Soci Images goes for a little Olivia Wilde Traffic bump eh?

Nothing wrong with that.

I think the blondes are dumb thing is tied in with how much you conform to society's standard of "beauty".

Oddly enough, she looks less "fake" and more natural to me as a brunette- and also more attractive. It might be that the last picture has her in less makeup and with a more natural smile, so she looks less fake, but somehow she actually looks more intelligent.

Then again, I've found that when I'm wearing a blond wig I have, I get caught up in how attractive I feel, and I act a little differently. Maybe its less that people treated her differently, but she thought that as a hot blond, she would be treated differently and acted accordingly? I do wonder how much of this stuff is self-imposed instead of society-imposed.

I always thought the "dumb blond" thing applied only to bottle blonds. (It was explained to me as "all of that bleach messes with your brain.")

I'm not really sure who this woman is, but in addition to the change of hair color, she's also covering more skin in the second two photos. My intent here isn't to shame her (or anyone) for their choice of clothing, but might that also have an effect on how people perceive/treat her? (Again, not saying that it's acceptable to take her less seriously if she's showing more skin, just asking if people do.)

Edie, I think you missed the part where she was quoted! She doesn't sound too much like she wanted to play into people's perceptions of her blonde self. It's not really relevant how she looks best or most natural; the point of the post is to draw attention to the way a woman's intelligence (or lack of intelligence) is pre-judged just based on hair colour.

A friend of mine once pointed out, while telling a story about her boyfriend telling her a dumb-blonde joke, that these jokes are really dumb-woman jokes. If hair colour and our associations with it were the only things that made the jokes work, the dumb blondes could be male or female. They're always female, though.

"Oddly enough, she looks less “fake” and more natural to me as a brunette- and also more attractive. It might be that the last picture has her in less makeup and with a more natural smile, so she looks less fake, but somehow she actually looks more intelligent."

True, she looks more at ease and with less of a pained-fake expression.

I'm naturally blonde too and have been both blonde and brunette (have switched between the two a few times). I can't say that I act any differently at all when my hair colour is different (I suppose it could be subconscious and I'd never know, but I definitely don't think I do) and people DEFINITELY treat you differently. It infuriates me to no end; even so, I prefer being blonde because I feel like it's a part of my identity. Which, hm, maybe says something even deeper about the whole thing. But yes, there are definite assumptions about your character, more in my experience from boys/men than other girls or women.

I've been a natural blonde my whole life, apart from a few months in my early twenties when I went purple. I found then that people did treat me differently, older men left me alone and younger people were much more talkative - usually with my hair as a conversation opener. At the time I thought that might be because it was such an unusual colour, and I had chosen it to make a change.

I gave up the dye because it was a huge bother redoing it all the time. Now I think it might be interesting to try brunette and see if people patronise me less - but I don't think I should have to change my colour just because something's become hollywood shorthand.

Interesting though that hollywood has the same shorthand for hot and stupid. Geek girls (brunettes or redheads of course) are usually played by conventionally beautiful actresses, but everyone in the sit com will know that the blonde airhead sister is the pretty one.

Anyone else notice the huge difference in chest cover that goes along with her new hair? When she was a blonde I'm sure people had trouble paying attention or focusing on her inteligence when half of her chest was hanging out.

Oh, I'm sorry. Next time I'll remember to do a google image search before I make a post. My mistake. Psht.

The point I was trying to make, I guess unsuccessfully, is that women seem to change more than their hair color when they dye their hair.

People constantly try to fit or not fit stereotypes. I was suggesting that maybe Olivia changed attributes of her lifestyle to fit her new look and thus changed how people perceived her.

I think that my guess fits Erving Goffman's theory of looking glass self.

Either way, I'm not too concerned. If she really wanted a reaction maybe she'd shave her head and grow a penis. Then she would be considered extremely intelligent as a white male celebrity haha.

Maybe just maybe, people should stop focusing so much on how we "do" gender.

I'm naturally blonde. I've also had black, dark brown, bleach (white) blonde and red hair, and I've definitely noticed a difference in the way people treat me.

When blonde, I'm treated as fragile and as needing assistance (even if I don't). I was consistently treated with the most respect with black hair. With red hair, men flirt more openly and I've been told that I seem more fun.

These experiences generally occur either with strangers or with people I'm barely acquainted with and where I only have a very shallow relationship with. I think the visual cues are so internalized that if a person doesn't have anything else to go by (i.e. they don't know me or anything about me) then they bring their own assumptions into the interaction and treat me the way they think they should treat me.

"People are incredibly literal sometimes in how they view you. You have dark hair and pale skin? You must be brooding. The second you dye your hair blond and get a spray tan, people treat you as if you’re a bit stupider and happier.”

Anna Paquin on changing the color of her hair for True Blood

I'm a natural blonde and I had the exact same experience when I dyed my hair red many years ago. Suddenly people started treating me like the intelligent woman I am. It was absolutely amazing. When I went back to my natural color, everything went back to the way it was before.

It's not only a certain hair colour that makes people think certain things about you. I dress a little silly and constantly get the same remarks. Can someone please make a post about how hurtful that is to a woman? One of the reasons I dropped out of university was because how my classmates perceived me. They made me feel so, so stupid for wearing whatever I liked to wear at that time. Seeing as I battled depression & had low self-confidence at that time I actually believed them.

There are two different types of blondes - the 'bottle' blonde and the natural blonde. A natural blonde can have highlights, which to me puts her into the 'bottle blonde' category...

I'm a natural blonde, which is actually a slightly darker colour than a lot of the bottle blondes you see, with maybe a more silvery cast to it. Every time I go to the hairdresser I get told 'people pay a lot of money for that colour' but I don't see anything really special in it...

But what I find as a 'natural' blonde is that you kind of fall into this ignored category. Your hair isn't really bright enough to make you stand out. The clothes that are supposedly designed for blondes are really designed for bottle blondes and look bad on you. And your hair is too thin to really go into those gorgeous, full bodied styles.

I can't talk about how people treat me, as I've only ever been blonde, but just the fact that I can't find nice clothes or hairstyles or makeup to suit me is damn annoying! So often I'll see a whole rack of dresses and they're all aimed at bottle blondes or brunettes.

*end rant*

So I'm tempted to go brunette just so I can wear those gorgeous shades of turquoise and other bright colours that are so in fashion at the moment. The only colours that really look good on my are olive green, pastel pink and burgundy...

i am a natural blonde, but for a while now i've been dying my hair a lighter shade of blonde because it suits my face better, in my opinion, and as a bit of a "f-you" to all of the negativity i have witnessed directed toward blondes over the course of my life thus far. in the past i've dyed my hair red and brown, but honestly, i haven't noticed much of a difference in the way people treat me because it isn't so much what people do or say directly to me as offhand comments i hear or read *about* people like me. in real life and on the internet, even on progressive sites like this one, blondes are dismissed as "boring," "generic," "fake," "girly," uninteresting, invalid, and generally unwelcome. while i totally understand the resentment many feel at the western world's historical obsession with blondes, and efforts to redefine beauty in an inclusive and realistic way, i cannot help but feel that this sort of dirision toward blondes is misdirected. i always thought the whole point was that beauty comes in all shapes, colors, and sizes — not that it comes in every flavor except boring old blonde.

I don't know how it originated, but I find it pretty peculiar that they can't get away with "stereotyping" somebody nowadays cause of their SKIN color cause that's considered 'racist', .. . but it's still o.k. to do it with someone cause of their HAIR color.
Oh, and here are some famous fair haired or "blonde" people who are not dumb a$$es .. .

Glen Close
Peter O'Tool
Joni Mitchell
Tom Petty
Sissy Spacek
Klaus Kinski
Max Von Sydow
Charleze Theron
David Bowie
Heather O'Rourke'
Paul Williams
Rhandy Rhoads
Robert Redford
Rod Stewart
Stevie Nicks
Olivia Newton John
Soarise Ronan
Kurt Cobain
Tina Weymouth
Brian Setzer
Steve McQueen
Stephanie March
Gweneth Paltrow
Sting
. .. So ssee, apparntly there are some smart blondes in the media after all.