<drnick>Hi, everybody!</drnick>
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As the saying goes, gender is a construct. But what does that mean, exactly? I think there is a very elegant way to explain the nature of gender politics as an ecological context for the development of gender identity and gender performance, and it boils down to: dumb blondes.
Obviously, the term ‘blondes’ could also refer to men with pale hair, but in general, it is safe to say that the term ‘dumb blondes’ is expected to refer to female and woman-presenting people. And in the way we think about and treat blonde women, I dare say, we Westerners might unravel a level of understanding that can rival even that of practitioners of Daoism, with its explicit masculine/feminine dynamics.
How can this claim be demonstrated? It is very simple.
The dumb blonde is a trope (read: a passageway between reality and fantasy) in American culture. There’s a movie about the experience of being ‘one of the blondes’ that just came out about, named Barbie. I might see once it’s streaming, but based on its trailer, I know that it touches on the subject of blondes being attributed with a lesser intellect — often with the implication that they’re living life in easy mode.
Within American culture, the blonde has a history of being imbued with attractive yet safe energies; after all, ‘gentlemen prefer blondes’. And racialization of blondeness as a sign of exotic Aryan ancestry is indeed one means by which a woman being naturally blonde can be put on a pedestal and reduced to an inhuman reflex-causing genie, witch, or fembot.
But I want to change focus away from the eugenics stuff for a moment, and just focus on the lived experience of the blonde. Because it is in the existence of the dumb blonde trope that all blondes become practitioners of game theory.
The blonde woman or AFAB is aware that their personhood both exists and doesn’t exist in many or most situations. The accessibility of their true nature is in flux, by virtue of this quality that is, generally, not perceptible to them (certain hairstyles excluded). Thus, their interactions with others have a quality of playful or violent intensity that involve a constant negotiation of their humanity and objectification.
Whether a particular woman who is blonde is dumb or playing dumb in a particular moment of perceived dumbness is not as important as the awareness that the dumb blonde trope exists. In this experience of stereotype threat, much like the East Asian student who feels social pressure to be good at schoolwork external to their actual ethnic culture, the existence of a game can be found.
And when operating by the rules of such a game, self-awareness becomes the chief currency. And a blonde woman may find her way to cleverness by ‘playing dumb’ as expressed in such notions as expressed in Proverbs 17:28:
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
There is a way for a blonde woman to lose the ‘dumb blonde’ meta-game — and that is to break the fourth wall and actually demonstrate that she is not a fool about playing dumb. The most notable example of this, in my mind, is from when Pamela Anderson spoke out in offense to women who find themselves trapped in non-consensual sexual situations. It is not shocking that a woman who was such an iconic cultural representation of the dumb blonde trope would either lack the self-awareness to avoid saying what ‘everybody knows’, or (much more likely) would be successful at monetizing her own suffering by playing the role of the martyr.
Similar principles also apply to anyone perceived as a woman, but the dumb blonde trope throws the dilemma of sexual desire and objectification into Stark relief, while emphasizing the agency of the blonde. It is via exercise of this sort of agency that gender is constructed.
Anyway — ladies, gentlemen, and others: have at it. Enjoy your beverage of choice!
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