Talk:Blond

Fair hair???

Do people actually use the term "fair hair" I've never heard it before. I've heard "fair skin" but never 'fair' in reference to hair. Is it just me? I'm from Oakland/San Francisco and I'm pretty sure we don't use that term... Is it prominent in other parts of the English-speaking world? 115.95.252.115 (talk) 11:24, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

If you read the article more carefully, this is already answered. The native "Old English" or "Anglo-Saxon" word for blond hair was faeger, pronounced /FAY-er/ - in other words, it would have been the normal word for 'blond' in the English of about 1000 years ago. After the French conquered England in 1066, and for about 200 years, the English language was driven underground and was not even taught in schools. In recent centuries the word "fair" has gradually lost ground as the predominant term in favor of "blond(e)", which is taken from French. The meaning of "fair" has also expanded over generations to be used for 'pale complexion', (but even this is becoming rare), as well as 'lovely' (any complexion) and 'just, reasonable'. In more conservative parts of the English speaking world, which I reckon in relation to San Francisco would be ALL of it, one might still sometimes occasionally hear references to "fair hair". Btw the proper name Fairfax comes from "faeger feahs", meaning "blond hair" in Old English. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, fæger means I. lovely, beautiful, pleasant, agreeable, attractive II. f. beauty. hwīt-loc, -loccede (white locks) means fair-haired, blonde. --Anwulf Wes þu hal! (talk) 04:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The term is in common use in southern England, and has regularly been applied to me all my life, as a polite alternative to 'blonde.' Leegee23 (talk) 15:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The number of Adult Blondes are the same as Redheads

Has anyone picked this fact up, that yes, in children, so many of them are blonde, but as they get older, many of them go brunette, or even black. So practically, i was confused why they said only 2% of the world is natural blonde (in adulthood), conceiving that as a small estimate. But the 2% was the same evaluation for redheads worldwide. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

"blonde is for women, blond is for men", except for the pictures in this article?

So I don't want to go and make changes to this page, but after including a section that states that blonde is for women, and blond for men, shouldn't the pictures including women say "a blonde..." ?? 116.102.19.7 (talk) 08:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Blonde hair evolved because it is more attractive?

There is much scientific research that blonde hair evolved because it was more attractive. We should incorporate such information into this article. Here is a journal article from the Institute of Psychology on this topic:

Attractiveness of blonde women in evolutionary perspective: studies with two Polish samples.

EasternAryan (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's another interesting article on blonde hair and helping. In this study, people were more likely to help a blonde!

Hitchhiking women's hair color.

EasternAryan (talk) 00:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Isn't that a point of view WP:NPOV? —Sandahl (♀) 05:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

No, that is what scientific research is showing. EasternAryan (talk) 18:38, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I doubt this. Sounds like POV to me, especially because they only surveyed Polish people (and Eastern Europeans tend to be more fair than other segments of the population).

And why is that Afghan woman pictured? her hair looks like none of the descriptions for blondes, also she is clearly a brunette. --Maladroitmortal (talk) 03:56, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Go to Japan, blond ppl are treated with almost awe there.99.152.112.169 (talk) 17:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Recessive genes can become more prevalent than dominant genes, having more blondes and brunettes is possible. That's through genetic drift and sexual selection, but sexual selection is based mostly on how rare it is. Say if the majority of the women were blonde, men will find brunettes attractive since has to do with the principle with distinction or looking unique. Poly-dactyl (6 fingers) is a dominant trait, but not prevalent, same with Dwarfism which is dominant but rare. At the current time, to increase the allele frequency of blondes, there would be genetic drift, or selective pressures to favor blondes over brunettes. Know that dominant genes are easier to get rid of than recessive genes because they're always expressed while recessive genes tend to remain hidden.

Hardy-Weinberg principle, learn it. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

This is just a wild hypotheses, which became popular via the gossip media. Most of the science world disagrees with this single study completely.

According to this logic, blonds would be all over the planet and not just in the dark north. It's obviously a selection due to the sunlight deficiency.

Actually no. Blond hair is a recessive gene, so even if blond ppl were sought after for breeding, the genes of their darker haired mates would still be more prevalent in their offspring, thus blondes would not dominate the world. You also must consider the fact that until the last 50 years or so, most ppl did not routinely travel to all parts of the globe (and if they did, it usually wasn't to breed with ppl)--another reason blondes aren't found all over the world.99.152.112.169 (talk) 17:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Just because a gene is genetically dominant does not mean that natural selection cannot favour the recessive gene. 70.65.161.174 (talk) 19:14, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Thus, it should be made clear, that this view is not the consensus of the majority and even opposed strongly. Pomelo, 24 June 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.226.1.7 (talk) 13:45, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Extreme extrapolation is involved in these studies; what they document is that in controlled experiments, men in a particular cultural context act in supportive-of-blond-women way. The evolutionary thesis involves consistent, reproduction-related actions across tens of thousands of years. Feel free to cite and discuss the actual conclusions (re: Polish men in psychological tests), although it might not be a notable aspect of this topic.--Carwil (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

picture of isabella I

this same picture is in the "auburn hair" article and says she was a natural auburn. i think it is confusing ... and this one looks wrong as i think she really did have auburn hair in the picture. 75.37.162.113 (talk) 01:57, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Billy Idol

Surely it is nonsense to say that Billy Idol is 'best' known for his blond hair? I suspect he is best known for his singing, although he may certainly also be known for having blond hair. --86.15.17.142 (talk) 20:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

blondes

Almost all the people in the last section of the article used to present blonde people are not even truly blond, they are people with brown hair who dye. The simple truth is in the fact that their eye brows are from dark brown or black to light brown. The other proof is where you see the finnish girl who has blonde hair, blond eye brows, and blonde eye lashes. My best friend from school for 14 years was an actual blond (both his parents are 100% blond too) and his hairs from his head, eye brows, eye lash, and even arm hair is all blonde. Only people with dyed hair have different color eye lash or eye brow, or arm hair than head hair. I think this article seems to exaggerate the number of blond people and it claims that something like there is 0% of black hair people in scandinavia. That is a joke, there are more black hair white people in scandinavia than blondes. Normal hair colors here are brown, light brown hair. About 1/5th of whites here have natural blond hair into adult hood. the rest brown or black hair. I think lithiuania has most blondes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.239.154.174 (talk) 01:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to say so, but this is complete nonsense. While it is true that many people have darker hair in Scandinavian countries (especially once they are 30 or 40 years or older - unless they are grey haired), many young people (I'd say: most of them) are blond - of course, it depends on the definition of "blond". By no means, "blond" is a uniform colour.

Moreover, it is simply NOT TRUE that darker eyebrows and/or eye lashes indicate a non-blonde person. Not true. Personally, I was blond in my adolescent and young adult years (now I am grey, not completely, but to a high degree), but I have always (except as a very young child) had dark eye lashes and eye brows; then again, I have blue eyes. - Not every natural blond person has the same colour when it comes to his/her lashes and eyebrows - many have a darker colour there. And then again, some people are clearly dark haired but have very light lashes and eye brows! Many of them are blue-eyed.- Regarding black hair colour, one has to be careful. Most people called "black haired" are NOT black haired, but at best have a very dark brown hair colour, this is also true for most everybody in Spain, for instance. The predominant colour is dark brown, not black. The only (if at all) people with "black" hair colour are Asians (let's say Japanes, Chinese etc.), maybe most Indians, and also Indios in Latin America; even black people in Africa often have a hair colour which is better described as "very dark brown", but not "black". To assume that there are so many black haired people in Sweden, is idiotic. There is (apart from some foreigners) almost no one (same for Germany, for instance or other European countries) who could be called "black haired". Just watch the difference in hair colour between a Chinese and your "black haired Swede", lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.58.215.2 (talk) 15:35, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

If the dark haired swede has wet hair, it's black :P. Dark-brown hair happens when the hair is dry--75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There is almost no truth to this entire rant you went on, and it would all be original research anyway. I and my three daughters are all natural blondes, and we all have brown-to-black eyelashes and eyebrows of varying shades of brown. Your statement lacks any merit whatsoever.214.3.138.234 (talk) 12:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Steve

This is certainly not true. My hair is dark brown, but my eyebrows are ash blond. When my hair grows, it turns red-brown. My beard and mustaches are dark brown with individual hairs and patches of hair ash blond. My father has almost black hair, but his eyebrows are ash blond, his mustaches are ash blond too, and his beard is red. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.185.100.155 (talk) 14:09, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you noticed why gingers have blonde bodyhair. Why the Turkish Brunette has a red beard? This happens, i think it's polygenic. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Map

There are mistakes in the map. Here is the original: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/214-the-blonde-map-of-europe/. See, northern France is not accurate, and especially, there is no reason to make Latvia yellow. Can the author correct please? --Little sawyer (talk) 23:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Little sawyer (talk • contribs)

You can find various versions of this kind of map. Here's yet another[1] - I believe this comes from one of Carleton Coon's books. I don't think that these maps can ever be regarded as 100 per cent accurate, they just show the general picture that lighter hair is more common around southern Scandinavia and the Baltic, and becomes increasingly less so in concentric bands further away from this region.--Pondle (talk) 01:13, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

In fact, the work of Coon has been made from the studies of other scientists. And there was a huge problem of methodology between the French and the German ones : the first ones have taken adult samples, while the second have taken children samples. This explains the contrast of the map in so close regions. In fact, according to other studies, in the 19th century, southern Germany would have rather the same hair-standard as south-central France (Auvergne, Dauphiné). This must be mentioned in the article. And light-feature isolation of South-Eastern Italy and Galicia is complete original (and fantasy) research compared to the original Coon's work. I will try to draw a better map (with sources of course). --Plombsoldier (talk) 19:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

source and date issues

The map does not represent actual measurement, but an hypothesis by an unnamed person. Without sourcing, it's not really proper to include in this article. Also it doesn't say when it is relevant: pre-Roman times? rewinn (talk) 03:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe the source is: Peter Frost, where he sumarizes his article Peter Frost (2006), "European hair and eye color - A case of frequency-dependent sexual selection?", Evolution and Human Behavior, n.27, 85-103. The Ogre (talk) 12:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

The legend on the map refers to an "indigenous population" which is a rather comical concept in terms of Europe's history of frequent migrations. Perhaps a more precise legend would be helpful; at least name the source since no dates for that distribution have been offered

NOW the map legend refers to an "historic" distribution, which is even sillier. Europe has THOUSANDS OF YEARS of history, and the movement of the tribes is known to have varied widely. The hair color map on the web page cited to appears to refer to modern distribution of hair color but does not say so explicitly. Perhaps it is referring to some 19th century work per http://carnby.altervista.org/lundraces/lundman-races1.htm and if so, it should say so: "19th century distribution of hair color". What does this map add to the objective content of this article? rewinn (talk) 00:37, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

deletion discussion

I have deleted the map since it is weakly sourced, undated, not correct at any known date, and per discussion above most likely not correct at any date at all. The concept that there is a greater frequency of blonds in Northern Europe than elsewhere, if supported, should be supported with more authoritative sourcing and, if illustrated with a map, should be illustrated with a map that is more accurate. I appreciate that someone evidently went to some effort to craft the map but that's no reason to spread inaccuracy. rewinn (talk) 04:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I believe there is a pretty well established consensus that this map, while vaguely giving the right general idea, is lacking in accuracy and detail.

My previous edit was in error, sorry. 213.91.145.85 (talk) 02:28, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Gender

Seeing as blondism occurs in both genders is there any good reason for this article to be almost entirely about women? I would understand that within a subsection that was about contemporary culture, but not for the page in full. There is almost nothing on blond men, and that's a bit of arrogance. Ilmanuplaut (talk • 11:56, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Same, that's the same case with fair skin, other than racism, it was about women. I heard that for men, Mediterranean features were ideal like tan rough skin to show he's strong under the sun and stuff like that. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be the case anymore. --Ilmanuplaut (talk) 18:46, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

This is why no one will ever take Wikipedia seriously as a research tool. Someone spends an entire section talking about blondes and sexism against women then the entire list of "famous people" with blonde hair is nothing but women. "Blonde" is a color that happens to include hair. Keep the sexism rants to the Sexism page. Dkaplan73 (talk) 14:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Only 2%

Only 2% of the world-population have blond hairs. However, blondism seems to die out among these people.-- 94.219.198.90 (talk) 09:20, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hardy–Weinberg principle is a good article explaining the relationships among dominant and recessive alleles. Practically, recessive and dominant don't have to be counted, but sexual selection may be a main factor that affects the allele frequencies of blondes and red-heads. Because of dying people's hair, it is detrimental to the alleles as more and more people are dying their hair blonde, a male mates with a fake blonde or redhead, and the persistence of children not having those allele increase.

It's all gotta do with what males find attractive. Men of other races discourage themselves to mate with those carrying the blonde allele because they see it as miscegenation which they frown upon, preferring to mix with their own race. Such this causes a selection agiant blondes and redheads. If there was substantial racial mixing, then the allele frequency for blondes and readhaeds would not die out , as these alleles can be expressed as homozygous reccessive on any race. There is no other genetic factor that stops this at all times. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Photos

It seems odd that in an article about blond hair, three of the six pictures show people where their blond hair is atypical in their region/ethnic group, and only two where blond hair is the norm. Also, two of the three 'normal' blonds are paintings - and the sole photo is of a child - and as we all know, often children are blond but become darker haired with age. Could we have some more European or European-origin adult blond/blondes please? 86.133.211.42 (talk) 17:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it were mostly pictures of 'blackhaired blondes'. Pictures of real ones are easily to be found via this proposed article: [2].VKing (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

And now there's a picture of "A natural blond Riffian Berber man" in the article. Well, in the first place this as well looks very much a blonded (= dyed blond) man; under the more or less light curls, there evidently is much darker hair; this is mostly a sign of dying, as the hair grows near to the head, as a result of which the new grown part of it is not dyed lighter (yet), but natural more dark or black.

It seems very much, that this man is a sprout of a Moroccan and a Northern-Europide (blond) parent. (During the last three or four decennia there has been very much 'traveling' between the mentioned Northern-African country and Northern-European ones like Holland, as many relatively young Moroccan men went to work in those countries and in most cases stayed there, whereas a small percentage went back, in some cases taking their (blond) Northern-European wife (and sometimes sprouts) with them to their country of origin). VKing (talk) 16:38, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

No matter where the sources are, the blonde types must be shown with photos.Undead Herle King (talk) 00:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

@Vking, thats an interesting theory you have, but completely unrealistic. If you do some basic background reading you will find that already the ancient romans noted that the rif berber population was predominantly blonde and blue-eyed. In some instances these traits have survived to this day, of which presumably the partly sun-bleached berber boy is one example.

Some random examples. In a book from 1911 "because I found among the Riff Berbers in Northern Morocco a large number of Jews ... They hold on to their religion, although physically they are decidedly of the Berber race, having blonde hair and blue eyes"[3]

"It is certain that there was a fair-haired element in libya long before Rome conquered Carthage or the vandals had passed into the ken of history, for Callimachus (cf. vol. I. p. 285) testifies to the existence of blond Berbers in the third century B.C We may hold then, with Sergi and others, that the blond elements in the Berbers is not a survival from invasions of Vandals or Goths or from Roman colonists, but that they rather owe their fair complexions and light-coloured eyes to the circumstance that they were cradled in a cool mountainous region, and not along the low-lying border of the Mediteranean like their dark-coloured relations whose language and customs they share."[4]

"In the north (Rif) there are relatively large numbers of blonde...[5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sloppy diplomat (talk • contribs) 22:10, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

cro magnons

this article clearly implies they have been all victorian era monogamists wtf?79.216.151.252 (talk) 14:56, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Racial Occurrence

No mention of variation by race? Occurrence in African or Asian groups? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.81.80 (talk) 00:57, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Removal of information about the specific color "blond"

As the material I removed has been re-added twice now, albeit with no explanation, I just wanted to ask here and see if anyone has any substantive disagreement with me about whether it belongs here. I removed the infobox and categories about the specific color "blond" (visible here) because the article seems to be discussing not that specific color, but instead the general phenomenon of light-colored hair. The color "blond" is a single specific shade, as seen in the infobox; it doesn't make sense to me to have the infobox saying "Blond means this specific color, 247-236-183 on the RGB scale" in an article that says "Blond means a very wide range of shades of hair color." An article about the specific color "blond" would tend to look more like Flax (color), describing a single, specific hue. There are many other color articles, such as Lime (color), that do discuss a range of hues, but it's still specific colors that are being discussed ("lime" is this, "lime green" is this, "electric lime" is this, etc., as opposed to "lime means lots of different colors"). Is there any disagreement here, or anything about my opinion I can clarify? Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:12, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you. The Ogre (talk) 12:01, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for saying so. A third user has since tried to undo my edit -- all three of the users who have done so have had extremely brief (and one might say unproductive) contrib histories and none has provided any reason for disagreeing with the changes, so I hope it's acceptable to assume it's just a weird streak of vandalism or something. Theoldsparkle (talk) 00:52, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

List of famous people

Should there not be a list of famous historical people that were blond? Either here in this article or as a separate article? For example Odysseus, Alexander the Great, Emperor Nero, Christopher Columbus, Isaac Newton etc. Possibly also even including Leonardo da Vinci[6]--Sloppy diplomat (talk) 23:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

That would be a really huge list, impossible to maintain. A better approach would be a category, so you can go tag people as blonds. rewinn (talk) 16:32, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I would have strong expectations that such a list, or a category, would be deleted. See WP:CATEGORY#Which categories should be created and Wikipedia:Overcategorization, and the deleted Category:Famous Redheads and List of redheads. Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

It would be like list of historical figures with Autism, because we can't prove if they really were blonde or just brunette. I heard Nazis were affraid of Da Vinci for having a dark complexion that would contradict their theory.. --75.159.2.59 (talk) 07:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Blurry self-portrait

trevorwidger (talk · contribs) has repeatedly reinstated what appears to be his blurry self-portrait on to this article. As I think the last thing this article needs is more low-quality images, I've reverted it three times but can no longer remove it. Can we get some consensus on the use of this photo? :bloodofox: (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

trevorwidger (talk · contribs) is a vandal, he has been warned several times on his talk page by several editors, for obvious vandalism to articles. He should be blocked. Some edits done by trevorwidger (talk · contribs) to other articles are: this edit; this edit; this edit. He is a serial vandal who must be blocked quickly.

File:MARILYN-MONROE.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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Blondism in South America

If blondism is indeed indigenous to Peru (as the oh-so-reliable Daily Mail claims) I would be glad to have it mentioned here, but not while the Chachapoyas culture article (this revision) contradicts it from the primary sources. For someone to read the claim in this article, then go to the other article and see that this one is lying, I think, creates a bad experience.

I have found two books that credit conquistador Pedro Pizarro with the claim of blond-haired Peruvians and quote him. This would seem rather convincing, except that they are not quoting Pedro Pizarro directly. They are both quoting from the book subtitled The Vikings in Mexico and Peru by Nazi race scientist Jacques de Mahieu. No thanks. 24.22.217.162 (talk) 19:15, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind you removing that material. The times that I reverted you, I was more focused on reverting one or two other people, as seen in this edit before you reverted me about an hour ago. 50.17.15.172 (talk) 01:41, 11 March 2012 (UTC)