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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

A bit dated, but nothing that a visit to the hairdresser will not fix. Have you ever noticed that Trump is surrounded by blondes, like Steven Miller and Fox News? Check out the list, from The Cut [thecut.com]. Only her hairdresser knows for sure. And the one who has grabbed . . . OK, not going there.

Blonde hair is at least 11,000 years old. The variety we’re now most familiar with began as a genetic mutation in northern Europe, where the sun is weak: Light hair allows more vitamin D to trickle in through the scalp, the theory goes, which is useful when the sky is cold and dark. It wasn’t the first hair color that people had, so it was rare, and its being rare made it sexually desirable, and its being sexually desirable meant it spread, and then there was a bit more of it.

Eventually, blondness spread south: Many of the Greek gods were golden-haired, as were many heroes of the Iliad. People missing the mutation started figuring out ways to ape it very early on with primitive versions of Sun-In. In ancient Rome, they used pigeon shit and also a combination of alum, wood ash, and quicklime. During the Renaissance, it was horse urine or lemons squirted onto the hair, which was then fitted into an open visor called a solana.

Horse urine? Explains Ann Coulter, at least.

It didn’t take long for stereotypes besides sexiness to attach to the look. Marie Antoinette’s friend Rosalie Duthé was a legendary courtesan with a habit of taking long pauses before she spoke. She was frequently the mistress of someone famous and powerful — she was even gifted to 20-year-old Prince Louis Philippe I by his father so that he could learn a thing or two. When a 1775 one-act play called Les Curiosités de la Foire sent up Duthé’s behavior, Paris was amused, and historians tend to agree that that moment was the birth of a notion that persists 250 years later: the blonde as slutty and dumb.

Did you hear the one about the blonde they found in the shower, dead? Wasn't till they looked at the instructions on the shampoo: Apply, lather, rinse, repeat. Any good programmer knows you need an "end" statement, or you get an infinite loop. (Which, by the way, linux can finish in 4 seconds, not being blonde, and being finnish.)

Fox News and Donald Trump have given blonde hair a new chapter: Now, blonde is the color of the right, for whom whiteness has become a hallmark. Over the past decade or so, as inclusiveness became the hallmark of Obama-era liberals, the left found feminist icons in Rachel Maddow, Samantha Power, and Michelle Obama, who make no apologies for their failure to fit traditional ideals. But #MAGA, Fox News America is a place where all the classic signifiers of privilege and wealth work on overdrive: country-club-issue blue blazers with brass buttons and khaki pants, and above all else, for women, that yellow-blonde, carefully tended hair — a dog whistle of whiteness, an unspoken declaration of values, a wink-wink to the power of racial privilege and to the 1980s vibe that pervades a movement led by a man who still believes in the guilt of the Central Park Five.

Ouch! My hair hurts, suddenly.

The alt-blonde common on Fox News is a specific look: It’s layered and yellow and never too long. It’s controlled and polished and always in place. In earlier generations, news was delivered almost exclusively by white men, with neat auburn (when it wasn’t graying) hair. These men spoke in tempered tones; they strove for a bland, unquestionable authority. But at Ailes-era Fox News, the point was no longer to project a sense of well-being or calm, it was to instill panic and fear, and blonde hair was practically a prerequisite for delivering it. Panicked reports about dangerous immigrants and the president with Hussein for a middle name were presented by white women wearing snug dresses, with pert noses, bronze skin, blonde hair. The Fox blonde is, in the end, conspicuously unnatural. She is less blonde as sexy and more blonde as safe: This blonde is a matronly blonde, a suburban soccer mom who makes sure everyone buckles up in the backseat of the minivan. This blonde is a reminder, perhaps, of what many Americans feel is truly at stake in a newly global world.

I have to bow out at this point. It is just too painful. I have to go play with my Barbies now.

But, seriously, the graphic is worth a look: Republican Blondes, all in a row. [nymag.com] The horror, the horror!

Original Submission