In defense of the blonde: one Marilyn's plea.

[seanan_mcguire]

Mary Robinette Kowal-who is fantastic and awesome and incidentally, the person reading the Toby Daye audio books, which means hers is a voice I'm going to be hearing quite a lot of-made a blog post previewing the upcoming fantasy movies of 2010. It's a good post, which is no surprise, since she's a good author and a great lady. But one line,

Comments

[gwynnega]

Were you a Bewitched fan growing up? I've never been blonde, but I sure wanted to be Samantha Stephens when I grew up...

[seanan_mcguire]

Excellent point about Samantha! She was definitely awesome, although I really didn't want to be a housewife and give up using my magical powers except when it benefited my husband. I wanted to live with monsters and still be allowed to be me, rather than rewriting myself for someone else.

I was a weird kid.

[gwynnega]

I guess I forgot about the renouncing magic to be a housewife part, since Samantha was so awesome and ended up using magic in pretty much every episode for one reason or another...

[seanan_mcguire]

But almost always because Darren either told her to or munificently granted her permission to "just this once" break her oath to live mortal for the sake of his love.

[filkertom]

Remember, m'dear, that Eilonwy was actually created by Lloyd Alexander in the Chronicles of Prydain, and she was a much more interesting character their, sort of a precursor to Hermione Granger. Matter of fact, since it's kinda difficult to get Emma Watson's image out of my head, I tend to think of Hermione as blondish, and have to remember she's got brown hair.

I've never really had the hair color hang-up. I mean, I knew all the jokes, but... well, my Mom changed her hair color about once a month, back in the day, or at least that's how it seemed. Blonde, auburn, red, black, variations thereof... one time something went wrong, and it came out purple. A nice pastel lavender, actually.

[seanan_mcguire]

Oh, I remember! I just try to judge the "they're all blonde" statements on basis of purely visual representations, because people totally forget that Dorothy is a blonde girl, and that Cinderella doesn't have to be.

I think the hair color thing is very much how you're socialized. I got a lot of people figuring I was dumb when I was little, because I was so blonde, and then being horrified when I wasn't. I was actually relieved when I got my glasses, because at least then people stopped defaulting to "what a pretty little girl, let's hide the sharp objects before she puts her own eye out trying to curl her eyelashes with the scissors."

A Correckshun

[filkertom]

"There", not "their". Can't brain, have dumb.

[dianthus]

I never forgot that Dorothy was blond, but I was a big fan of the books, with the illustrations.

[emberleo]

Huh, I'd always parsed the complaints about Disney characters as being ethnically focused. A blonde with blue eyes is thoroughly white. As soon as they started in on Princesses again, they got another unquestionably white redhead with big blue eyes out of the way, and then started immediately on making characters that could at least be Latina or Mediterranean rather than the return-of-still-yet-more Northern European [American

[emberleo]

Ah! Thank you. The only Baum books I have don't have interior decorations in color, and happen to not have Dorothy on the cover.

--Ember--

[angel_vixen]

Thank you for the clarification. I didn't have the illustrated versions, and the only picture I'd ever seen of a non-Judy Garland Dorothy was a brunette. So I was wondering what reference I was missing.

AngelVixen :-)

[blythe025]

Awesome post and you have a great point.

It's not a perspective that would have jumped to my mind immediately, but I totally see your point. There is a lot of stereotyping that goes on about blondes, but I tend not to notice it as much (like the blonds all being evil). For me, this is in part because I tend to notice stereotyping or absence of minorities and women in general more often.

In my own writing, and I'm not going to express all this the way I want, I've been tending toward writing characters with dark hair and skin. In part, I think this has been from a desire to be "politically correct", but I realize that I have to be careful with that, because there are so many different kind of people and so many different perspectives out there.

I think this goes back to needing to be aware of why we make the choices we do as writers. Are we making them simply because it's the obvious as per how society perceives it, or because its the best choice for the story as a whole.

[seanan_mcguire]

Even I tend to avoid writing blondes, because I don't want people to make the assumptions about my characters. It annoys me every time I catch myself doing it. (Verity is very blonde. This helps a bit.)

My problems with Rapunzel have nothing to do with her hair.

[druidspell]

First: I agree with your larger point, that we need girls on TV and in movies who look like the girls watching TV and movies and need heroes and role models they can relate to

Re: My problems with Rapunzel have nothing to do with her hair.

[seanan_mcguire]

I completely agree that it's overly simplistic to reduce the Disney girls to only their hair color, and I love it when we get new characters that expand the diversity and awesomeness inherent in the fairy stories of the world. (Have you noticed that the characters over in Pixie Hollow are beautifully diverse? It rocks completely.)

But again, looking at the list of Disney theatrical animated features, Disney has been doing an incredibly good job with diversity in their recent movie offerings (this list leaves off the sequels, so I'm not even going to try to timeline them). I just keep hoping and praying for Disney princesses who are awesome, and have agency, and aren't just there to be prizes for a prince. I don't think Disney and their princesses, by themselves, promote the idea of who should and shouldn't have stories told about them, and I think we need to change everyone's stories, not target a single studio as the source of the problem

Re: My problems with Rapunzel have nothing to do with her hair.

[seanan_mcguire]

Added after your ETA came through: I got that, I promise. :) The general existence of the idea makes me batshit moonmonkey pumpkinfuckers crazy. I just want to be sure all the little girls get awesome role models, 'cause I suffered a shortage.

Re: My problems with Rapunzel have nothing to do with her hair.

[druidspell]

I definitely understand that; and while I'm a blue-eyed brunette now, when I was younger, my hair was cornsilk blonde and I had big blue eyes, and I definitely understand and sympathize with the resentment toward the myth of the dumb blonde. That's the same myth that led me (and several of my fellow blondes) to hide my intelligence because society told me that I wasn't supposed to be smart. I was relieved when I got glasses too, and when my hair gradually darkened to the reddish brown it is now, because it was like being given permission to be smart and nerdy without always having to defend myself.
Another reason why I have a problem with Rapunzel: ... Rapunzel waited in a tower for a prince to rescue her from the witch who was raising her. How about we get another princess who can take care of herself, and doesn't need rescuing? *holds out hope for an "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" retelling*

(Also: Pixie Hollow is AWESOME and incredibly beautiful!)