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Those glasses aren't fooling anyone (at least not those who don't know better), Norma Jean. But keep them on anyway...Speak slowly, I'm blonde.
For, though very beautiful, with large grey eyes and the hair the colour of ripe corn, the heroine of a thriller is almost never a very intelligent girl. Indeed, it would scarcely be overstating it to say that her mentality is that of a cockroach — and not an ordinary cockroach at that, but one which has been dropped on its head as a baby.
Blondes are dumb.
This can take two forms.
One is where she features as The Fool, The Ditz, or even the Brainless Beauty.
The other is where she contrasts to a smarter brunette; while she can be as foolish as when she doesn't have a foil, she can be just noticably less smart. (If the brunette is, say, the Hot Librarian, the blonde can be of average or above average intelligence.) Or the blonde may be less worldly-wise and consequently show less judgment; extreme cases can make her the Cloudcuckoolander.
This can range from a Love Freak, to a sweet, wholesome blonde whose lack of interest in education only shows she is more concerned about people, to a vacuous, mean-spirited and often lazy bimbo, to The Vamp operating more on cunning than on intelligence.
The Dumb Blonde may lack experience or just be naturally dumber, or she may have decided to skate through life on her looks, leaving intellectual pursuits to the darker-haired women because she does not want to spend the effort to cultivate her mind. It may be even a deliberately cultivated act, to appear in need of help before men. Whatever the reason, she tends to be scatter-brained.
Very prone to subversion now, with the characters who assume the blonde is foolish paying for it dearly. This may be a form of Obfuscating Stupidity, with the blonde playing off the stereotype, or she may have both strengths and weaknesses, and the blonde hair causes characters to overestimate the weakness and underestimate the strengths.
Arguably an Undead Horse Trope.
Oddly enough, this trope seems to apply to bottle blondes more than natural ones. Perhaps dyeing her hair is a sign of her natural shallowness, or it's one of the ways that she tries to get out of doing any thinking, studying or other action to develop her mind.
(When the blonde is innocent rather than stupid, the trope is Hair Of Gold.)
Examples
Anime
- Sailor Moon and Sailor Venus. (Sailor Moon manages to get blond-pure and blond-ditz in the same character.)
- Mihoshi, the Dark Skinned Blond from Tenchi Muyo
- Male example: Gourry Gabriev of Slayers.
- Takuya from Animerica, whenever he's not being shy or Badass
- Naruto.
- Vash the Stampede pretends to be this as Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Cutey Honey is a borderline case, because she's only blond in civilian ID (and not in live action). Ditziness (and whether it's real or Obfuscating Stupidity) also varies depending on the version of the character.
- Misa Amane from Death Note. Then again, near to L or Lght pretty much anyone would look dumb by proxy.
- Feliks/Poland from Axis Powers Hetalia is a perfect example... he needed someone to turn the table while he was standing on it to screw in a ligthbulb.
- Poland was still smart enough to buy time for Lithuania to pull his Crowning Moment Of Awesome in the Battle of Tannenburg, buying Liet time while Prussia was pointing a sword on him. That, and the whole series pokes fun at stereotypes of all kinds; his supposed stupidity is actually played for laughs, and nations with other hair colors can be just as dumb (re: Italy, a brunet who's pretty much The Ditz).
- Launch from Dragon Ball Z, in her" Normal" mode, or what can pass as normal.
- She's more of an inversion, since she's a lot smarter when blond (in addition to being stronger and more violent).
Comic Books
- DC Comics example: Dumb Bunny of the Inferior Five is typical, but with superhuman strength.
Fairy Tales
- Goldilocks combines both the innocence and the folly associated with blond hair.
Fan Fic
Film
- One of the earlier movie examples would be Jean Harlow's character in Dinner at Eight. When she mentions to Marie Dressler's character that "I was reading a book the other day," Dressler literally stops in her tracks in astonishment.
- Played with in Legally Blonde: The heroine is less dumb than unambitious and naďve, and when she discovers her hidden depths, she does become a force to be reckoned with.
- Cindy Campbell in the latter Scary Movie films; she is just as dim in the first two films, but was originally a brunette.
- Most of Anna Faris' roles, most recently Observe and Report, probably fall under this. At last count she has played a dumb blonde in at least seven movies (three of them as the lead character) and a recurring dumb blonde on Friends. Faris doesn't only play ditzy blondes but she has a reasonable claim to be the (living) actress who most embodies this trope in her roles.
- Marilyn Monroe in most of her roles, especially together with the brunet Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is more of a subversion. She's not as smart as she thinks she is but she's a hell of a lot more intelligent than she gets credit for. Add in the Howard Hawks factor and his massive Ho Yay tendancies, combine with this film and you have some very interesting results.
- Monroe got stuck in many of these roles. However, she was not only fairly sharp, but at least somewhat witty: She once told a director it was okay to film shots that didn't show the whole head, since it was already established before that the actor had an entire head.
- Besides, she was not originally blonde
 ◊.
- Jayne Mansfield was also extremely smart (she was a talented amateur violinist with an estimated IQ in the 160s) and got stuck with this in her roles.
- Judy Holliday frequently played this type, belying an impressive real-life IQ of 172.
- Blonde and Blonder, a female version of Dumb and Dumber starring Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson, the latter of whom is yet another actress who specializes in dumb blondes.
- Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion: The two main characters are dim, but loveable blondes with a snarky brunette foil.
- Karen Smith, by far the dimmest character in Mean Girls, is a blonde. In fairness so is Regina George, who is fairly sharp - at least in terms of manipulation.
- Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane. Apparently, even the Greatest Movie of All Time isn't above this.
- Buttercup in The Princess Bride; she also has Hair Of Gold.
- Inverted in the movie version of My Favorite Martian: The vain, shallow Brainless Beauty is played by the brunet Liz Hurley while the smart, likeable, funny Girl Next Door love interest is played by the blond Daryl Hannah.
- Subverted in Superman III. Pamela Stephenson's character displays all the traits of a dumb blonde when other people are around. When she's alone, though, she likes to kick back and read philosophy. Interestingly, the actress herself tired of playing blond comedy bimbos and is now a psychologist.
- Nicole Kidman plays a rare outright villainous Dumb Blonde in To Die For. Rarer yet, she is also the main character.
- Rocky Horror is a male example of this. He's also a nearly literal example of a Brainless Beauty (he's only got half a brain, folks).
Literature
- Luna Lovegood, the only significant blond female among the main cast of Harry Potter, isn't exactly dumb, but she's a world-class Cloudcuckoolander.
- She's occasionally shown to be surprisingly smart. (She is a Ravenclaw, after all.)
- Joy Chant's Red Moon Black Mountain features an entire race of Dumb Blondes.
- Tawny the inept succubus from Succubus Dreams, the third book in the Georgina Kincaid series. Although, by the end of the book, it is revealed that at least some of her stupidity is an act.
- Subverted heavily and deliberately by Dr. Sarah Winchester, aka Trigger of the Seekers Of Truth; being blond himself, the author wanted to make a blond woman the most intelligent member of the team.
- Olivia Ryan from The Clique.
- Subverted in Douglas Hill's ColSec Trilogy: The one blond female character is Samella, who's an empath, a Wrench Wench, and described as average-looking.
Live Action TV
- Goldie Hawn on Rowan And Martins Laugh In
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer set out to subvert this trope with the titular character; she comes off on first acquaintance as a stereotypical Dumb Blonde, but turns out to be a clever, wisecracking Action Girl. On the other hand, many of the villains and minor characters (most notably Harmony and fifth-season Big Bad Glorificus) played the trope straight; and Buffy herself, though savvy and intelligent, was a mediocre student and not nearly as brainy as her redheaded friend Willow.
- Glory? Really? She had plenty of negative traits like vanity and arrogance but she didn't really come across as dumb (superficial, yes, but not dumb).
- Also an inversion of the "smart brunette, dumb blonde" variant. Buffy is about average intelligence, and somewhat sophisticated compared to her superficial rival Cordelia, who acts as The Libby for most of the series. Cordy eventually joins the main cast in season two, but doesn't become truly capable until she leaves and joins the spin-off Angel The Series.
- Not exactly. While Cordelia wasn't shown as a strong character, her Hidden Depths were hinted at. She's good at standardized testing, scored high on the SAT, and is repeatedly good at manipulating people. Despite her repeated mocking of the more 'nerdy' characters, she's shown staying after school to get extra help from her teachers, at one point commenting that she has too many thoughts, but can't organize them well. If you're paying attention, you know that Cordy isn't stupid long before the spin-off, but it's not until Angel (and even then the second season and beyond) that she really develops into an obviously likable and intelligent character.
- Buffy also wasn't the worst student ever. While she doesn't do much of the work and has no qualms about cheating off other students, she gets good scores on tests (Giles was floored by her SATs), and a few of the more positively-portrayed teachers say that they see "potential" in her.
- On 30 Rock, Brainy Brunette Liz stands in contrast to dumb blondes Jenna and Cerie. Both Jenna and Cerie have occasional flashes of being smarter than they initally appear, but overall follow the trope.
- Chrissy on Three's Company
- The "dumb blonde smart brunette" trope is inverted in Sabrina The Teenage Witch where the blond Sabrina is an intelligent, nice Cool Loser and the infamous Libby has black/dark brown hair. One of Libby's Girl Posse is a dumb blonde, though.
- In one episode, a cleaning spell goes wrong, resulting in the black-furred cat Salem turning white. The response:
Salem: I'm blond! My IQ just dropped 20 points!
Zelda: (indicating the three witches in turn, then Salem) Blonde. Blonde. Blonde. Dead.
(Salem jumps off the table)
- Kelly Bundy on Married With Children.
- Well and truly inverted with Samantha Carter in the Stargate Verse.
- Later spoofed by Rodney McKay:
McKay: I wish I wasn't so attracted to you. I've always had such a weakness for dumb blondes.
Sam: (Looks shocked for a minute, then glares) Go suck a lemon. (Exits)
McKay: Sexy. Very, very sexy.
- Also inverted in CSI Miami, where brunet Natalia is the less intelligent one (relatively speaking) than peroxide blond Calleigh.
- Amanda on Ugly Betty.
- Also, in Yo Soy Betty La Fea, Patricia Fernández (whose dumbness was in a Ted Baxter style), and Aura María (who was simply ditzy and a bad judge of character). Averted with Catalina Angel, one of the smartest, sweetest and most sensible characters, who is peroxide blond.
- Averted on Desperate Housewives. You'd expect the bitchy and stripperific Edie to be brainless as well, but she's as bright as the other housewives (definitely brighter than Susan) if not the brightest. Lynette is also blond and clever. However, most of their intelligence goes into manipulating people in bizarre situations.
- Sketch actress Carol Wayne specialized in playing this type on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, as with the Matinee Lady in the "Art Fern Tea Time Movie" routines. Even on those occasions when she chatted with Johnny "as herself" she affected this persona.
- Several dimwitted blondes turned up on Friends over the years (Ross briefly dated one) but the two most prominent recurring ones were played by veteran dumb blond character actressess Christina Applegate and Anna Faris.
- On The West Wing, Lt. Jack Reese breaks a $400 ashtray (for submarines) to show Donna why it costs so much money. He wishes he hadn't done it and says to Donna (jokingly), "It's... 'cause you're blond."
- As that quote implies, Donna neatly and completely subverts the trope through the entire series, often entering into heady debates with her boss and winning more than half the time because of how smart Josh is about not-politics.
- In That '70s Show, Laurie Forman is a dumb blond persona; might also be considered the skanky blonde.
- Jessica Simpson portrayed herself as one of these in MTV's Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.
- Really, Jessica has played one of these in pretty much everything she's done.
- Yeah, 'played'...
- On Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, Victoria Jackson frequently played this type.
- Averted by Loni Anderson's Jennifer on WKRP In Cincinnati. (The character supposedly was originally written as a stereotypical Dumb Blonde, but Anderson refused to take the role until she was reworked as smarter and savvier.)
- Terri on Glee, as well as her sister Kendra. The other main blond characters, Sue and Quinn, meanwhile, have fairly normal intelligences. However, all of them follow Blondes Are Evil.
- This troper thinks that Brittany plays this trope straight the most. She had difficulty finding her right arm...
- Played oddly straight (though possibly accidentally) on Robin Hood with the Too Dumb To Live Kate. Even more strangely, the actress was a natural brunette. For them to have actually dyed a woman's hair in order to make her a blonde, and then portray her as such an idiot that there was serious fan speculation that she had a mental disorder, led to several Unfortunate Implications.
Music
- Julie Brown's "'Cause I'm a Blonde".
Theater
- Galinda from Wicked fits this trope, at first anyway. When Elphaba writes home and tries to find a word to describe her roommate, all she can come up with is "blonde".
- Holly from both the movie and musical versions of The Wedding Singer is both slutty and slightly dim. However in the original movie, Julia herself was intelligent with Hair Of Gold in contrast to Robbie's stupid brunet ex, Linda. The musical reverses Julia's and Linda's hair colors, with Julia a Brainy Brunette / Girl Next Door type and Linda an even bigger Dumb Blonde than Holly and dabbling into Blondes Are Evil.
Video Games
- Viva Pinata has an item called the Weathergirl Wig. It's a blond wig. The description says, "It decreases the wearer's intelligence by 50%, but apparently, [blondes] do have more fun."
- Colette from Tales Of Symphonia, hardcore foolish Messiah Pollyanna Love Freak.
- Angel Trainee Flonne from Disgaea
- Flonne is closer to Hair Of Gold than Dumb Blonde, really.
- Her introduction begs to differ:
- However, this is completely subverted by Gordon's sidekick, Jennifer. It came as a complete surprise to this troper.
- Miki Hoshii from The Idolmaster. When she gets serious, though...
- Berri the Chipmunk, Conker the Squirrel's now deceased girlfriend from Conkers Bad Fur Day, is a sterotype of this trope. She couldn't recognize Conker when all he was wearing was a caveman's hat, but she does disable an alarm system toward the end of the game though, but I think it was part of the Matrix parody heist level; she and Conker were the only two in the room at the time to use for the cutscene.
- Candy from Space Colony ticks all the boxes, blonde? Yep, cheerleader? Apparently. Oppressed with shopping? Yes. Dumb? Definitely.
- Rock from Harvest Moon. He's, well, dumb as a rock. Muffy may count at times, but she's more naive then dumb.
- Cassandra in the Soul Calibur series behaves in a slightly ditzy, clumsy and purportedly cute manner.
Webcomics
Web Original
Western Animation
- In Beauty And The Beast, Belle is contrasted to three blond bimbos.
- Inverted in This Troper's local amateur society who did B&B where due to a shortage of blondes, the very blonde Belle was contrasted by three brunette bimbos
- Melody Valentine on Josie And The Pussycats
- She got her start as a comics Dumb Blonde.
- Bubbles on Jabberjaw
- Brittany from Daria, although she is smarter than her Dumb Jock boyfriend, Kevin. Quinn might also qualify (she's a redhead, but still clearly fairer than red-brunette sister and foil Daria) save that she isn't just dumb; she puts on an act because she thinks dumb cute girls are more popular than bookish brains (which she has the potential to be - and when she does unlock such potential, it's seen that she'd better stay that way).
- Nurse Bendy from Moral Orel shows a more depressing side to the stereotype in Season 3 revealing that Nurse Bendy is often mistreated (not to mention being possibly sexually abused) for being a pessimistic dumb blonde. It isn't until she is reunited with her equally unintelligent son, Joe that she finally finds someone who accepts her for who she is in quite a heartwarming fashion.
- Lindsay from Total Drama Island is pretty much the definition of this trope.
- As is Jillian, Brian's ex-girlfriend from Family Guy.
- Luann Platter, Hank and Peggy's niece from King Of The Hill.
- Miss Information and Lucky Bob from Histeria.
- Posey in Mission Hill acts like the brainless naďve hippie most of the time, but did show a startling flash of business acumen at least once.
- Ron Stoppable.
- Dash Baxter and Star from Danny Phantom.
- Sally Avril from The Spectacular Spider Man.
- Bubbles of the Powerpuff Girls plays just about every blonde stereotype perfectly straight, being both less intelligent than the other girls, being more upbeat and having more fun, on average. Of course, that doesn't mean she can't still be the heroine of the story.
- Bubbles appears to have gotten the short end of the subversion stick, as brawny Buttercup and brainy Blossom have hair to the opposite of their tropes...
- Nazz from Ed Edd N Eddy is this. She's a bit smarter than she appears, but that isn't hard.
Comedy
- This trope is endemic in German-speaking comedy. This is possibly due to the fact that the German word for dumb, "blöd", is spoken very similar to the word "blond." And, of course, "blauäugig" (blue eyed) is used as a synonym for "naive".
- Double Subversion: A ventriloquist is performing a routine with his dummy, telling a series of dumb blonde jokes. Suddenly, a well-dressed platinum blonde business woman stands up and says "How can you judge people based on their hair color? It has no bearing on intelligence!" The ventriloquist says, "Lady, please, I just-" The blonde snaps, "You stay out of this! I'm talking to that jerk sitting in your lap!"
- Cal of Undergrads, a male example.
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