First of all, I am not blonde.  I have been, but it was a mistake and I was not good at it.  I think being blonde is an attitude.  Marilyn Monroe knew how to be blonde.

I am a brunette.  I am excellent at being a brunette.  My period of being blonde, came as a result of 'highlights gone wrong.'  I learned quickly that people treat you differently when you are blonde.  For example, I had the hardest time convincing the salesman at a gardening store that I understood how to use 'weed and feed.'  It was like he really didn't believe that I had used it on my lawn before, quite successfully, and he truly doubted that I could succeed without adult supervision. I thought for a while that he wasn't going to sell it to me.  Then there was the washing machine repair man who refused to charge me; you had to be there, but I think it was because I was blonde.  There are too many incidents to name, but it was more than I could handle.  I don't like being perceived as 'not that bright' or helpless.  It's insulting.

I read a cool quote from Dolly Parton recently.  She stated that she is not insulted by 'blonde jokes.'  Her exact words were: "I know I'm not dumb and I know I'm not blonde."

I have a favorite short story by Kurt Vonnegut,  Jr.  It's called "The Lie" and it's about a wealthy married couple who are trying to get their 13 year old son accepted into an exclusive prep school called Whitehill.  Sylvia Remenzel and her doctor husband are obsessed with their son's acceptance.  They are in denial about their son's intellectual capacity to function within such a challenging school and the father tries to bribe the administrators.  He feels compelled to do this, ALL the men in his family have attended Whitehill for generations.  Eli, the son, is completely humiliated when faced with the headmaster and his own deceit in hiding the school's rejection letter from his parents.

But, the mother, Sylvia, is a bit more pragmatic; she's a realist.  She was not born, as her husband was, "with a silver spoon" in her mouth.  I picture her as a blonde and beautiful trophy wife.  But she is not compliant!  When her husband tries to keep her 'in her place,'  as Vonnegut describes her: "Sylvia enjoyed arguing with her husband about her lack of reserve and his excess of it, enjoyed saying at the end of arguments like that, 'Well, I guess I'm just a simple-minded country girl at heart, and that's all I'll ever be, and I'm afraid you will just have to get used to it.' "

Sylvia knows how to be blonde; she works it.  I admire blondes and I like blonde jokes.  I get the concept of 'having a blonde moment.' But, I have never forgotten the bumper sticker I saw years ago:

"There's NO such thing as a dumb blonde."

January 31, 2009, Saturday

Karen in Tennessee

Just a Simple-Minded Country Girl