Blonde brunettes

What do many brunettes considered to be great beauties have in common? They're naturally blond, or have gone from light brown to near-black. Consider Olivia Wilde. Leigh Lezark. Rooney Mara. Jennifer Lawrence. What does it all mean?

-Because it's expected that women will go for hair shades lighter than whatever nature gave them, in order to look conventionally prettier/sexier, a woman who goes darker is making a statement: 'I'm alternative,' perhaps, or 'I don't care what people/men think of me,' or 'I'm something of an intellectual, and don't sleep with just anyone.' Or: 'I'm so pretty, nothing I do can detract from this, sorry guys.' It's the opposite of what a woman who bleaches/highlights her naturally dark hair is indicating. It's the opposite of a miniskirt or pushup bra.

-Conventional beauty standards are - and I realize I'm the first to remark on this - racially biased. Women who come from the blonder countries, or whose features have something in common with those common to those countries (see: Halle Berry), are considered more attractive, at least by the powers-that-be. Hair color itself is only a part of what 'blonde' is about. It's also blue eyes, a tiny nose, etc. (Not that no blondes ever have giant schnozzes, no brunettes blue eyes, etc.) Yet the brunette 'type' - its myriad significations - remains a draw for some, remains a quality of some fictional characters. A blonde with dark hair is a brunette without those inconvenient traits: 'ethnic' facial features, a curvy build. Thus the casting agent looking for a 'brunette' is inclined to cast a blonde.

-The ubiquity of the blonde brunette poses a problem for women with naturally dark hair, when we look for style/beauty inspiration from the usual sources. It's also a bit dispiriting, in a Photoshop kind of way, that the celebrities we're meant to view as our representatives look not only better than we do, as we'd expect, but also different. A Greek, Sicilian, or Armenian woman simply does not look like a Swedish woman who's gone goth- or librarian-chic.

-None of this, of course, is intended as a condemnation of blond women who dye their hair darker. From what I understand, having blond hair basically amplifies the often creepy reaction women, esp. young ones, get from strangers. That, and I'm enthusiastically in favor of self-expression-through-self-presentation, especially of the non-permanent, non-surgical varieties. No one should, as an individual, have to justify choices to go blonder or darker, curlier or straighter, etc. My point is merely that a societal expectation that a pretty brunette is a blonde with dyed-brown hair a) exists, and b) isn't so great for we the naturally dark.