'Unconventional' research unveiled at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition claims there is truth behind the stereotypes of brunettes as boring, redheads as hot-tempered and blondes as dumb to be based in reality. Brunette ANNA CAREY, redhead ROSITA BOLANDand blonde KATE HOLMQUIST
THE BRUNETTE
I WASN’T ALWAYS a brunette. Until I was four and a half I had silky blonde curls that could only be described as cherubic. And then, slowly but surely, my hair started getting darker (and straighter) until it reached the state it was surely always destined to be: a nondescript dark brown.
It’s hard to feel particularly possessive of your hair colour when you share it with the majority of your fellow countrywomen and men, but I do feel quite strongly about my brown locks. Although my ridiculously thick hair has required me to spend a lot of time with very skilled hairdressers over the years, I’ve never been tempted to ask them to change the colour when they were doing complicated things with layers.
Sure, there was that period in the early 1990s when I toyed with the idea of bleaching it white-blonde like Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland, or dyeing it fire-engine red. But I never went through with it. In my heart I knew I was destined to have dark hair, and that’s the way I liked it. When I did go to the trouble of dyeing my hair as a teenager, I always dyed it a slightly different shade of brown.
Which may, of course, prove that the youthful scientists of Drumcree College really were onto something when they claimed brunettes are boring. Maybe we are boring. Unadventurous. Afraid of change. But I prefer to think of us as strong-minded and determined, refusing to give in to the temptation to dye our hair a flashier shade (I’m looking at you, Madonna, you hair traitor).
Yes, we've got the same hair colour as most of western Europe. But that just means we've got to do something a bit more interesting to get attention. And surely there's nothing boring about that. Anna Carey
THE BLONDE
HOW DO YOU know you’re a blonde? You use your fingers to do simple maths, your gum falls out of our mouth even when you’re not speaking and you walk into glass doors. Then again, blonde egg donors are in demand and women looking for sperm donors are flocking to Danish sperm banks.
Blonde is contradictory. As Marilyn Monroe and generations of bottled blondes since have shown, yellow hair means sexual power, yet if you were to believe the dumb blonde tests on the internet, being blonde also means you are unlikely ever to get a proper job.
Not for the first time, the Young Scientist results make me wonder if my life would have been different if I’d been born a brunette with a flat chest. But you still have to wonder if spending your life as a blonde has affected how people treat you, which in turn has affected how you see yourself. If anti-blonde prejudice is widespread, surely people will automatically deduct a few points from your intelligence.
Blondes may gain more first glances in a crowded room, but maybe these aren’t the sort of stares you want to attract when the stereotype is that blondes are childishly malleable and know how to do the business in the bedroom rather than the boardroom.
Since everyone thinks we’re so dumb, we blondes surely have been born with a social disability that can be corrected at relatively little expense with some brown hair dye – but that’s not what we blondes do. We just go blonder, which perhaps proves how dumb we are. Then again, naturally brown-haired Hillary Clinton hasn’t done too badly since going blonde.
Having grown up as a golden strawberry blonde, I’ve evolved into a dishwater mousy dark blond, if my roots were to tell the story (few people who are light blonde as children stay that way). For years I’ve been attempting to reproduce the sun-highlighted golden hair of my youth, even though the end result has apparently been to make me look less intelligent, which seems counterproductive.
Yet as all intelligent blondes know, being really clever while having a hair colour that puts people off the scent is a killer combination. I’ve noticed that Princess Victoria of Sweden, a childhood blonde who will marry this year and will eventually become queen, has stopped highlighting her mousy dark blonde hair, which is now an intense brown. I have to wonder whether she’s been advised that brown hair makes her look more authoritative.
Past a certain age there is no strikingly blonde, brown or red-haired woman whose hair is naturally that way. All hair fades, and at some point hair colour becomes a choice, so it's interesting that when women are having their hair dyed, 40 per cent choose blonde, despite the prejudice. It can't be that dumb. Kate Holmquist
THE REDHEAD
I HAVE red hair. Quite noticeable red hair. And it’s long, so according to the Young Scientists from Portadown and their hair colour project, that probably means I have additional rage-making abilities burning volcano-like within me: the more red hair I have, the fierier my temper, yes? That’s how the cliche goes, the one that makes the lazy association of red hair colour with things that are hot – such as tempers. It’s enough to get my blood pressure surging.
So is my temper as pronounced as my hair colour? No. I certainly possess a temper, as everyone does, but most of the time it resides in cold storage, to be taken out and defrosted only when merited. In fact, if anything, I avoid conflict. Just because I have red hair doesn’t mean I’m like a stew, perpetually boiling on some stove of soon-to-explode emotions. Any more than it means I’m stupid, or dull, the more ridiculous cliches attached to my fellow sisters who are blonde or brunette.
Do people really make assumptions about you due to your hair colour? Well, put it this way: I’ve never been asked in a job interview if I’m hot of temper. Everything else is just teasing, and on a scale of 1-10 in annoyance, it rates 0 for me. (Actually, what really does enrage me is being called “ginger”. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think because it has a distinct whiff of the derogatory about it.)
There is an additional cliche, of course, to having red hair, not mentioned in the survey. If you have red hair and are Irish, and are travelling abroad – particularly in America – then, begob you're instantly anointed the nearest thing to a leprechaun, the Maid of Erin, the spirit of Ireland, and Kathleen Ní Houlihan all rolled into one. This cliche, I confess, I'm extremely fond of, because I love the idea of representing something so gloriously mythical and intangible that it doesn't actually exist. Rosita Boland
