. There are naturally black blondes. Google is your friend.
@@Koki-hc3mw At the end, I said: 96% of the time, people that aren't black-haired are white. I don't even mean 96% of the not-black-haired population, but literally random people you'd see on the street. So I know about that. But since this is so rare, you would mention it. If i want to cast someone for a role, but it needs to someone who is naturally blonde but black, I would say so, because most Blonde people are white, and almost everyone in western society will never meet someone who is naturally Blonde but not white..
Probably why I find my fiance soo attractive. His dark hair colour is sublime to me. 😊
I'm no hair expert, but I'm sure Marilyn Monroe and AnnaNicole Smith, and later Princess Diana? Britney Spears and Taylor Swift played a big role in this phenomenon. Not to mention Elizabeth Holmes and her charismatic personality. If she wasn't anything but a blonde haired blue-eyed woman, she wouldn't get away with all the fraud she got away with. Add Dolly Parton to this list. I don't know if she's a natural blonde or not, but her hair is very distinct
oh yes tay tay is the modern person who’s brand is being blonde. but she has more respect than a lot of the other ones
Britney is the EPITOME of blonde to me. I wonder if that’s part of why we all cared so much when she shaved her head🤔
I know Taylor more for her curls than blonde hair. I adore her locks
@@risxrathat was explicitly part of the reason she wanted to shave her head. she said she knew her value was tied to her hair and she was sick of it.
@@risxra One of the most shocking facts I learned from Britney's memoir is that she's not a natural blonde--she has dark hair like her mother!
Very interesting video but one thing that always got me is, red hair is rarer then blond so why isn't it put on a pedistal as well
For many it is but often fetishized
I'm a redhead. We have the same issue. I was born red as a carrot, but over the years, my hair became darker and now auburn. The issue is that if you are not "fire on head," you are "not a redhead," even if your hair clearly has redness. So I was stuck in this limbo of being the "wrong redhead": duller than what many perceive as red, but still not brown either. People just deny you exist. Learned it the hard way when the colorist burned my hair trying to bleach it to platinum blond. Ask me - you are still a blond, just not a "societal expected blond."
I had a stylist give me white hair because she left the bleach on too long. I’m dark blonde, but some identify me as brunette. She left the bleach on waaaay too long for a natural blonde. We exist! 🌸
As someone who grew up in alt subcultures, blond hair politics is so foreign sometimes because for me, the point of me dying and bleaching is 1) fun and 2) for the end product to look artificial so this video was like seeing a whole new world of hair politics
I feel similarly! I am familiar with the topic - the fact that I used get natural blonde highlights in the summer before I started dyeing my hair has made me part of it. I always bleach my hair, and platinum blonde is one of my favourite hair colours to sport. But I'd never pretend that's my real hair colour - because bleaching it is the point! If my hair is pink or red that's obvious, but when I have it blonde, myself and my dark eyebrows will gladly tell you I went through the trouble of bleaching it to achieve this look.
For real lol. And honestly I'd rather dye it purple or something that stands out more than regular blonde
If you're white and from a country like the U.S., Canada or England being alternative doesn't shelter you from the blonde/brunette discussion. Where are you from and how old are you that you have no idea about this? I'm 33, from the U.S. and was always part of alternative subcultures and was inundated with this discussion from media, classmates, etc.
I grew up with bright blonde hair that is now a darker blonde. I identified with being blonde a lot because I liked disproving the stereotypes. "Yes I am blonde, but I am smart" sort of mentality. As someone who doesn't dye their hair, I think the biggest difference in treatment I've noticed in my personal experience was length of hair. When I had a buzzcut, people were more intimidated by me I think, when it was short bob, it was all pretty neutral, and now that it is long, I get noticeably more attention from people than I used to. The hair women have displays class, can be praised or disapproved due to the perception of beauty by others, along with having the racial biases implied as you mentioned. My biggest gripe in the blonde debate is I've tried searching for natural blonde hair when evaluating haircuts and I've noticed how few actually natural blondes pop up. I think the lack of natural blonde hair being shown reinforces platinum blonde as the only possible blonde hair color. Having said all that, I think it's easy for natural blondes to want to gatekeep blondeness because it's rare and makes them feel special. To me, if it's even slightly yellow in light, you can be called a blonde whether it's natural or artificial. It's not worth having a crisis over and you can always change it nowadays.
I'm a brunette and always have been but your observations on hair length are almost exactly how I've experienced it as well. I grew up having very long hair, like I frequently sat on it long hair, and I was always told how "pretty" it was. Even when it wasn't its healthiest or needed a trim it didn't matter it was long and that was the point. When I had a bob people would comment on how "healthy" or "easy" it was. I've had some variation of a pixie for a decade now and no one calls my hair pretty. It's "bold", "cool", "a statement", "memorable" but never pretty. It's honestly fascinating how we think about different hair lengths and colors societally.
Exactly! "Natural blonde" is actually a due color, apparently. "Scandinavian blonde" does bring up seemingly natural light blonde people, but it's so difficult to find even one more central European-like or Slavic blonde (golden instead of whitish-yellow). "Russian blonde" is apparently some kind of wig. So annoying! Especially when imho many Americans haven't even seen natural dirty blonde, only the dyed or bleached ones. Much easier to find it in older movies, btw.
This has been my experience too! At school I was furious when blond jokes were made and always wanted to disprove the stereotype (I’ve since learned that if people actually think hair colour denotes intelligence that says far more about them than it does about you!) and also find it hilariously maddening when trying to search up natural blond hair inspo online, only to be met with salon results (which are lovely, but not what I want!)
@@tymondabrowski12hair bleaching is extremely common amongst Scandinavians starting at a young age. In the old days, they used to wear blonde wigs.
My hair is probably a level 5 (medium brown), and when I lived in Morocco I had people discussing whether my hair was red or blonde. It was so fascinating. I have never once in my life considered myself blonde but compared to a community that generally had hair darker than mine, it was interesting to see their perspective. It was also a whole other thing with my hair being seen as prettier because it is smooth/straight which I did not like the discourse around
Having blond hair and light eyes is perceived as being part of the beauty standard, which means, kids with these traits receive a lot of compliments about their “pretty hair” or “pretty eyes”. It’s obvious that people feel better receiving these compliments, so when they get older and lose the compliments, they just bleach their hair to keep getting the compliments. Now, if you want to get into why this is part of the beauty standard, you’re going to have to read a lot. We should also ask ourselves why do we have beauty standards
This is so interesting because I’m in the UK and have never felt this. Actresses like Jean Simmons and Vivien leigh and the ‘raven haired beauties’ was always considered the beauty standard. Even famous novels like ‘Rebecca’ where her raven hair made her stand out among others
@@dthompson5234 I never said that people with dark hair were not considered as pretty, they are, but we know that being white is the beauty standard, and being blond is the whitest you can get… I just said kids get compliments about their blond hair and light eyes, which is a fact. Movies and the media always used colors to pass certain messages, like using hair color to make someone stand out in a certain movie, which is common and doesn’t correlate to what I said in my comment. Back in those days, dark hair was the best because of the black and white movies, so it took time for them to be able to make blond hair stand out. But at the same time as Jean Simmons were famous we had Marilyn Monroe in a movie called “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (do I need to say more? 😂). This movie came out the same year TV started having color. Twiggy is British and is considered the first high fashion model and she is blond. If you take a look at the most famous British models, most of them are blond. It’s funny how you say you never had that but the women that represent the beauty standard in the UK are blond. If you begin in the fashion industry, you’ll understand that being blond is something they look for in models, and blond people that are tall have higher chances of becoming a model. But even if they were all dark haired, blond hair and light eyes are still perceived as being part of the beauty standard, and the UK is one of the countries where that is very obvious. If you said Japan or India your comment would make more sense, but even in these countries, blond hair gets loads of compliments
Châtain is used to define brown hair. "Brun" in French is meant to stand for much darker hair, which is probably why this person was corrected. "Dark blonde" is lighter than châtain (I'd know that since I'm a dark blonde to my hairdresser, and châtain to most other people who care a lot less). You can be châtain clair or châtain foncé - it's all brown. Maybe Google Translate isn't a great source.
How interesting! Maybe English needs more nuanced terminology like French.
@@rhythmandblues_alibiI've been thinking about this - even though I know what Tiffany is talking about re: blondes, the conversation around "brunettes" seems to be about the English language specifically. "Brun(e)" in French can absolutely make you think of a person of colour, since the lighter/medium brown you'd associate to white people more has its own name.
Agreed, for me "châtain" is more of a marron glacé color, while "dark blond" would be something like old gold.
interesting, what do you think about the "brun" vs "marron" eye colour thing?? Since some French speakers argue that people's eyes can only be "brown" and "maroon" (closest translation, i guess?) can only be found in nature, like chestnuts
@@lostkittenxxHonestly, I've never heard about that argument. It might be because I have blue eyes... But I just generally hear "marron" (which is the colour brown) be used to describe eyes. I feel like "brun" would be used in a poem or any potential good prose, whereas "marron" is a plain descriptor for eyes. It could be a regional thing too.
I know a lot of people who ARE natural blondes, as in, no highlights/hair dye, but who still need things like purple shampoo or who need to wash their hair more than me or itll start to look brown-er either because they arent getting sun on the top of their head or because dust and grease is just a lot more noticable.
that’s me! 🙋♀️ when my hair is freshly washed it is dark blonde but when some grease gets into it, it gets darker. it takes effort for my hair to look blonde even though i don’t dye it or anything
If their hair looks brown without special color treatment products, it's brown. The world would be better if people would stop taking pride in being as far away from "colored" as possible.
My hair also is much blonder straight after i washed it!
That was so good you’re the greatest. I haven’t watched your videos in so long. I’m so glad I did I feel so much peace and contentedness hehe
I was born blonde, but much like you, my hair got dark. I love being blonde, & i always go for an ashy tone. & it also feels so weird to have my hair dark which is what i’m currently doing rn
my hair is somewhere in between as well (light ass blonde as a child) and I've been calling it brown but my partner (whose hair I would describe as super dark brown, almost black) insists I'm "basically blonde" and he's "normal brown". it's wild how our perceptions of hair colour can be so different!
When I moved from New York to Wisconsin, I went from having dark brown hair to having black hair, according to the people around me.
In Game of Thrones, the two most powerful houses, the Lannisters and Targaryens, have blonde and platinum hair respectively
Yes but that has to do with both the historical inspiration and the metaphorical animals corresponding to each house. The Targaryens are platinum/silver blonde because they're otherworldly, magical, unnatural. The Lannisters are golden haired because lion's manes are often golden. The Starks are dark haired because wolves most often have a black coat of fur on the top of their bodies. Also, because at the time the war of the roses started, the most prominent Lancasters at play were blondes while Edward IV (York) was dark haired. That's it.
@@liv97497I dunno, I feel like Lannisters are more yellowish than golden. Not much of a meyallic quality there, maybe only Jaime has golden hair. All still pretty and blonde, of course.
@@liv97497 "The Targaryens are platinum/silver blonde because they're otherworldly, magical, unnatural." Oh yeah, that 100%. explains it. They're platinum blond/e because they're magical, that's certainly not the thrust of the entire video.
@@themetr0gn0me In the books they are described as having silver hair and purple eyes.
@@themetr0gn0me because people don't have silver hair and purple eyes in real life, babes
This is so healing. Thank you!
For me its also the fact that my grandmother who died when i was really young was blonde. Her and I are the only blondes in our family. I feel that our hair color is another thing that connects us.
I've always seen blond hair as a negative part of myself. As a kid as early as elementary school, I was on the receiving end of dumb blonde jokes and the like. As soon as I could dye it, I did. I remember being a kid and hoping my hair would darken with age, so that people wouldn't think I was dumb, and have only recently started to like my hair.
same! All the dumb blond jokes made me really insecure as a child!
Exactly! I don’t think it’s always just been positive experience for blondes.
Yeah, my experience was really similar. I clearly didn't fit with all the positive blonde stereotypes, so I just got made fun of for every little mistake that I made as a "dumb blonde". I didn't have to deal with that stereotype as much when I started needing glasses (typical) and it's part of why I never transitioned to contact lenses. Now that I'm older, my hair has darkened (I like to think it has acquired a patina, like bronze) and I love the colour, and I don't get the blonde jokes anymore!
You tiptoed around it but I think we need to consider the blonde = youth association being deeply rooted in our own unconscious culture of anti-aging.
Ageism and pedophelia. In the 80s I liked to read ads about finding a partner and many men stated in these ads that they were looking for a Kindfrau, which is the german word for childwoman. They also referred to Marilyn Monroe as a childwoman. It's badly masked pedophelia in my eyes.
As a black woman, I find this subject fascinating. I’m sure that someone has commented this already, but for us direct parallel is hair texture. Many of us, especially in a certain age group grew up, straightening our hair chemically and did the grow out process. Our “blonde” is a silkier and looser curl pattern. It can be privately devastating to some when we finally reveal our actual textures and it doesn’t look the way we had hoped or expected. (this is obviously not the case for everyone please don’t come for me in the comments- and of course love yourself and who you are) This Eurocentric mindset clearly has done damage to all of us that have to participate in it. Hopefully we can be the generations that make things better.
Ive had people look at my pictures as a child and actively argue with me that it isnt me, as they have put 2 pictures next to each other and say theyre different people. When I was young the sun would bleach me white in summer and by mid-winter I edged to darker and darker blondes, then next year I was ridiculously bright. When we moved away from the coast the sun-bleaching effect ebbed where I now go from very dark brown to not as dark. I used to dye my hair orange, pink, and blue, now I've just been seeing how long I can get it so I've been avoiding dying and straightening. A lot of my self-image and confidence was in my hair, but losing the lot due to medication kicks you out of that brutally. I've got it to waist length now, but my confidence isn’t as tied up in it anymore, for which I am thankful for, as hard as it was to experience.