December 17, 2007
On Being Blonde


To be blonde is a state of being. There are some, a few, who have no choice. Like others into greatness, they are thrust into blondeness, and whether they want it or not, they walk among us blonde and glimmering.

The rest of us, though, we have to choose to be blonde. Nature gave me what is most kindly called “honey” hair. It’s not brown, it’s not blonde. It’s not dishwater. It’s a not-unpleasant color that defies being placed into any hirsute lexicon. It’s not unattractive, but it’s not blonde.

With enough sun and time, salt and chlorine, lassitude and exposure to harmful ultraviolet rays, I can become blonde as a volleyball competitor. I am like a Malibu Barbie; my skin turns a happy toasty marshmallow tan and my hair becomes as gloriously striated as a tulip, given enough sun.

This hair is a form of serendipitous blondeness. Accidental blondeness. The kind of blondeness out of reach of anyone but the very young and the very wealthy. It hasn’t been mine in a very long time, so to be blonde, to be truly blonde, I have to turn to chemicals and to Randall, my hairdresser.

I bring this blonde point up because most of my life I have been a dedicated blonde. There was a brief spate of time in the early ’80s when I dyed my hair Audrey Hepburn red, a shade that my father still willfully refers to as “orange,” when it was not orange, not orange at all. But aside from that month I spent as a redhead, I have been blonde, blonde as a pin-up, blonde as a golden retriever, blonde as a Nazi child,

In my teens, I would dedicate my free summertime lying in the sun-in a pasture, by the water, on a roof, anywhere, really-one squeeze bottle of water to cool me off, another of a concoction of lemon, hydrogen peroxide, suntan oil, and chamomile tea to spray intermittently in my hair to make it blonde.

I would lie naked, my teen limbs in their altogether nakedness, before my tattoos, before my implants, before my scars on wrists, on ribcage, on abdomen, and I would pour pure hydrogen peroxide on my pubic hair until I turned the uniform gold of a Persian raisin. I was a body of blondeness-my skin was marshmallow blonde, my hair was tulip blonde, my pubic hair raisin blonde, my body hair the white blonde of sunshine made tactile-I was blonde from nip to tip, top to bottom and all the naughty crevices in between.

Later, when those long summers of indolence were ripped away from me, I highlighted my hair. I’d have it pulled through plastic caps with a crochet hook, or painted and folded into foil packets careful as camper’s food. I stressed over the unwanted appearance of my roots; I tried every kind of product to keep it blonde. To be blonde was a source of great pride and great anxiety, for at any moment it could be taken away from me.

Books have been written on blondeness, and I can’t do much more here than pluck a hair from this big blonde powerful skein. It has a strange power, a gravitational pull. We get sucked into blondeness. It pulls us in, almost beyond our wills to defy it. Look at any starlet, for she or he will testify to the inexorability of blondeness. Mythic blondeness: there are few who can resist its siren song.

In part because to be blonde is to have power. It is to stand out in a crowd (though of course simultaneously it is not). It is to wear a neon sign blinking “Look At Me!” on your head. It is to mark yourself as an object. It is to willfully join the pantheon of blondes-Aphrodite on the clamshell, Marilyn, Jayne, Madonna, Pamela, Brad, Jessica, Britney. It is to announce that you are more than your mind.

If not less.

For years I defined myself by my blondeness. While I was stripping I was blonde. I had that long flowing Breck-girl blonde hair. I had the hair of a shampoo ad. It hung to my ass in one smooth blonde sheet, and it was perfect. I treated it better than antique dealers treat old lace. I was the ür-blonde, and my perfect blondeness helped me quiet, however momentarily, the incessant whirling hamster wheels that went round and round ceaselessly incessant in my head.

Blonde I was for years. For years, 42 years, actually, I was blonde. I thought of myself as a kind of quintessential blonde, vocally championing for blonde rights-our right to be smart, our right to be assertive, our right to be adult-as much as I simultaneously enjoyed the privileges of being blonde. I both chafed at the baggage of blondeness-the catcalls and the objectification-and laved myself with its perks-the attention and the objectification.

And then I went on a reality show and I had my ass-length hair chopped short and died Teri Hatcher brunette. To look at myself in the mirror and see this other person, this brunette, was disorienting. It was me and it was not. I was this Other, this nut-brown woman who smiled when I did, but didn’t too because she was not blonde like me. I hated it.

I wanted to go back to me, to my long blondeness, to the person I’d been and all that was golden and familiar. I wanted nothing more than to return to the blonde landscape, its plains and golden waves of grain. I could not-it was gone, for one thing, and I couldn’t keep chemically frying my hair for another. I couldn’t return. And then I found I didn’t want to.

I found that people liked it. They complimented me, which helped me see the better in the brown. Then I found that brunette I had freedom I didn’t have as a blonde. I wasn’t as visible, maybe, but in hovering just below the radar, I had the space to have people notice me, what I said, how I carried myself, what I did, before they judged me on the excess of my hair.

I felt sexier brunette. I felt more authentic, somehow. I found that I liked my hair and in liking my hair I liked me too. I wasn’t trying to forget who I was or trying to be someone I wasn’t; I was enjoying the person I’d become, and that was really quite cool.

Obviously, the change my haircolor didn’t change me as much as my change in color coincided with fulminating change in me. But somehow seeing this brown self helped me realize who I’d become-or who I was becoming and how becoming it was-because of its stark visible change.

I’m no longer that Desperate Housewife brunette, but I’m not the golden apple blonde of yore either. I’m somewhere in the middle, and it’s very cool. I’m thinking I’ll never go that blonde again.

Redhead, though, that’s an idea . . .


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