Talk:Blond

Blond or Blonde is: 1. light in color 2. having yellow or light-brown hair, light eyes, and fair skin.

So according to WB, light brown hair is considered blond(e). Blond seems more of a category than a color, and under that category fall many different colors, including lighter shades of brown hair.

And yes, it does seem to be misconcieved as being only "yellow" in colour.

~~JP

Hey you guys. That woman in that pic at the bgottom of the page is totally hot....well it looks like she would be an absolute 12! Who is she? Can we see a picture of her face? Just so you guys know, 5% of all America is blond. 1 in 20 people. I would guess that of the white population, about 15%. Just so you guys know also,

74% of all natural blondes have what is described as dirty/honey/caramel/butternut/ash/sandy/sandy ash/auburn bronze/golden brown/buttery/ blond. Basically deeper shades of blond with more eumelanin.

About 10% have what is described as platinum/champagne/sand dune/silver/white/pale sunny/golden/Nordic/flaxen/ blond. Shades of blond with very little or no eumelanin and little phaemelanin.

About 15% have yellow/straw/ blond. With a 90/10 split of phaemelanin and eumelanin, respectively.

About 1% have strawberry blond hair a reddish shade of blond, usually attained from having one red headed parent and one blond parent, similar to auburn hair.

This article conveys the common misconception that blond hair is bright yellow. Actually the lighter hair can be colored naturally is "red," called strawberry blond in this article. Complete lack of pigmentation gives pale yellow, but that albinism, not blond.

Move to Wiktionary? -- Seth Ilys 19:56, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe a copy could be put there, but I think that what could be said about blondness (i.e. what mammals it occurs in, traditional perception as most beautiful hair color in women in the West, stereotyping blond women as unintelligent, &c.) is enough to leave it here. Check out Red hair for an example of how this page could be expanded. -- Djinn112 00:31, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough. More than enough reason for it to stay. :) -- Seth Ilys 04:45, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have seen a great occurance of natural blondes in the Aboriginal population of Australia. How come this has not been addressed in the article? Blonde hair is not only a European trait. Picture of Blonde Aboriginal Children of Australia

--203.208.88.578 19:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a 'standard' for writing Latin in Wikipedia? I doubt it.

In English, Anglicised Latin words are of course written in the modern manner, as are Latin quotations (very often mediaeval rather than classical or ancient) used in English. However, etymological studies within Romance languages are a quite different affair. I was referring to the ancient language known as Latin, so I wrote in the ancient language known as Latin. And, in that language, lower-case letters did not exist. If people want to use lower-case letters when discussing such etymologies, that is acceptable, but no changes need be made to the texts of those of us who are a little more pedantic on these matters.

If a Wikipedia policy contradicts this, it is wrong and I'll have to change it. However, I don't believe there is such a policy. BLVNDVS stays. — Chameleon My page/My talk 02:07, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion it looks ugly, myself. That could originate from years of having studied Cicero and Virgil in lowercase, mind. However, I note that it is general Wikipedia practice to provide the (ahem) romanized forms of words in other languages, when quoted in etymological discussion. Logically this would result in something like

• 'BLONDVS' blondus

but that looks like it came out of the Department of Redundancy Department. Really, we should be writing to the casual user. To paraphrase the Wikipedia Japanese MoS, anyone who knows enough to understand 'BLONDVS' can take care of themselves.

Also, and equally importantly, I have never seen (in dictionaries or in linguistics texts, treatises, or discussions) the style 'BLONDVS' used in discussions of etymological studies. Typically the romanized forms -- to be precise, the anglicized forms -- are used, even for the Greek from which the Latin originally came.

Besides, if I recall correctly, nine times out of ten they didn't bother writing the '-VS'. And that would be no help at all. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 02:08, 2004 Aug 31 (UTC)

Can anyone actually find any reference that Marilyn Monroe was a redhead? (as per caption in photo)

I can only find information that she was a brunette!

Could we not use a picture of a natural blonde on this article? Bastie 17:35, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, folks might be interested to see her natural hair color. Bastie 21:27, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And Ellen Rocche is not blonde either Bastie 11:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The link has broken, so here's another picture. The caption is clearly incorrect, as she does not have "natural blonde hair". Bastie 06:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone find them out?

Weren't blonde wigs a mark of prostitution among Roman women?

If this is a joke you are a racist bastard.Cameron Nedland 00:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Take it easy, s/he might be having other information than you... Foant 13:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually true:

In ancient Rome, the law stated that prostitutes were to either dye their hair blonde or wear a blonde wig to separate themselves from the upstanding brunette female citizens of Rome. [1]

The etymology section is misleading on the subject of gender: the predominant French system of gender simply doesn't exist in English, even among 'careful writers'. We wouldn't say a finger is 'long' but a hand is 'longue', for example, because neither word has any concept of gender attached to it. What is meant by gender in English is a semantic notion of gender, ie it's based on the meanings of nouns rather than the nouns themselves.

There are some people who use 'blond' to describe a man's hair, and 'blonde' to describe a woman's hair, and indeed this convention is currently used in the article. But it makes no sense at all to call this a careful emulation of French. In French, the phrase 'Ses cheveux sont blonds' could mean 'his hair is blond(e)' or 'her hair is blond(e)' - the adjective is inflected according to the noun it describes, which is 'hair', not the person who owns the hair. AFAIK this curious form of inflection doesn't exist at all in standard French, and by the looks of it it's an example of 'confusion' which arose when the word passed into English usage.

It's not so much confusion but adaptation to the English gender system, which is a natural one. — Chameleon 09:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Because it's totally unclear what meaning the baroque punctuation is supposed to convey, I removed the following obscure passage:

In heraldry, a "woman" is, almost without exception, young and blonde, though she is nevertheless somewhat redundantly blazoned crined or {i.e., "crined" (her hair [is the tincture to be named]) "or" [gold]}.

—Herbee 10:32, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I don't see your problem. — Chameleon 10:48, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Researchers predict the last truly natural blonde will be born in Finland - the country with the highest proportion of blondes." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2284783.stm strictly speaking Finland is NOT part of Scandinavia, but one of the five Nordic Countries or, if you wish, it's part of Fennoscandia.

Can someone cite a source for this amusing tidbit:

Sweden, the largest and most populous of the Nordic countries, for example, has the highest percentage of both males and female who make use of hydrogen peroxide and related chemicals to change their natural hair colour to that of 'Nordic Blond/e'.

Bastie 14:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to see a source for the "blonds by country" statistics. Bastie 18:55, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Me to, until then I suggest removing the information. Foant 13:04, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some research suggests that fair hair, being characteristic of young children, evokes parent-like feelings of affection and protection in others.

What is the source for this? -- Beland 04:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The photo currently at the top of the photo is clearly a dye-job. Just look at the dark eyebrows! I, for one, think that articles on hair color should have pictures of people whose hair is naturally that color. --68.239.204.54 00:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Replaced by a natural blond now. --Abu Badali 03:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The girl in that picture still has dyed hair. No doubt she is a blonde of some form, but her eyebrow colour suggests she is more an ash blonde than a pale blonde as depicted. I will work on getting some pictures of family as we all have varying shades of blonde. It would be cool to show the different shades. I myself have honey blonde hair, but will have to find a picture that doesn't show too much of my face as I really don't want to be on the Net. --Beckie S

PLEASE NOTE: I am a natural blonde and my eyebrows are dark... you can tell my hair is natural because it has many tones.. i.e. it's darker underneath and sunkissed on top. It goes darker in winter and the sun makes it light again in the summer. It was very white until I was 7 and is still blonde now. I am over 40 - but not out! ;o) oh yeah and I have a degree... but I am a bit dizzy sometimes! I have very dark skin too (I am a natural blonde with dark eyebrows and dark golden skin!) I have English-French-East European roots.

Suggestions: or File:A tattooed lady.jpg (both from commons) --Abu Badali 19:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. The "natural blonde" photo, with the tan skin, black eyebrows and dark brown roots is most deffinately not a Nordic woman. Also the two pictures listed in the first one, that is also a dye job, and the second one looks like a person with natural light bown hair. Considering that natural blonde people make up 2% of the worlds population, finding a picture on one really would be hard to find!

I helped in the dissapearing blonde theory section, AND cited my sources. I suggest somebody started a list of natural blondes, please. (excuse my English, I don't think I phrased that last sentence correctly; English is not my first language as you can see). I say the whole article is factual, but I think there needs to be more added onto explaining the topic of 'dyed blonds' and different varieties of blonde. --4.253.123.30 22:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)Insomniak[reply]

I removed the unsorced section "Blondes all over the World". If a source can be found then it can be put back. I rewrote the "Theory of the Disappearing Blonds" section and moved the external links into it. The spelling in the article was a mixture of UK and US but now seems to be UK only. I don't have a US spell checker installed so if you want to change it back I'm not bothered. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

there seems to be a revert war between having either the seemingly unnatural hair color on some "eurasian" woman vs some "brazillian" woman. i think both pictures stink, but until we find a better one we should stick to the brazillian one. other suggestions? Foant 20:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, they aren't representative for the article but the eurasian girl pict looks like a light brunette. Jfreyre

Why do you guys have such discrimination of old blond females? Just b/c she's not as sexy as that young blond doesn't make her less of a blond! (Oahc 22:12, 12 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

The article has been protected due to the reversion war; please see the dispute resolution process. // Pathoschild 06:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the rule that, whenever possible, use an imagem from Commons. The relevant categories I could find there for candidade picures for this article are Portraits_of_men and Portraits_of_women. Among them, my favourites (in this order) are:

1. Image:Ellen_Roche-saidshjds.jpg (picture of Ellen Roche (the Brazilian lady))
2. Image:A_tattooed_lady.jpg (some surfist lady)
3. Image:Sylvia_Saint_001.jpg (picture of Sylvia Saint, not pretty sure if she is really blond.)

The english teacher picture (Image:My_english_teacher,_Sue!.jpg) simply doesn't cut. The picuter is ugly (and I'm talking about the PICTURE, not the lady). --Abu Badali 13:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whoever put that picture of Ellen Rocche, I totally support it!! If you want it, i have some photos where you can check out if she's a real blonde or not *cough* —This unsigned comment is by 200.222.3.3 (talk • contribs) .

Image number one is a fake blonde and so is image number three. And image number two is a woman with light BROWN hair, that highly disqualifies her as a blonde. Maybe we should just have people post good quality pictures of their own hair? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.109.200.197 (talk • contribs)

This women has natural blonde hair. She is English and both her parents have brown hair.

Out of her 4 grandparents: Two were natural blondes, one was red haired and one brown haired.

Although she has never used man made products to lighten her hair. Exposure to sunlight does intensify the colour.

Her hair thickness is very fine and bodily hair is very fair.

(80.0.172.114 22:58, 14 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Nice, I support this photo! :) Foant 15:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Too much light on the hair.

Newsflash, her hair IS light. It's not the light, her hair is just really shiny and light hair reflects light more. I support the picture, I think it's beautiful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.109.200.197 (talk • contribs)

WTF?! who deleted the picture of the boy with platinum blond hair that I had?-busboy 03:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't the one who deleted it but I can imagine it was due to the fact that the boy did not have platinum blonde hair, but white hair due to albinism. The picture was also featured on the page for albinism in humans. Despite that someone said in here that they think light blonde hair/people are a type of albinism, albinism and being blonde are two VERY different things. A blonde person lacks pigment ethnicically and can pass down these colors. It is very possible for a person of northern European descent to be born so extremely fair that they have pale skin, white hair and blue eyes and NOT be albino. Albinism is a genetic defect that both normal colored parents must have and pass on to a child. If that child has children one day, unless they have children with someone else carrying the albino gene, their children have normal coloring. Same can not be said for the pale blonde person. So I can only imagine that was the only reason the picture was taken down, but I'm NOT possotive on the motive because I didn't remove it.

But I do stand by albinism not being the same as being born blonde. ;) Being blonde is not a form of albinism.

Actually, depending on which type of blonde you are talking about it is. The yellow-haired toddler on this page has OCA2 or a subtype of OCA1 in conjunction with ocular albinism. It is even said on the albinism page that, people with albinism can have dirty blonde or light brown hair. Various subtypes of OCA1&2 exist mostl among whites, scince all blondes are some type of albino.busboy 16:50, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, not depending on what type of "blonde" I am talking about, being born ethnically blonde and being born ALBINO are not the same thing. There is a difference between a "blonde" person and a "person with blonde hair." A person of African ancestry can have albinism and have blonde, or even white hair, (and rarer cases of red) and still not be a "blonde". And there is a HUGE difference between occular albinism (the dirty blonde/light brown hair you're talking about which only affects their eyes and not their skin and hair) and occulocutaneous albinism. Having blonde hair means you have Scandanavian ancestry, no matter what nationally you are, even if your family has lived in Japan for x amount of generations and you consider yourself Japanese. Albinism is a condition. No, all blondes are not some type of albino, please understand the difference between pigment (think of it as contrast) and melanin (think of it as hue/saturation, what makes red hair red and blonde hair yellow), and that albinism is a condition which must be diognosed by an eye doctor (sometimes even as late as 18 people are diagnosed). I know a few blonde people I can take to an eye doctor and they can have perfectly normal eyes, no matter what color, or even if they are near/far sited and still not have the condition known as albinism.

X-posted to albinism for humans.

The same reason a blonde person is not an albino, is similar to why a maltese is not an albino dog, or why whites aren't albinos, however,the thing that causes them to be fair haired is directly related to albinism.

"How can a gene that tells someones DNA to produce little to no pigment in the hair and a certain type of melanin to turn the hair yellow be related to a genetic defect condition in which the person has no pigment or melanin at all? That is not the same. Blonde hair evolved when people started moving away from Africa and no longer needed pigment and began to migrate to other areas less hot/receiving straight UVA/UVB rays from the sun. They dropped the pigment because they no longer needed it, not because they picked up some form of albinism. This theory seems to be more of your own with disgarding a few scientific facts."

The same thing that causes blacks to have blonde hair, is the same thing that causes whites to have blonde hair, A type of albinism.

"It's not unusual for a white person to have blonde hair. It is unusual for a black person to have blonde hair since most people of African ancestry have either dark brown or black hair. This (having natural blonde hair) is usually attributed to perhaps mixed lineage or the condition occulocutaneous albinism, or even when a form of malnutrition can turn the hair different colours. You act as if it is perfectly normal for a black person to have blonde hair and though I have seen people of African ancestry with natural red hair because of mixed parenting, I have never seen one as a natural blonde though I have seen dyed blonde hair and extensions."

Consider this: Africans(albinos) were actually the first ones to have blonde hair and blue eyes.

"I cringed at this one. You have either not taken a few science classes or chose to diliberately disagree. I think you have your own personal opinion here, and I'm vaguely familiar with this theory "Africans use to be white, blonde haired and blue eyed and then turned black". Africans are not albinos since albinism is a condition, not representing a whole nationality like you have here. People moved out of African and into different parts of the Eastern hemisphere and developed different characteristics. They lost their pigment because they did not need it, not gained it. Blonde hair and blue eyes is one of the last things that humans attained when they began to move to the northern lattitudes of Scandanavia, not the earliest and certainly not the first. Red hair is actually more "recent" than blonde. There aren't many blue eyed blonde people in Africa, and if so, it's probably because they came from Europe a few hundred years ago (South Africa and England for example) not because they were there first."

You are using "blonde" here as a euphamism for "white", when blonde hair is technically race non-specific.

"The entire world attributes blonde hair to white people. It's not a secret. People all over the world of all races dye their hair blonde, yet usually when a girl of Japanese ancestry is born with natural blonde hair it's because she has mixed parenting. I have even seen an African-American with blue eyes, but he's not ashamed to say because one of this parents/grandparents was "white." These things are not unusual for "white" people, yet considered unusual when blonde hair turns up in other places. Hmmm, wonder why that is. Again, the entire world attributes it to white people."

We deem the name "albino" to those with OCA1, however,

"No, obviously you don't know much about albinism at all since OCA1 is just ONE form of albinism. There are nine others. All of whom under the condition are considered to be people with albinism."

scince albinism is fairly common,

"Like 1 in every 17,000 common?"

it is logical to say yellow blondes(like the toddler)have a type of albinism.

"A blonde toddler with yellow hair is not the same thing as a toddler with OCA1 with WHITE hair."

(P.S) Blonde hair does not mean you have scandinavian in you, as some italians do, and italians have black blood in them. And pure africans can have blonde hair to.busboy 23:36, 6 May 2006 (UTC) [reply]

3: AFRICANS WERE THE FIRST ONES WITH BLONDE HAIR AND BLUE EYES,BECAUSE THEY WERE THE FIRST HUMANS SO OF COURSE A FEW WOULD HAVE BLONDE HAIR AND BLUE EYES FIRST! BLACK PEOPLE WERE BROWN, THEN BLACK, THEN TURNED WHITE AS THEY LEFT, DUE TO ALBINISM!