Issues with: Everyone Loves Blondes

The description seems to be 9/10ths Hair of Gold, only with complaining; and 1/10th "Blondes are over-represented in fiction". The contrast with Girl Next Door is especially jarring (Betty would beg to differ).

The example list aspires to be a list of all blonde characters in fiction ever.

Can someone involved in the YKTTW clear up what this trope is supposed to be?

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Everyone Loves Blondes found in: 55 articles, excluding discussions.

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edited 20th Jan '11 11:35:28 AM by TripleElation

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I believe that this is an existing trope, that blonde hair is treated as a step above other hair colors, in terms of beauty, but the examples are really random.

Maybe it should be limited to things like animated works where the same face with blonde hair is treated as more beautiful, when the only blonde in the cast is treated as the epitome of beauty, or when a beauty upgrade involves a blonde dye.

Yeah, I think this could be a trope: blonde hair is treated as more attractive than any other color. But the description as it is now needs some work and the examples are awful. It's basically a list of characters with blonde hair. I think this should be limited to works where this is made explicit or possibly works where out of equally attractive characters, only the blonde ones are treated as attractive in-story.

Yeah, Blonde as a short hand for more attractive is definitely a trope, even if it's one I personally disagree with.

Fight smart, not fair.

I think it would be a good idea to shift the definition to something closer to "character is regarded as more attractive because they are blonde (or character is regarded as less attractive because they are not blonde)" rather than "blondes show up a fuck of a lot in fiction and tend to be positively regarded." At the very least, it would make it easier to write examples for.

"If there's a hole, it's a man's job to thrust into it!" — Ryoma Nagare, New Getter Robo

Make sure there's a reference to in work examples.

Fight smart, not fair.

We'll need to really pin down what we mean by "regarded". Does the Sweet Valley High example count?

We might end up calling works out on this trope when the case is just Informed Attractiveness+character happens to be blonde. The Beautiful Makeover equals Blonde Hair Dye thing definitely qualifies, though.

edited 20th Jan '11 6:04:22 PM by TripleElation

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Or something like Legally Blonde that has a big speech on how being blond is a responsibility because it makes you hot.

edited 20th Jan '11 6:16:34 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think there is a trope here too, but I think that the current description might be a bit vague. From what I can tell, some of the examples on the page also do not really describe how they fit the trope (and look like listing shows with casts that have many blonde-haired people in them) which indicates to me that the trope might need some work.

I think that "having many blonde-haired people in a series' cast for a specific reason" is a trope, but just "having a disproportionate number of people with blonde hair in a series' cast" does not seem like a trope to me. I think some of the examples are just the latter, but Your Mileage May Vary as to whether I am making any sense here.

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

Wouldn't know, having never read the series, but I'm thinking of about a number of girl-aimed YA books that feature a wangsty spiel by the protagonist about how she's sooooo ugly compared to Girl X because Girl X is blonde and the protag's a brunette.

[Annoyed brunette that wasn't previously aware that her decidedly not-blonde hair is supposed to mean that she's hideous by conventional social norms. Or that stupidly sexy-fine Catherine Zeta-Jones and Romi Park are too. Because really now...]

edited 21st Jan '11 5:28:02 PM by Sparkysharps

"If there's a hole, it's a man's job to thrust into it!" — Ryoma Nagare, New Getter Robo

I started, independently from this thread, a YKTTW discussion under the name of Blonde Is Better to gather examples of when blond(e)ness is treated as being more attractive than other hair colours, much like Buxom Is Better is about "more boobage" = "better looking".

As for Everyone Loves Blondes, it seems like a list of works which have more blond(e)s than would be statistically expected of its setting, and/or that avert blonde-related tropes. But examples like video games set in fantasy worlds where blond hair is very common (FFXII at least) is just dumb. And lot of the examples are X Just X.

A number of examples are pretty good for Blonde Is Better.

edited 16th Jun '11 8:35:30 AM by peccantis

I think it should be cut. This page claims to be different from hair of gold. Hair of gold is supposedly about character, but reading that page it seems to be just as much "Blond is pretty" so much as "Blond people are good" and doesn't complain about it. Then we have Blonds are evil, and you know what that is? A trope. This page is not.

Likewise with cookie cutter cuties, which I'm also for cutting out of the wiki. This doesn't even have a lot of "inbound links" for people who worry about that sort of thing.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

This doesn't need to be cut. There's a valid trope buried under the complaining. Though yes, the examples are pretty much just Hair of Gold.

Maybe Hair of Gold should be redefined? IMO it's not really ok to contain both

• blondes are prettier and
• blondes are nice and loveable

because both are such huge tropes :/

I think the description is pretty clear. The character is blonde to show they are happy, fun loving and successful. Hair Of Gold is when the blonde hair symbolises innocence and purity while this is probably a bit related to that but to me it seems like a combination of what I said above and people preferring to cast blondes because they are more distinctive.

Just another point as well. I'd say Hair of Gold would be for more classical literature like fairytale princesses and Victorian ladies back when blonde hair was rarer. And Hair of Gold does seem to be for natural blondes as well. More modern characters would fit this trope and it can apply to dyed-blonde hair as well.

edited 6th Jul '11 4:20:47 PM by blueranger

peccantis, I wouldn't have a problem with seperateing Blonde Is Better from Everyone Is Blonde. I'd say that even in video games set in fantasy worlds where blond hair is very common might be relevent because are there games where all the character have blue hair? Or red or brown? If not it's like the bias casting. If they do do the same thing with other colors then it's just a random thing and should be ignored. That's right blueranger. If anyone who knows what I was getting at would like to edit it then I wouln't mind.

peccantis: Hair of Gold arrives at "blond is beautiful" by way of Beauty Equals Goodness. We should have probably have "blond is beautiful" as a standalone trope too, but we definitely shouldn't remove it from Hair of Gold; it's a very old archetype and beauty is a part of it.

In general: I'm actually seeing three trope ideas present in Everyone Loves Blondes as it is currently written.

• There's "blond is hotter/more desirable" (All Guys Want Blondes?)
• There's "disproportionate number of blondes for the setting" ( Everyone Is Blond? Blondes Are Everywhere?), which I'm not 100% certain is a distinctly tropable concept; it might be better imagined as some sort of general eye-candy-trumps-ethnography trope.
• And then there's what blueranger mentioned, where blondes are "happy, fun-loving, and successful", which has been written about as the Power Blonde; that's a totally valid trope which draws on the idea of blonds being more attractive, but shouldn't be lumped with it as it has a lot of other stuff going on; it's why Buffy is blond, incidentally.

Anyway, I guess what I'd do is keep Hair of Gold as is, rework Everyone Loves Blondes to be exclusively about the desirability of fictional blondes in-universe, and YKTTW the Power Blonde concept separately.

edited 7th Jul '11 5:37:56 PM by Bailey

Hair of Gold is the older trope. Everyone Loves Blondes was I supposed added later to cover blonde popularity that was not covered by Hair of Gold.

Bailey, I never thought of it being three tropes. Well, keeping in mind that the three of them can overlap (maybe guys can want blondes because they are happy, fun-loving, and successful) I would second the changes you've proposed.

The "disproportionate number of blondes for the setting" would defy the Real Life fact that the genetic allele governing the occurrence of blonde hair color is recessive, and thus naturally blonde-haired people are uncommon in comparison to other hair colors aside from red, whose associated allele equally recessive if not moreso.

Are there any leftover issues? Or is it okay to lock this thread?

edited 11th Jul '11 4:55:38 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

There have been a lot of suggestions to split the page and we haven't seriously discussed any of them.

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Good? Thanks for everyone's help but I think we can close this thread now.