May 1, 2013 • 35 mins
Do redheads have it worst? Listen in to learn more about history's original "dumb blonde" and how yellow hair took on its various meanings -- including how and why hair color colors our perceptions of people.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we're tackling the question do
blonds have more fun? And we're gonna talk about all
hair colors, especially because well, we're not going to talk
(00:25):
about gray I take that back. Yeah, we did an
episode a while ago focusing on gray hair and Melano
site activity. Yes, and for this episode, we're really hunting
in on what's the deal with blonde hair, hair color stereotypes,
why we associate different characteristics with different hair colors, especially
(00:47):
on women, and talking about brunettes and redheads as well. Yeah,
because because you and I are a bunch of dark
haired gals. We you were your hair is really dark,
and mine I've been it. I've been trying for years
to join the ranks of the gingers that God read.
The hair dye fades fast, does it? Yeah? I did
(01:08):
a maroon hair dye in high school, early high school. Allah,
angela chase for my so called life. But that's the
most adventurous. Oh and I got highlights. I got blonde
highlights in tenth grade. Really, yes, I will never do
blonde highlights in my dark hair. I've I've been a blonde. Well,
(01:29):
I was born with white blonde hair. Like I had
white blonde hair until I was about ten, and then
it started to fade to a brown. And so then
in high school I was blonde. I was my normal color,
and then I was a redhead. But I've never gone
black because my hair stylist told me it would wash
me out. Now, the fact, though, Caroline, that you were
born with that really, really blonde hair and had it
(01:50):
when you were a kid is one of the reasons
why we might value blonde hair differently than we value
brunette hair. And just to kick things off, I've got
a quote from Victoria's Sharrow, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Hair,
a Cultural History, and she writes, throughout most of human history,
(02:11):
blonde hair has been considered attractive and alluring, possibly because
this color is associated with gold and light, two things
that people consider valuable and desirable. And blondes are statistically
a lot less common than brunettes, right, and so are redheads,
but people just don't seem to trust redheads for some reason.
(02:33):
But for millennia, people have been changing up their hair
colors because clearly, we put so much value in this
color of our hair. Yeah, this goes back, as it
typically does, all the way to the ancient Egyptians and
Middle Eastern folks. So those women color their hair with hannah,
(02:54):
a practice that is still pursued now. And hannah is
derived from the dried leaves and stems of the hinnu shrub.
That sounds so fancy covering your hair with a shrub
and to cover gray hair, hold on for it. Egyptians
mixed oil with the blood of a black cat. Oh dear,
oh dear, I glad that technology has improved for hair
(03:17):
dying um. In ancient Rome, hair dyes were also very popular,
and historians have found more than one different recipes for
dying and bleaching hair. For instance, there was a Slate
article from two thousand and ten that offered this Roman
concoction of goat's fat mixed with beech wood, ashes and
vinegar and a little bit of saffron to get their
(03:42):
hair all blonde. Well, men were doing this to the
Celts and the Vikings. Those dudes used bleach to create
pale blonde beards. In Babylonian, Abyssinian and Assyrian cultures, men
dyed their facial hair black I guess to look more youthful,
strong strong men black beard, uh, and men in ancient
(04:02):
Persia used Hanna as well. And since we're really focusing
a lot on the blonde hair thing in this episode,
the Greeks were the first to praise bleaching techniques and
to record their strong beliefs that lighter hair color signified
here we go in a sense superior social standing and
sexual desirability. And that sexual desirability thing is takes on
(04:25):
a couple of different positive and more negative connotations for
the Romans. Yeah, because you mean the Romans thought blondes
or prostitutes. Yeah, well they actually were, because prostitutes in
the Roman Empire either dyed their hair or wore wigs,
although blonde hair later became a respectable marker of upper
class women. So it's interesting to me how blonde hair
(04:47):
has been cy cyclical since the very beginning. You're either
upper class and rich, or you're a prostitute, or maybe
you're out of fashion, but then you're in fashion again,
and then you're a prostitute. Yeah. Some people actually think
that there was a Roman in law at one point
that decreed that prostitutes had to wear blonde wigs, and
so some wonder whether or not that's where the whole
(05:08):
idea of blonde's quote unquote having more fun came from.
Although I think that's taking a little bit of creative
license with history well, because it also had something to
do with slavery. Light hair became fashionable after Greek culture
reached Italy and the Roman legionnaires began bringing back fair
haired slaves from gaul with you know, those those frenchy people.
(05:30):
Um wealthier people sprinkled gold dust on their hair, as
did the ancient Phoenicians, and to color gray hair, Romans
used a mixture of ashes, boiled walnut shells, and earth worms.
I wonder what would happen. You know how YouTube has
all of those those bloggers that will do the you know,
like this is how you do your hair. I think
(05:52):
that we should do a show taking finding those one
hundred plus different recipes for dyeing bleaching hair from ancient
Rome and make them and put them, maybe not on
our hair, maybe on the mannequin hair, yeah, mannequin hair barbies,
and see if it works. Because I think that ash
has boiled walnut shells and earthworms would be pretty easy
to come by, Caroline, I'll let you crush the earthworms.
(06:14):
We could call it ancient Roman salon hair. I'll think
of a better name, okay. Um, blonde and medieval Europe
couldn't get a break. Really. The Roman Catholic Church condemned
women in this time period who bleached their hair, and
up until the late fourteenth century, many Europeans regarded blonde
hair as provocative and a symbol of female seductive mom
(06:36):
See here where you go back again from the oh
your prostitute, if you have blonde hair, No, you're a
fashionable upper class woman. No you are a witch. No
you are too seductive. Meanwhile, though in China and Japan,
dark hair was highly exalted. Um in seventeenth century England,
(06:58):
dark hair became more desirable than blonde hair for women,
and this trend start in the early seventeenth century when
French artists were painting in classical styles, and if you
look at a lot of those paintings, they depict darker
haired women rather than blondes, and women who bleached your
hair or use blonde wigs were Here we go again
for the flip, now seen as low class or unfashionable.
(07:22):
Can you win as a blonde You can win for
about a hundred years sounds one hundred years at a time.
I think, I think we're in a pretty neutral blonde
hair period. It's pretty acceptable to have blonde hair, as
we will discuss indeed um But as far as coloring
your hair and the way that women did it, we
move forward to the early twentieth century when we start
(07:43):
getting a lot more technology, and granted it it tended
to be a little painful at times the way that
they used chemicals and heating and all that stuff. But
in nineteen seventeen, the double process technique to create blonde
hair hair was developed, and this is where people who
color their hair will be familiar with it. Natural color
is stripped and then the new color is applied. And
(08:04):
then in the nineteen twenties, a small French company, Murray,
created a formula that enabled color it to penetrate the
hair shaft rather than just coding the outside. So we're
getting more of these technological hair developments, and in the
nineteen fifties, women are really able to take hair coloring,
for better or for worse, into their own hands with
home hair color kits to become more popular. Claire Al,
(08:27):
for instance, develop new products that helped change these attitudes.
And it's interesting that in the earliest ad campaigns for
Claire Al, they really emphasize the value of blonde hair
for women. For instance, in some of their nineteen fifties campaigns, uh,
they had taglines such as, is it true blonds have
(08:48):
more fun? If I only have one life to live,
let me live it as a blonde. And as you know,
the new blonde woman is probably pushing a vacuum cleaner
finding lots of fulfillment and our new hair coulor uh
well yeah, I mean, all these ads served to try
to make coloring your hair a more acceptable, socially acceptable practice,
because how are companies like claire All going to make
(09:10):
any money if women and men still perceive coloring your
hair to be sort of a taboo topic. And it's interesting,
considering that dicey history of blonde hair, that they really
did use the value in attractiveness of being a blonde
to sell that. But this also is coinciding in the
(09:31):
nineteen fifties with the popularity, for instance, of Marilyn Monroe
and Jane Mansfield. These blonde bombshells who are setting screens
on fire all around the country and the world. Really
um and moving on in the nineteen seventies, more women
are becoming more open about using hair color. They start
(09:53):
getting highlights like I did when I was in tenth grade,
and an increasing number of men start doinging it as well.
So might remember the old school Grecian formula. And now
there's just for men. Yeah, got, yeah, it's just for men,
although still more taboo for men to admit to coloring
(10:14):
their hair. Yeah, because guys can become silver foxes stately,
you know, whereas women just become old old gray heads. Well,
speaking of old gray heads, about of the people who
use hair colorants today do so to conceal gray hairs
associated with aging. I'm not there yet. My melana site
(10:36):
activity is still strong, all right. Yeah, and so I
color my hair just because of vanity. Turns out also
that baby boomers are more likely to dye their hair
than any previous generation. So clearly those advertisements in the
nineteen fifties from Claral and Loreal did wonders for making
it socially acceptable. And speaking of the nineteen fifties, we
(10:57):
have had hair color habits rise each decade. So in
the nineteen fifties, about four to six percent of American
women admitted to doing it. I guess that's just admitted
to doing it. We don't know, it's self reporting, he knows. Okay.
In the nineteen seventies that number jumped to more than
forty percent, and moving up to two thousand four, fifty
one to seventy percent of American women had colored their
(11:20):
hair at least once, and as of two thousand, hair
coloring products have become a one billion dollar per year industry,
and uh, you know, men contribute a lot to this
as well. In two thousand two, for instance, sales of
men home hair coloring products reached almost one fourteen million dollars,
(11:40):
and about one in every twelve American men was coloring
his hair, most of them thirty to fifty years old,
either single or divorced. And of course we have the
rise of teens like myself coloring their hair. About thirty
percent of us teams started using hair color by the
(12:01):
twenty one century. But getting back to the whole blonde thing,
because now we have with this hair color technology, it's
so easy for us to choose whatever hair color we
want and just go with it. And when it comes
so to um the popularity of blonde hair in the
(12:22):
US in particular, we got to talk for just a
second about Ms Norma Jean All. Marilyn Monroe was, as
many people probably know, not a natural born blonde. Yeah.
In as the story goes, she went into the Salonda
have her hair done for a modeling shoot, and the
tent technician straightened what she called Maryland's brown and kinky hair,
(12:46):
and the strong solution lightened her hair, making it a
reddish blond. And so you'll see in some of those
early Maryland modeling shots that her hair actually has a
nice reddish tint to it. And there's a lot of
people who say a lot of lore that says, you know,
she didn't want to do it, They made her do it,
but she came back and wanted to become a blonde,
and over the next four to five months, that same
technician lightened her hair to her trademark golden Honey blonde.
(13:09):
Another random tidbit about a bottle blonde I was not
aware of, and this is coming from Joanna Pittman's book
on Blonde. Princess Diana reportedly spent thirty six hundred pounds
per year to stay blonde. Is she brunette? I think
she had had darker hair. But the woman that we
(13:31):
can probably thank for the popularity of redheads right now,
I don't know if she was your inspiration, Caroline, but
I know that Christina Hendrix, star of Mad Men, had
really ignited a red hair craze. But she was originally
a blonde. She was She started coloring her hair at
(13:52):
the age of ten. And you know why, listeners, because
she was a huge fan of Anne of green Gables.
As if we needed another reason she loved Stina Hendrix.
She dyed her hair because of Anna green Gables. Now
I'll take pictures of Christina Hendrix to my colorist and
she's like, you realize your hair is not that light.
If you want to become the carrot top Christina Hendrix color,
(14:15):
you've got to like completely strip. And I'm like, oh
my god, that's so much upkeep. And then I just
see dollar signs everywhere and I'm like, you know what,
let's just let's just color on top of my hair.
And this is why I argue that wigs should be
more socially acceptable. Sure, then you wouldn't even have to
worry about it. But now let's get into more of
the sociology of hair. Why hair color it makes such
(14:39):
a difference, and these stereotypes and perceptions that we have
about the color of people's hair, especially of women's hair. Yeah,
Jodie Manning of Western Connecticut State University in September put
forth the idea that our culture, American culture, puts focus
on the individual, emphas sizing that appearance is a public
(15:01):
display of one's values and beliefs, and that includes your hair.
So what women do to their hair, how they color
it sends a message out to the universe, and researchers
began studying what that message might be in the nineteen seventies,
which coincidentally was when we really saw that big uptick
uh in women coloring their hair at home. But yeah,
(15:23):
researchers first began investigating our perceptions of hair color on women,
and the initial findings suggested that people found brown hair
the most appealing, and that's among men and women alike,
followed by blonde, then red, then artificial blonde. And in
the study that Jodie Manning did in two thousand eleven,
(15:45):
she showed students pictures to judge of women with different
colors of hair and also different links, like a brunette
with long hair versus brunette with short hair, et cetera,
and she found similarly that brunettes with long hair were
considered to be higher maintenance than brunette's with shorter hair,
who were perceived to be smarter. So short brunette hair
(16:07):
smarter than long brunette hair, okay, yeah, and then red
heads with short hair were judged to be hapvier than
redheads with long hair. So I guess after I come
home from the colorist, I am unhappy looking, but going on.
Blondes with long hair are perceived to be also higher maintenance,
but more attractive than blonds with short hair. And interestingly enough,
(16:31):
they also asked about femininity and the African American women
with black hair, both those with natural curly hair and
those with straightened hair were perceived as the most feminine,
followed by blondes who were perceived as less intelligent. Yeah,
the whole stereotyping of blondes as incompetent, the whole dumb
blonde meme um is something that's really persistent and a
(16:54):
lot of studies on hair color and perceptions um. For instance,
Jodie Manning in her study sites at two thousand six
study called hair color Stereotyping and CEO Selection in the
United Kingdom, and those researchers found that blondes were underrepresented
in corporate leadership, possibly due to stereotyping a blonde as incompetent,
(17:15):
and that is something that affects women not so surprisingly,
even more so than men in the workplace, of just
seeing a blonde woman in the workplace and assuming just
right off the bad she's not going to be great
at her job. Well, just as they're underrepresented in the boardroom,
they are overrepresented in magazines. And Manning also cited a
study that examined hair color of models in Ladies, Home Journal, Vogue,
(17:39):
and Playboy from the nineteen fifties all the way to
nine nine and came to the conclusion because blondes were
so overrepresented that society's beauty standards didn't actually represent the population.
Are you surprised, christin Conga? Yeah, But at the same time,
though it puts it still puts blondes as this kind
of feminine ideal, and that heteronormative construct of blond's being
(18:05):
more sexually desirable is driven home again and again and again,
as demonstrated by this series of articles from the past
three years, starting with blonds out at clubs. So let's
say you're a guy who is into women and you
go out to the club and a woman approaches you.
(18:27):
If she's blonde, brunette or redhead. Does the hair color
make a difference. Well, according to Veran Swammy's study published
in December and the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, oh yes
it does. Yeah. They looked at women who went to
clubs with their hair dye blonde, brown, or red, and
the blonde was approached the most often. The second part
(18:49):
of the study, though, had men looking at pictures of
the same woman with different hair colors, and in this
case they said that the brunette was rated as more
physically attractive, intelligent, approachable, competent, and arrogant, whereas the blonde
was rated as needier. And yet the blonde was the
most approached, which is kind of an interesting twist. Also, though,
(19:12):
men rated redheads as the most promiscuous. Oh dear. Now
moving on, though, blonde hair could literally pay off in
the service industry. This is coming from in August twelve
study published in the Journal of socio Economics looking at
how a woman's hair color might influence customers tipping behavior
(19:34):
in restaurants, and essentially they had a model weight on
tables and switch out her hair color via wigs, and
waitresses wearing blonde wigs received more tips, but only from
male and I'm assuming heterosexual patrons. Waitress's hair color had
no effect on women's tipping behavior. Yeah. Women also were
(19:58):
not influenced by blonde fundraisers the same way that men were,
or blonde hitchhikers. I just love how all these studies
say the exact same thing, but they're just putting blondes
in different scenarios all over the world. So, in a
December two thousand nine study and perceptual and motor skills
in France, women with blonde hair on the side of
the road sticking their thumb up were picked up way
(20:19):
more often than when women with black or brown hair.
When the drivers were men. Women wearing blonde wigs in
France managed to raise more money for the French telethon
banded women in brown or dark colored wigs, but surprised
just from men, just just from the men. But you know,
hair color discrimination actually works both ways. We've talked about
(20:42):
what men prefer, but what about what women think? Uh?
In a study in December twelve, blonde women were more
frequently approached by men in a nightclub. So this is
some of the same people that were involved in the
other nightclub study. So blonde women were approached more followed
by brunette black than redheads when men with wigs approached
women asking for a dance, Though women said yes most
(21:06):
often to men with black hair, then brown, then blonde,
then redhead people looked wrong with you. Come on. Yeah,
there's a lot of redhead discrimination that we'll talk about
in a second, Gingers. But okay, So the theory because
this and this ties in with our previous nightclub study
that we mentioned. But the theory is that men said
that blonde hair looked the neediest, So perhaps they had
(21:28):
the greatest confidence approaching a blonde woman, and you know,
the red head being perceived as the leash shy and
most promiscuous. Maybe they think they thought that they didn't
have a chance and that more contemporary research also drives
with a nineteen seventy eight study which found that men
prefer blonde women, whereas women prefer dark haired men. But
(21:49):
the thing about a lot of this research too, is
that it focuses so much on you know, essentially ask
you the question, do gentlemen prefer blondes? Over and we
and over again and tip to hitchhikers out there and
buy a blonde wig? Um, but also maybe don't hitchhike right,
dangerous p s A over. But I could not find
(22:14):
very much at all focusing on women's preferences to men.
I mean, there's kind of a general assumption that we
just want darker hair. And also, of course no research
whatsoever testing these same kinds of things among gay populations.
So because I was curious to see whether or not
(22:34):
different colors of hair or valued like based on sexual orientation,
maybe that could be a variable, who knows. But this
kind of hard hitting research of interchanging wigs and such
at the diner has not caught up to the LGBT population. Um.
But digging even more into the blonde thing, especially this
(22:57):
idea that blonde women were approached more often because they
appeared needier, I feel ties directly into the whole blondes
are less intelligent than brunette women. The whole dumb blonde
meme and Caroline, I was astounded to find that this
(23:19):
goes back, way, way way beyond Marilyn Monroe to Paris
sent there's this famous French courtesan, Rosalie Duth, who is
so popular in her day that she essentially spawns the
dumb blonde meme when a playwright takes a shine to
(23:41):
her and features her character and a one act play
and sort of satirizes this habit that Rosalie had of
taking very long pauses in conversation. And I kind of
think of her as like the blonde Kim Kardashian of
her day, because she was super famous in Paris at
(24:03):
the time for rubbing elbows with the royals. Obviously she
was a courtisan, and uh, I was just kind of
famous for being famous and for being dumb. Because the
play took off and now she's referred to as history's
original dumb blonde. Wow, what a legacy, I know. And
I guess you could say, though, in the same way
(24:24):
that Marilyn Monrose character and gentlemen prefer blondes, is intentional
with her, uh, let's say, lack of intelligence because she
rides her beauty to the arms of wealthy men, which
I'm not going to advocate for. But you could say,
(24:45):
you know, maybe she's I don't know, playing to her
strengths or something in a in a why am I
arguing for this? I don't know. Well, she has included
on Grant McCracken's breakdown of the six categories of blonds.
This is from Big Hair, A Journey into the Transformation
of Self. He says, We've got a couple of different
types of blondes. Marilyn Monroe is up first a lot
(25:06):
with May West as a bombshell blonde. We've got the
sunny blonde whose Doris Day and Goldie Hawn, Candice Bergen's
brassy blonde, Sharon Stone's dangerous blonde, CZ guest society blond,
and Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly's cool blonde. So what
kind of blonde do you want to be? Just just
choose your choice. Um, I did want to make. The
(25:28):
one note about Gentleman Prefer Blonde is that before it
was a film, Starry Marilyn Monroe, it started out as
a novel that was published in by Harper's writer and
screenwriter Anita Loose, and it was this huge best seller,
and it was all about this blonde obviously protagonists whom
Louse wanted to represent the nation's lowest possible mentality. So yeah,
(25:54):
that that horrible, dumb blonde name just running through through history.
It's really unfortunate, though, I don't know. I feel like
it's because it's obviously like sometimes it's directed at men,
but overwhelmingly it's directed at women, and it usually is
horribly sexist. And I'm friends with plenty of smart blonde people. Yes,
(26:15):
I'm aware of some as well. Yes, But on a
more serious note though, to kind of close things off
on this Hair Color Perceptions podcast, we want to talk
about redhead discrimination because while blondes are perceived a lot
of times unfortunately as more incompetent, and brunettes were just
kind of like, well whatever, and maybe too smart for
(26:36):
their own good. Uh that's speaking in stereotype, not saying
that's actually possible. Um, redheads get the shortest end of
the stick. Yeah, I had no idea before reading stuff
for this episode that there were actual physical, violent attacks
against redheads. I seriously thought it was just like a
joke coming from a South Park episode. No idea that
(26:59):
there was actual violence and a lot of it is
in the u K. It seems to be a very
British phenomenon and the head of Kids Escape, which is
the UK bullying prevention initiatives, so that there's no logic
to it. It's ingrained in some part of our folklore,
she says, Yeah, And that was coming from a Telegraph
article from the past year or two reporting on an
(27:20):
incident when a couple of redheads were beaten up, apparently
just because they're redheads. Yeah. Dr Lisa Wade said that
this could be related to the longstanding antagonism between Britain
and Ireland, that the discrimination against Irish people, who are
typically the percentage of redheads is higher. That this discrimination
(27:42):
then crossed the Atlantic with early Americans, so that it's
just like you know, ingrained in everything. Yeah. And Robert Bartlett,
who's a medieval history expert who was interviewed for that
Telegraph article UM says that the discrimination against redhead actually
dates back to ancient Egypt, where the odds set, who
was associated with earthquakes, thunderstorms and eclipses, was depicted with
(28:05):
pale skin and reddish hair. And um, there's also some
redhead discrimination in ancient Rome, when the gals who were
captured by Caesar were forced to dye their hair red
and learned German in order to signify class rank. And
in the fifteenth century, we can't leave out which witchcraft
(28:26):
redheads were accused of being. Which isn't burned at the steak?
Oh no, so we're obviously evil, I say, weak? Is
I really want to be one of you? And let's
not forget the something that could be perceived as a benefit, Kristen.
A University at Hamburg study found the redheads have more
active sex lives than brunettes and blonds. So redheads get
(28:46):
the last laugh or the last orgasm. There you go.
Perhaps perhaps now the redhead discrimination, though, does break my heart.
I was telling Caroline before we started recording his podcast
that I have a couple of young redhead nephews, and
even at ten years old, they're aware that being a
(29:07):
redhead is not cool. I think it is cool. And
then I responded to Kristen by saying, one of my
first loves was a ginger, So I have a very
soft spot for redheaded boys. Yeah, so I mean maybe
you should advocate for isn't there a hugged ginger day?
Although you know what, I bet. I bet gingers don't
want to be pandered too, because they don't want your pity. Kristen. Yeah,
(29:28):
they get called out for their their hair colors so often. Um.
But let's go though, to wrap things up to our
question that we posed in the podcast title, do blonds
have more fun? Caroline certainly get more stereotypes, it certainly
have better luck hitch shiking. Yeah, I would say that. No,
I don't think blonds do have more fun because they're
(29:51):
having to battle usually negative stereotypes about their intelligence. So no, no,
I'm gonna say the answer is no. Well, I mean,
I guess it depends on your definition, like if if
you want, I mean, look at all these studies and
my papers that I'm jostling about men paying more attention
(30:13):
to blonds. So if that's your definition of more fun,
maybe you should bleach your hair. But is it problematic
though that the reason why, at least according to those studies,
that they're being approached more often is because they're perceived
as needier. Yes, but right, you know, to each his own. Yeah,
And also where are the studies on on burnette perceptions?
(30:35):
I guess it's just like you're everybody. You're all over
the world, everybody's got your hair. You're just You're just
another person. They're not just another person to me. Thank you,
Thank you. Well. Blondes out there, we especially want to
hear from you or people who are perhaps bottle blondes.
Did going blonde change your life in any way? I
(30:57):
don't know? What do you? What do you think are
the hair their stereotypes? Real redheads out there? Have you
been unfairly discriminated against? Let us know all of your
hair color related thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
is where you can send your letters, and you can
also messages on Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast.
And now back to our letters. Well, Kristen, I have
(31:20):
a letter here from MICHAELA about our kids at the
Workplace episode. She says, I found it rather ironic to
see your most recent podcast title because my husband just
dropped my five year old off in my office for
the afternoon while I work. I am fortunate enough to
work for a flexible company that allows pretty much whatever
reasonable concession necessary when dealing with parenting. Today, my son
(31:42):
is here just to enjoy stamping envelopes and playing with
my Stapler. You watch out, Michaela. I I remember in
third grade my my classmates stapling her finger and she
was not five, she was However, you old you are
in third grade anyway, Michaela says. My husband and I
are so looking forward to this fall when our daycare
bill will be cut in half thanks to that five
(32:03):
year old of mine entering the school force. We've been
through four or five different daycares of various quality before
finding our current which is the most expensive but definitely
the best option we've found for our five year old
and two year old. Our daycare bill is higher than
our monthly mortgage payment. I would definitely pay the equivalent
of this for the convenience of on site childcare. It
(32:24):
would have been amazing after having my kids and spending
countless hours pumping bottles for the baby's I was missing.
So thanks, Michaela, and watch out for the Stapler. Well.
I've got an email here from Zara and she wanted
to another perspective on that podcast on childcare at work
(32:44):
and about how Quebec handles things. She writes, since seven
Quebec has had a subsidized daycare system that is seven
dollars per day per child. Not everyone can get a
spot in subsidized daycare, which has led to some employers
building a daycare on the premises or taking an arrangement
with existing daycares to give priorities to their employers over
(33:06):
the general population. People on social Security also get priority
if I recall correctly, so they can go back to
the workforce. If you don't get a place in subsidized daycare,
you can get a refund at tax time if you
go to a non subsidized daycare. Non subsidized daycare is
usually charge about twenty to thirty dollars per day, though
some are more expensive. There's no sliding scale depending on
(33:27):
your child's age. It's the same fee for everybody. A
study published in two thousand twelve showed that subsidized daycare
is actually profitable for the government. Around seventy thousand women
went back to the workforce since the subsidized daycare program started,
for a proportion of seventy of women aged fifteen to
sixty four now working, up from sixty three pc in nine.
(33:49):
As a result, for each one hundred dollars that the
provincial government invested in the program, they received one hundred
and four dollars and the government received forty three dollars.
So apparently subside daycare can be good not only for
businesses bottom lines, but also for Canadian provinces or Quebec specifically.
(34:11):
But yeah, I know that's a that's interesting to see
how it can profit the government as well. So thanks
for that insight to Zara and everyone else who has
written into mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can
also find us on Facebook, of course, follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. We're on Tumbler as well
as stuff Mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com,
and in case you haven't subscribed yet, you can watch
(34:33):
us on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom
Never Told You. We're coming at you three times a
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you're not already busy enough, head over to our website,
it's how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(34:53):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works
dot com. Twe
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we're tackling the question do
blonds have more fun? And we're gonna talk about all
hair colors, especially because well, we're not going to talk
(00:25):
about gray I take that back. Yeah, we did an
episode a while ago focusing on gray hair and Melano
site activity. Yes, and for this episode, we're really hunting
in on what's the deal with blonde hair, hair color stereotypes,
why we associate different characteristics with different hair colors, especially
(00:47):
on women, and talking about brunettes and redheads as well. Yeah,
because because you and I are a bunch of dark
haired gals. We you were your hair is really dark,
and mine I've been it. I've been trying for years
to join the ranks of the gingers that God read.
The hair dye fades fast, does it? Yeah? I did
(01:08):
a maroon hair dye in high school, early high school. Allah,
angela chase for my so called life. But that's the
most adventurous. Oh and I got highlights. I got blonde
highlights in tenth grade. Really, yes, I will never do
blonde highlights in my dark hair. I've I've been a blonde. Well,
(01:29):
I was born with white blonde hair. Like I had
white blonde hair until I was about ten, and then
it started to fade to a brown. And so then
in high school I was blonde. I was my normal color,
and then I was a redhead. But I've never gone
black because my hair stylist told me it would wash
me out. Now, the fact, though, Caroline, that you were
born with that really, really blonde hair and had it
(01:50):
when you were a kid is one of the reasons
why we might value blonde hair differently than we value
brunette hair. And just to kick things off, I've got
a quote from Victoria's Sharrow, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Hair,
a Cultural History, and she writes, throughout most of human history,
(02:11):
blonde hair has been considered attractive and alluring, possibly because
this color is associated with gold and light, two things
that people consider valuable and desirable. And blondes are statistically
a lot less common than brunettes, right, and so are redheads,
but people just don't seem to trust redheads for some reason.
(02:33):
But for millennia, people have been changing up their hair
colors because clearly, we put so much value in this
color of our hair. Yeah, this goes back, as it
typically does, all the way to the ancient Egyptians and
Middle Eastern folks. So those women color their hair with hannah,
(02:54):
a practice that is still pursued now. And hannah is
derived from the dried leaves and stems of the hinnu shrub.
That sounds so fancy covering your hair with a shrub
and to cover gray hair, hold on for it. Egyptians
mixed oil with the blood of a black cat. Oh dear,
oh dear, I glad that technology has improved for hair
(03:17):
dying um. In ancient Rome, hair dyes were also very popular,
and historians have found more than one different recipes for
dying and bleaching hair. For instance, there was a Slate
article from two thousand and ten that offered this Roman
concoction of goat's fat mixed with beech wood, ashes and
vinegar and a little bit of saffron to get their
(03:42):
hair all blonde. Well, men were doing this to the
Celts and the Vikings. Those dudes used bleach to create
pale blonde beards. In Babylonian, Abyssinian and Assyrian cultures, men
dyed their facial hair black I guess to look more youthful,
strong strong men black beard, uh, and men in ancient
(04:02):
Persia used Hanna as well. And since we're really focusing
a lot on the blonde hair thing in this episode,
the Greeks were the first to praise bleaching techniques and
to record their strong beliefs that lighter hair color signified
here we go in a sense superior social standing and
sexual desirability. And that sexual desirability thing is takes on
(04:25):
a couple of different positive and more negative connotations for
the Romans. Yeah, because you mean the Romans thought blondes
or prostitutes. Yeah, well they actually were, because prostitutes in
the Roman Empire either dyed their hair or wore wigs,
although blonde hair later became a respectable marker of upper
class women. So it's interesting to me how blonde hair
(04:47):
has been cy cyclical since the very beginning. You're either
upper class and rich, or you're a prostitute, or maybe
you're out of fashion, but then you're in fashion again,
and then you're a prostitute. Yeah. Some people actually think
that there was a Roman in law at one point
that decreed that prostitutes had to wear blonde wigs, and
so some wonder whether or not that's where the whole
(05:08):
idea of blonde's quote unquote having more fun came from.
Although I think that's taking a little bit of creative
license with history well, because it also had something to
do with slavery. Light hair became fashionable after Greek culture
reached Italy and the Roman legionnaires began bringing back fair
haired slaves from gaul with you know, those those frenchy people.
(05:30):
Um wealthier people sprinkled gold dust on their hair, as
did the ancient Phoenicians, and to color gray hair, Romans
used a mixture of ashes, boiled walnut shells, and earth worms.
I wonder what would happen. You know how YouTube has
all of those those bloggers that will do the you know,
like this is how you do your hair. I think
(05:52):
that we should do a show taking finding those one
hundred plus different recipes for dyeing bleaching hair from ancient
Rome and make them and put them, maybe not on
our hair, maybe on the mannequin hair, yeah, mannequin hair barbies,
and see if it works. Because I think that ash
has boiled walnut shells and earthworms would be pretty easy
to come by, Caroline, I'll let you crush the earthworms.
(06:14):
We could call it ancient Roman salon hair. I'll think
of a better name, okay. Um, blonde and medieval Europe
couldn't get a break. Really. The Roman Catholic Church condemned
women in this time period who bleached their hair, and
up until the late fourteenth century, many Europeans regarded blonde
hair as provocative and a symbol of female seductive mom
(06:36):
See here where you go back again from the oh
your prostitute, if you have blonde hair, No, you're a
fashionable upper class woman. No you are a witch. No
you are too seductive. Meanwhile, though in China and Japan,
dark hair was highly exalted. Um in seventeenth century England,
(06:58):
dark hair became more desirable than blonde hair for women,
and this trend start in the early seventeenth century when
French artists were painting in classical styles, and if you
look at a lot of those paintings, they depict darker
haired women rather than blondes, and women who bleached your
hair or use blonde wigs were Here we go again
for the flip, now seen as low class or unfashionable.
(07:22):
Can you win as a blonde You can win for
about a hundred years sounds one hundred years at a time.
I think, I think we're in a pretty neutral blonde
hair period. It's pretty acceptable to have blonde hair, as
we will discuss indeed um But as far as coloring
your hair and the way that women did it, we
move forward to the early twentieth century when we start
(07:43):
getting a lot more technology, and granted it it tended
to be a little painful at times the way that
they used chemicals and heating and all that stuff. But
in nineteen seventeen, the double process technique to create blonde
hair hair was developed, and this is where people who
color their hair will be familiar with it. Natural color
is stripped and then the new color is applied. And
(08:04):
then in the nineteen twenties, a small French company, Murray,
created a formula that enabled color it to penetrate the
hair shaft rather than just coding the outside. So we're
getting more of these technological hair developments, and in the
nineteen fifties, women are really able to take hair coloring,
for better or for worse, into their own hands with
home hair color kits to become more popular. Claire Al,
(08:27):
for instance, develop new products that helped change these attitudes.
And it's interesting that in the earliest ad campaigns for
Claire Al, they really emphasize the value of blonde hair
for women. For instance, in some of their nineteen fifties campaigns, uh,
they had taglines such as, is it true blonds have
(08:48):
more fun? If I only have one life to live,
let me live it as a blonde. And as you know,
the new blonde woman is probably pushing a vacuum cleaner
finding lots of fulfillment and our new hair coulor uh
well yeah, I mean, all these ads served to try
to make coloring your hair a more acceptable, socially acceptable practice,
because how are companies like claire All going to make
(09:10):
any money if women and men still perceive coloring your
hair to be sort of a taboo topic. And it's interesting,
considering that dicey history of blonde hair, that they really
did use the value in attractiveness of being a blonde
to sell that. But this also is coinciding in the
(09:31):
nineteen fifties with the popularity, for instance, of Marilyn Monroe
and Jane Mansfield. These blonde bombshells who are setting screens
on fire all around the country and the world. Really
um and moving on in the nineteen seventies, more women
are becoming more open about using hair color. They start
(09:53):
getting highlights like I did when I was in tenth grade,
and an increasing number of men start doinging it as well.
So might remember the old school Grecian formula. And now
there's just for men. Yeah, got, yeah, it's just for men,
although still more taboo for men to admit to coloring
(10:14):
their hair. Yeah, because guys can become silver foxes stately,
you know, whereas women just become old old gray heads. Well,
speaking of old gray heads, about of the people who
use hair colorants today do so to conceal gray hairs
associated with aging. I'm not there yet. My melana site
(10:36):
activity is still strong, all right. Yeah, and so I
color my hair just because of vanity. Turns out also
that baby boomers are more likely to dye their hair
than any previous generation. So clearly those advertisements in the
nineteen fifties from Claral and Loreal did wonders for making
it socially acceptable. And speaking of the nineteen fifties, we
(10:57):
have had hair color habits rise each decade. So in
the nineteen fifties, about four to six percent of American
women admitted to doing it. I guess that's just admitted
to doing it. We don't know, it's self reporting, he knows. Okay.
In the nineteen seventies that number jumped to more than
forty percent, and moving up to two thousand four, fifty
one to seventy percent of American women had colored their
(11:20):
hair at least once, and as of two thousand, hair
coloring products have become a one billion dollar per year industry,
and uh, you know, men contribute a lot to this
as well. In two thousand two, for instance, sales of
men home hair coloring products reached almost one fourteen million dollars,
(11:40):
and about one in every twelve American men was coloring
his hair, most of them thirty to fifty years old,
either single or divorced. And of course we have the
rise of teens like myself coloring their hair. About thirty
percent of us teams started using hair color by the
(12:01):
twenty one century. But getting back to the whole blonde thing,
because now we have with this hair color technology, it's
so easy for us to choose whatever hair color we
want and just go with it. And when it comes
so to um the popularity of blonde hair in the
(12:22):
US in particular, we got to talk for just a
second about Ms Norma Jean All. Marilyn Monroe was, as
many people probably know, not a natural born blonde. Yeah.
In as the story goes, she went into the Salonda
have her hair done for a modeling shoot, and the
tent technician straightened what she called Maryland's brown and kinky hair,
(12:46):
and the strong solution lightened her hair, making it a
reddish blond. And so you'll see in some of those
early Maryland modeling shots that her hair actually has a
nice reddish tint to it. And there's a lot of
people who say a lot of lore that says, you know,
she didn't want to do it, They made her do it,
but she came back and wanted to become a blonde,
and over the next four to five months, that same
technician lightened her hair to her trademark golden Honey blonde.
(13:09):
Another random tidbit about a bottle blonde I was not
aware of, and this is coming from Joanna Pittman's book
on Blonde. Princess Diana reportedly spent thirty six hundred pounds
per year to stay blonde. Is she brunette? I think
she had had darker hair. But the woman that we
(13:31):
can probably thank for the popularity of redheads right now,
I don't know if she was your inspiration, Caroline, but
I know that Christina Hendrix, star of Mad Men, had
really ignited a red hair craze. But she was originally
a blonde. She was She started coloring her hair at
(13:52):
the age of ten. And you know why, listeners, because
she was a huge fan of Anne of green Gables.
As if we needed another reason she loved Stina Hendrix.
She dyed her hair because of Anna green Gables. Now
I'll take pictures of Christina Hendrix to my colorist and
she's like, you realize your hair is not that light.
If you want to become the carrot top Christina Hendrix color,
(14:15):
you've got to like completely strip. And I'm like, oh
my god, that's so much upkeep. And then I just
see dollar signs everywhere and I'm like, you know what,
let's just let's just color on top of my hair.
And this is why I argue that wigs should be
more socially acceptable. Sure, then you wouldn't even have to
worry about it. But now let's get into more of
the sociology of hair. Why hair color it makes such
(14:39):
a difference, and these stereotypes and perceptions that we have
about the color of people's hair, especially of women's hair. Yeah,
Jodie Manning of Western Connecticut State University in September put
forth the idea that our culture, American culture, puts focus
on the individual, emphas sizing that appearance is a public
(15:01):
display of one's values and beliefs, and that includes your hair.
So what women do to their hair, how they color
it sends a message out to the universe, and researchers
began studying what that message might be in the nineteen seventies,
which coincidentally was when we really saw that big uptick
uh in women coloring their hair at home. But yeah,
(15:23):
researchers first began investigating our perceptions of hair color on women,
and the initial findings suggested that people found brown hair
the most appealing, and that's among men and women alike,
followed by blonde, then red, then artificial blonde. And in
the study that Jodie Manning did in two thousand eleven,
(15:45):
she showed students pictures to judge of women with different
colors of hair and also different links, like a brunette
with long hair versus brunette with short hair, et cetera,
and she found similarly that brunettes with long hair were
considered to be higher maintenance than brunette's with shorter hair,
who were perceived to be smarter. So short brunette hair
(16:07):
smarter than long brunette hair, okay, yeah, and then red
heads with short hair were judged to be hapvier than
redheads with long hair. So I guess after I come
home from the colorist, I am unhappy looking, but going on.
Blondes with long hair are perceived to be also higher maintenance,
but more attractive than blonds with short hair. And interestingly enough,
(16:31):
they also asked about femininity and the African American women
with black hair, both those with natural curly hair and
those with straightened hair were perceived as the most feminine,
followed by blondes who were perceived as less intelligent. Yeah,
the whole stereotyping of blondes as incompetent, the whole dumb
blonde meme um is something that's really persistent and a
(16:54):
lot of studies on hair color and perceptions um. For instance,
Jodie Manning in her study sites at two thousand six
study called hair color Stereotyping and CEO Selection in the
United Kingdom, and those researchers found that blondes were underrepresented
in corporate leadership, possibly due to stereotyping a blonde as incompetent,
(17:15):
and that is something that affects women not so surprisingly,
even more so than men in the workplace, of just
seeing a blonde woman in the workplace and assuming just
right off the bad she's not going to be great
at her job. Well, just as they're underrepresented in the boardroom,
they are overrepresented in magazines. And Manning also cited a
study that examined hair color of models in Ladies, Home Journal, Vogue,
(17:39):
and Playboy from the nineteen fifties all the way to
nine nine and came to the conclusion because blondes were
so overrepresented that society's beauty standards didn't actually represent the population.
Are you surprised, christin Conga? Yeah, But at the same time,
though it puts it still puts blondes as this kind
of feminine ideal, and that heteronormative construct of blond's being
(18:05):
more sexually desirable is driven home again and again and again,
as demonstrated by this series of articles from the past
three years, starting with blonds out at clubs. So let's
say you're a guy who is into women and you
go out to the club and a woman approaches you.
(18:27):
If she's blonde, brunette or redhead. Does the hair color
make a difference. Well, according to Veran Swammy's study published
in December and the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, oh yes
it does. Yeah. They looked at women who went to
clubs with their hair dye blonde, brown, or red, and
the blonde was approached the most often. The second part
(18:49):
of the study, though, had men looking at pictures of
the same woman with different hair colors, and in this
case they said that the brunette was rated as more
physically attractive, intelligent, approachable, competent, and arrogant, whereas the blonde
was rated as needier. And yet the blonde was the
most approached, which is kind of an interesting twist. Also, though,
(19:12):
men rated redheads as the most promiscuous. Oh dear. Now
moving on, though, blonde hair could literally pay off in
the service industry. This is coming from in August twelve
study published in the Journal of socio Economics looking at
how a woman's hair color might influence customers tipping behavior
(19:34):
in restaurants, and essentially they had a model weight on
tables and switch out her hair color via wigs, and
waitresses wearing blonde wigs received more tips, but only from
male and I'm assuming heterosexual patrons. Waitress's hair color had
no effect on women's tipping behavior. Yeah. Women also were
(19:58):
not influenced by blonde fundraisers the same way that men were,
or blonde hitchhikers. I just love how all these studies
say the exact same thing, but they're just putting blondes
in different scenarios all over the world. So, in a
December two thousand nine study and perceptual and motor skills
in France, women with blonde hair on the side of
the road sticking their thumb up were picked up way
(20:19):
more often than when women with black or brown hair.
When the drivers were men. Women wearing blonde wigs in
France managed to raise more money for the French telethon
banded women in brown or dark colored wigs, but surprised
just from men, just just from the men. But you know,
hair color discrimination actually works both ways. We've talked about
(20:42):
what men prefer, but what about what women think? Uh?
In a study in December twelve, blonde women were more
frequently approached by men in a nightclub. So this is
some of the same people that were involved in the
other nightclub study. So blonde women were approached more followed
by brunette black than redheads when men with wigs approached
women asking for a dance, Though women said yes most
(21:06):
often to men with black hair, then brown, then blonde,
then redhead people looked wrong with you. Come on. Yeah,
there's a lot of redhead discrimination that we'll talk about
in a second, Gingers. But okay, So the theory because
this and this ties in with our previous nightclub study
that we mentioned. But the theory is that men said
that blonde hair looked the neediest, So perhaps they had
(21:28):
the greatest confidence approaching a blonde woman, and you know,
the red head being perceived as the leash shy and
most promiscuous. Maybe they think they thought that they didn't
have a chance and that more contemporary research also drives
with a nineteen seventy eight study which found that men
prefer blonde women, whereas women prefer dark haired men. But
(21:49):
the thing about a lot of this research too, is
that it focuses so much on you know, essentially ask
you the question, do gentlemen prefer blondes? Over and we
and over again and tip to hitchhikers out there and
buy a blonde wig? Um, but also maybe don't hitchhike right,
dangerous p s A over. But I could not find
(22:14):
very much at all focusing on women's preferences to men.
I mean, there's kind of a general assumption that we
just want darker hair. And also, of course no research
whatsoever testing these same kinds of things among gay populations.
So because I was curious to see whether or not
(22:34):
different colors of hair or valued like based on sexual orientation,
maybe that could be a variable, who knows. But this
kind of hard hitting research of interchanging wigs and such
at the diner has not caught up to the LGBT population. Um.
But digging even more into the blonde thing, especially this
(22:57):
idea that blonde women were approached more often because they
appeared needier, I feel ties directly into the whole blondes
are less intelligent than brunette women. The whole dumb blonde
meme and Caroline, I was astounded to find that this
(23:19):
goes back, way, way way beyond Marilyn Monroe to Paris
sent there's this famous French courtesan, Rosalie Duth, who is
so popular in her day that she essentially spawns the
dumb blonde meme when a playwright takes a shine to
(23:41):
her and features her character and a one act play
and sort of satirizes this habit that Rosalie had of
taking very long pauses in conversation. And I kind of
think of her as like the blonde Kim Kardashian of
her day, because she was super famous in Paris at
(24:03):
the time for rubbing elbows with the royals. Obviously she
was a courtisan, and uh, I was just kind of
famous for being famous and for being dumb. Because the
play took off and now she's referred to as history's
original dumb blonde. Wow, what a legacy, I know. And
I guess you could say, though, in the same way
(24:24):
that Marilyn Monrose character and gentlemen prefer blondes, is intentional
with her, uh, let's say, lack of intelligence because she
rides her beauty to the arms of wealthy men, which
I'm not going to advocate for. But you could say,
(24:45):
you know, maybe she's I don't know, playing to her
strengths or something in a in a why am I
arguing for this? I don't know. Well, she has included
on Grant McCracken's breakdown of the six categories of blonds.
This is from Big Hair, A Journey into the Transformation
of Self. He says, We've got a couple of different
types of blondes. Marilyn Monroe is up first a lot
(25:06):
with May West as a bombshell blonde. We've got the
sunny blonde whose Doris Day and Goldie Hawn, Candice Bergen's
brassy blonde, Sharon Stone's dangerous blonde, CZ guest society blond,
and Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly's cool blonde. So what
kind of blonde do you want to be? Just just
choose your choice. Um, I did want to make. The
(25:28):
one note about Gentleman Prefer Blonde is that before it
was a film, Starry Marilyn Monroe, it started out as
a novel that was published in by Harper's writer and
screenwriter Anita Loose, and it was this huge best seller,
and it was all about this blonde obviously protagonists whom
Louse wanted to represent the nation's lowest possible mentality. So yeah,
(25:54):
that that horrible, dumb blonde name just running through through history.
It's really unfortunate, though, I don't know. I feel like
it's because it's obviously like sometimes it's directed at men,
but overwhelmingly it's directed at women, and it usually is
horribly sexist. And I'm friends with plenty of smart blonde people. Yes,
(26:15):
I'm aware of some as well. Yes, But on a
more serious note though, to kind of close things off
on this Hair Color Perceptions podcast, we want to talk
about redhead discrimination because while blondes are perceived a lot
of times unfortunately as more incompetent, and brunettes were just
kind of like, well whatever, and maybe too smart for
(26:36):
their own good. Uh that's speaking in stereotype, not saying
that's actually possible. Um, redheads get the shortest end of
the stick. Yeah, I had no idea before reading stuff
for this episode that there were actual physical, violent attacks
against redheads. I seriously thought it was just like a
joke coming from a South Park episode. No idea that
(26:59):
there was actual violence and a lot of it is
in the u K. It seems to be a very
British phenomenon and the head of Kids Escape, which is
the UK bullying prevention initiatives, so that there's no logic
to it. It's ingrained in some part of our folklore,
she says, Yeah, And that was coming from a Telegraph
article from the past year or two reporting on an
(27:20):
incident when a couple of redheads were beaten up, apparently
just because they're redheads. Yeah. Dr Lisa Wade said that
this could be related to the longstanding antagonism between Britain
and Ireland, that the discrimination against Irish people, who are
typically the percentage of redheads is higher. That this discrimination
(27:42):
then crossed the Atlantic with early Americans, so that it's
just like you know, ingrained in everything. Yeah. And Robert Bartlett,
who's a medieval history expert who was interviewed for that
Telegraph article UM says that the discrimination against redhead actually
dates back to ancient Egypt, where the odds set, who
was associated with earthquakes, thunderstorms and eclipses, was depicted with
(28:05):
pale skin and reddish hair. And um, there's also some
redhead discrimination in ancient Rome, when the gals who were
captured by Caesar were forced to dye their hair red
and learned German in order to signify class rank. And
in the fifteenth century, we can't leave out which witchcraft
(28:26):
redheads were accused of being. Which isn't burned at the steak?
Oh no, so we're obviously evil, I say, weak? Is
I really want to be one of you? And let's
not forget the something that could be perceived as a benefit, Kristen.
A University at Hamburg study found the redheads have more
active sex lives than brunettes and blonds. So redheads get
(28:46):
the last laugh or the last orgasm. There you go.
Perhaps perhaps now the redhead discrimination, though, does break my heart.
I was telling Caroline before we started recording his podcast
that I have a couple of young redhead nephews, and
even at ten years old, they're aware that being a
(29:07):
redhead is not cool. I think it is cool. And
then I responded to Kristen by saying, one of my
first loves was a ginger, So I have a very
soft spot for redheaded boys. Yeah, so I mean maybe
you should advocate for isn't there a hugged ginger day?
Although you know what, I bet. I bet gingers don't
want to be pandered too, because they don't want your pity. Kristen. Yeah,
(29:28):
they get called out for their their hair colors so often. Um.
But let's go though, to wrap things up to our
question that we posed in the podcast title, do blonds
have more fun? Caroline certainly get more stereotypes, it certainly
have better luck hitch shiking. Yeah, I would say that. No,
I don't think blonds do have more fun because they're
(29:51):
having to battle usually negative stereotypes about their intelligence. So no, no,
I'm gonna say the answer is no. Well, I mean,
I guess it depends on your definition, like if if
you want, I mean, look at all these studies and
my papers that I'm jostling about men paying more attention
(30:13):
to blonds. So if that's your definition of more fun,
maybe you should bleach your hair. But is it problematic
though that the reason why, at least according to those studies,
that they're being approached more often is because they're perceived
as needier. Yes, but right, you know, to each his own. Yeah,
And also where are the studies on on burnette perceptions?
(30:35):
I guess it's just like you're everybody. You're all over
the world, everybody's got your hair. You're just You're just
another person. They're not just another person to me. Thank you,
Thank you. Well. Blondes out there, we especially want to
hear from you or people who are perhaps bottle blondes.
Did going blonde change your life in any way? I
(30:57):
don't know? What do you? What do you think are
the hair their stereotypes? Real redheads out there? Have you
been unfairly discriminated against? Let us know all of your
hair color related thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
is where you can send your letters, and you can
also messages on Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast.
And now back to our letters. Well, Kristen, I have
(31:20):
a letter here from MICHAELA about our kids at the
Workplace episode. She says, I found it rather ironic to
see your most recent podcast title because my husband just
dropped my five year old off in my office for
the afternoon while I work. I am fortunate enough to
work for a flexible company that allows pretty much whatever
reasonable concession necessary when dealing with parenting. Today, my son
(31:42):
is here just to enjoy stamping envelopes and playing with
my Stapler. You watch out, Michaela. I I remember in
third grade my my classmates stapling her finger and she
was not five, she was However, you old you are
in third grade anyway, Michaela says. My husband and I
are so looking forward to this fall when our daycare
bill will be cut in half thanks to that five
(32:03):
year old of mine entering the school force. We've been
through four or five different daycares of various quality before
finding our current which is the most expensive but definitely
the best option we've found for our five year old
and two year old. Our daycare bill is higher than
our monthly mortgage payment. I would definitely pay the equivalent
of this for the convenience of on site childcare. It
(32:24):
would have been amazing after having my kids and spending
countless hours pumping bottles for the baby's I was missing.
So thanks, Michaela, and watch out for the Stapler. Well.
I've got an email here from Zara and she wanted
to another perspective on that podcast on childcare at work
(32:44):
and about how Quebec handles things. She writes, since seven
Quebec has had a subsidized daycare system that is seven
dollars per day per child. Not everyone can get a
spot in subsidized daycare, which has led to some employers
building a daycare on the premises or taking an arrangement
with existing daycares to give priorities to their employers over
(33:06):
the general population. People on social Security also get priority
if I recall correctly, so they can go back to
the workforce. If you don't get a place in subsidized daycare,
you can get a refund at tax time if you
go to a non subsidized daycare. Non subsidized daycare is
usually charge about twenty to thirty dollars per day, though
some are more expensive. There's no sliding scale depending on
(33:27):
your child's age. It's the same fee for everybody. A
study published in two thousand twelve showed that subsidized daycare
is actually profitable for the government. Around seventy thousand women
went back to the workforce since the subsidized daycare program started,
for a proportion of seventy of women aged fifteen to
sixty four now working, up from sixty three pc in nine.
(33:49):
As a result, for each one hundred dollars that the
provincial government invested in the program, they received one hundred
and four dollars and the government received forty three dollars.
So apparently subside daycare can be good not only for
businesses bottom lines, but also for Canadian provinces or Quebec specifically.
(34:11):
But yeah, I know that's a that's interesting to see
how it can profit the government as well. So thanks
for that insight to Zara and everyone else who has
written into mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can
also find us on Facebook, of course, follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. We're on Tumbler as well
as stuff Mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com,
and in case you haven't subscribed yet, you can watch
(34:33):
us on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom
Never Told You. We're coming at you three times a
week on YouTube, so check it out there, and if
you're not already busy enough, head over to our website,
it's how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(34:53):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works
dot com. Twe
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