40 Surprising Blonde Hair Facts

[♥ Lily ♥]

40 Facts About Blondes

1. Hair colour is based on how much melanin, or pigmentation, is in the hair.
Two types of melanin create hair colour: 1) eumelanin and 2) phaeomelanin.
The more eumelanin a person has, the darker their hair will be.
Phaeomelanin works in a similar way, except instead of causing hair to be blacker, it causes hair to be more red.
Low levels of both eumelanin and phaeomelanin characterise blonde hair.




2. Blonde hair can range from practically white (platinum blonde) to a dark golden blonde.
Strawberry blonde, the mixture of blonde and red hair, is the rarest type of blonde hair.





3. The Melanesians of New Guinea are the only dark-skinned group of humans known to have a high blonde hair rate.
The gene responsible for the type of blonde hair in Melanesia is different from the European blonde gene.



4. Just two percent of the world’s population is naturally blonde.



5. Just 1 in 20 white American adults is naturally blonde, and roughly the same ratio applies to white northern Europeans.
Virtually 1 in 3 white adult females bleach the colour out of their hair to a shade of blonde.
Dyeing puts colour into the hair, whilst bleaching takes the colour out of the hair.
http://coolmenshair.com/2013/03/diff...-hair-dye.html
Madonna is naturally dark haired, but bleaches her hair blonde.

[♥ Lily ♥]

6. In Ancient Rome, women tried to dye their hair blonde using pigeon dung (poop/faeces.) In Renaissance Venice, they used horse urine.
Hair bleaching was a common practice in ancient Greece and Rome.

In Greece, women used plant extracts and even arsenic to lighten their hair.
To maintain the lack of colour, they would wash their treated hair with a blend of ashes, olive oil, and water.
The trend eventually reached Rome, where Roman women tried to replicate the flaxen-haired look.

Unfortunately, the mixtures they used to lighten their hair often caused hair loss,
so they resorted to making wigs from the hair of their blonde war captives.
http://www.gic.edu/news/



7. Recent excavations in China’s Taklamakan desert have found mummies from as far back as 1800 B.C.
with strikingly blonde hair.
According to this video (link below,) some blonde-haired mummies were discovered in Ancient Egypt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmJB1DHhAw




8. Jean Harlow was Hollywood’s first blonde goddess.
She bleached her hair with a mixture of peroxide, household bleach, soap flakes, and ammonia,
until it fell out and she was forced to wear a wig.



9. Marilyn Monroe, (real name Norma Jean) who was not a natural blonde,
refused to allow other blonde actresses on the film set with her. Her natural hair colour was brown.




10. Princess Diana spent almost £4,000 ($6,284.80) a year to have her hair lightened.

[♥ Lily ♥]

11. In Greece, blonde hair was associated with prostitution.
Messalina, a Roman empress, would hide her black hair with a blonde wig when she visited the brothel every night.



12. Greek dramatist Menander (342-291 B.C.) once wrote, “No chaste woman ought to make her hair yellow.”




13. Nearly 2,000 years before Homer, during the time of the Proto-Indo-Europeans,
blonde hair was connected to the worship of the sun and fire and to the adoration of a yellow dawn goddess.
The Persians plaited their beards with golden threads, and the Assyrians powdered their hair with extravagant clouds of gold dust.
The Pagan Spring Goddess Eastre (Eostre) and Aurora below.




14. German blondes were taken captive during the Roman era and had their hair cut off to be made into wigs for fashionable ladies.
Successful wars were a source of a large influx of blonde hair for the Romans.

"Non Angli, sed Angeli.'' Quote by Gregory the Great, Pope (c. 540–604). Not Angles, but Angels.
An oral rendition of words that appear in Bede's History of the English Church and People (bk. 2, sct. 1; completed 731),
in which Gregory—before he was Pope—was presented with some English child slaves in the market-place in Rome,
with "fair complexions, fine-cut features, and beautiful hair."
On being told they were Angles, the Roman Pope said,
"That is appropriate, for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven."
According to Bede, this encounter led him to take in hand the conversion of Britain immediately on succeeding to the Papacy.
http://quotes.dictionary.com/Not_Ang...mwjAWdh00s0.99



15. During the Middle Ages, blonde women were held with suspicion, and by the mid-14th century,
depictions of Eve from biblical mythology were consistently giving her free-flowing locks of golden blonde hair
that marked her as an evil temptress.
An image in 1356 by Bartolo di Fredi in San Gimignano depicts the creation of Eve
as a pale and sensuous blonde emerging from the ribcage of a sleeping Adam.



The very ancient Pagan goddess Lilith is often referred to as the first ever female in nature,
since she predates 'Adam & Eve' by thousands of years in ancient mythology spanning many cultures.
Lilith is associated with the sexual feminine aspect of nature and for her seductive powers over men,
but she was later referred to as Adam's first wife in biblical mythology.

Lilith was later demonised as the 'Devil's Bride' and her character is depicted
with either blonde or red, thick and long hair in some paintings, and long dark hair in other paintings.

[♥ Lily ♥]

16. Northern Europe has the most blondes.
Finland is thought to have the highest proportion of natural blondes.



17. The word “blonde” is derived from several possible sources.
Some scholars think it derived from the Medieval Latin blundus meaning “yellow,” the Old Frankish blund,
meaning “grey haired” or “to mix,” or from the Old English beblonden meaning “dyed.”



18. Influenced by Richard Wagner, Elizabeth Nietzsche, the sister of the famous philosopher,
selected an entire community of people based on their blonde hair and blue eyes
and shipped them off to an isolated village in Paraguay in order to plant the seed of a new race of supermen.
The village still exists.




19. Hydrogen peroxide was discovered in 1818, but there was little application for it until 1867 when it was found that it could bleach hair.
It quickly became popular throughout Europe and America, superseding everything else that had been used as bleach before then.





20. During the Renaissance, society women spent hours on the balconies of their mansions
bathing and rinsing their hair with a tincture known as 'aqua bionda' or 'aqua di gioventu.'
They would wear a crownless straw hat with a wide brim called a solana.
The hat shaded their faces and skin from the sun, while their hair was combed out over the hat and exposed to the sun.
There are records of women developing heatstroke, headaches, nosebleeds, and even blindness in their quest for blonde hair.

[♥ Lily ♥]

21. Blonde hair is seen throughout fairy tales, including Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, and Goldilocks.
In fairytales, blonde hair often suggests strength, untarnished beauty, indestructibility, youth, and high value.
In contrast, vice is associated with hairy, dark, and ugliness.








22. Meteors were once called “comets” after the Latin word comes, meaning hair,
and were named for their flowing golden tail of hair as they flashed through the sky.




23. Dr. Tony Fallone noted in 1997 that hair colour is the root of a person’s personality.
Blondes are typically more outgoing and lively and are perceived
as more feminine than women with other hair colours.
According to Fallone, being blonde is not a hair colour, but a state of mind.



24. Alfred Hitchcock, the “master of suspense,” was obsessed with blondes and cast only blondes in his movies.
His favorite blondes included Eve Marie Saint (North by Northwest), Joan Fontaine (Suspicion),
Carol Lombard (Mr. and Mrs. Smith), Janet Leigh (Psycho), Grace Kelly (Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief),
and Tippi Hedren (The Birds and Marni).
Scholars have noted that Hitchcock’s blondes have become one of the most potent icons of our era.





25. Blond beards grow faster than dark beards.

[♥ Lily ♥]

26. Blonde-haired heads have more strands of hair than dark-haired heads.
Blondes have approximately 140,000 hairs compared with 108,000 for their darker counterparts.
Blondes typically have more hair than brunettes




27. Barbie, a blonde, is the most popular doll in the world.






28. The genetic mutation that created blonde hair in Europe happened about 11,000 years ago, approximately during the last ice age.



29. While blonde hair is a recessive gene, it is not a disappearing gene.
The World Health Organisation and others erroneously published a report that claimed people with blonde hair would become extinct by 2202.






30. Scientists believe that blonde hair evolved in sun-deficient climates so that the body could synthesise vitamin D more efficiently.
Other scholars, such as anthropologist Peter Forst, claimed blonde hair evolved very quickly as a means of sexual selection.
The blonde hair and blue eyes of some northern European women made them more alluring to men.

[♥ Lily ♥]

31. Most researchers believe that blonde hair evolved more than once in different parts of the world.
In fact, blonde hair is not found just in Northern Europe but also in Asia, eastern Afghanistan,
northwestern Pakistan, Turkey, southwestern and northern Iran, Israel, western Syria, northern Iraq,
Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, the Berbers in North Africa, and aboriginal Australia.



32. The blonde stereotype has been divided into three categories:
1) the ice-cold blonde (Grace Kelly), 2) the blonde bombshell (Brigitte Bardot),
and 3) the dumb blonde (Marilyn Monroe).





33. The term “blonde” came from French and kept its masculine and feminine forms;
consequently, as a noun, “blond” is a fair-haired male, while “blonde” is a fair-haired female.
However, when the word is used as an adjective, “blond” can be used for both males and females;
however “blonde” can also be used to describe a woman or girl with fair hair.



34. The “Dumb Blonde” joke may be rooted in the 1775 satirical play Les curiosites de la Foire,
in which a blonde French courtesan named Rosalie Duthe is portrayed as being less than intelligent.
Research indicates that blondes are viewed as less intelligent than women with darker hair.
However, modern science shows that there is no evidence of intellectual differences based on hair colour.




35. Dolly Parton’s 1967 song “Dumb Blonde” challenged the dumb blonde stereotype with its lyrics.
She claimed that she is not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because she is not dumb. And she is also not a true blonde.

[♥ Lily ♥]

36. Blonde women are more susceptible to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), an eye condition that can cause blindness.



37. Blondes produce less melanin, which leaves their skin more susceptible to skin cancer.






38. Margaret Thatcher’s hair became blonder as she became more powerful.

[♥ Lily ♥]

39. According to several surveys,
men do not prefer blondes—at least not as serious mates.
Men prefer brunettes as long-term partners because they view them as more reliable and steady.










40. A luxurious island in the Madives will be run by blondes only.
A Lithuanian firm called Olialia (ooh-la-la) announced in 2010 that it was going to build a resort
in the Maldives that would employ only blonde women.
It will also have a special airline staffed by blondes only that would take customers to the island.
The resort is scheduled to open in 2015.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11442920
https://www.facebook.com/OlialiaBlondeIsland
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...n_818005.html?







References:

Ilyin, Natalia. 2000. Blonde Like Me: The Roots of the Blonde Myth in Our Culture. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Pawlowski, A. “Firm Plans Resort Staffed by Blondes Only.” CNN Travel. October 11, 2010. Accessed: May 12, 2012.

Phillips, Kathy. 1999. Vogue Book of Blondes. New York, NY: Viking Studio.

Pitman, Joanna. 2003. On Blondes. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

[Sandman]

It should be noted that the highest intensity of natural blondes occurs in Hollywood movies.