Fade To Black

For 26 years, I had been a blonde. A bubbly, voluptuous bombshell, let’s say (ha!). On the eve of my 27th birthday, I dyed my platinum hair raven black. Soon after, I began to realize that what I had done was not only an aesthetic modification, but a social adaptation as well. Who has two thumbs and loves social experiments? This girl.

While I’ve heard testimonials from similarly-morphed women that their friends and family opined strongly (and negatively) on the subject, everyone in my immediate circles, both men and women, were supportive and positive. Whether or not they actually believe that it suits me or they’re being kind, I’m just going to take the compliment naively! They knew me as a blonde, and they know me as a brunette now, but I’m still the same person and that’s the only thing that has changed.

Ah, but perhaps not the only thing. Now, with people who never knew me as a blonde, I have found a marked difference in my social interactions. And having had no metric of comparison for the first 26 years of my life, the variation only became notable when I, now a brunette, was asked the question: “So what’s it like with guys now that you’re no longer blonde?”

Yeah, what is it like with guys? I hadn’t thought about it. We’ve all heard that gentlemen prefer blondes (and for the sake of argument, I’m going to lump all men in the ‘gentlemen’ category, even though rifling through my ghosts of exes past reveals no regular superior standard of conduct), but having been a blonde my entire life I wasn’t sure if that was true or not. An experiment looms.

Stand back, I’m about to do science!

Aim:
To determine if blondes really do have more fun.

Hypothesis:
If gentlemen prefer blondes, then brunettes get the short end of the [Freudian slip].

Equipment:
Feminine wiles and a box of Garnier Nutrisse.

Variables:
Control: Blonde hair.
Test: Black hair.

Method:
Let me back up. Biologically speaking, men tend to have darker hair than women. It could be argued that men prefer women with fairer and therefore more feminine hair because attractiveness has been contextualized in terms of gender. Similarly, as a sub-clause of beauty is youth, another point for the Blonde Squad could be that blonde hair often darkens as people age. It’s not surprising, then, that such an experiment could be based on evolutionary theory. To test this, all that needed to happen was to revisit my relations with men once as a blonde, now as a brunette. The same bars, the same clothes, the same jokes, the same fabulous posse. Granted, they weren’t the same guys and they weren’t the same nights, but hey, I’m no scientician.

Results:
The type of guy I tended to attract as a blonde was the typical dude – liked sports, cars, beer, women, and probably blasted Alt-Rock from the speakers of his Jeep. Nice dudes, good intentions for the most part. I fell in love with some of them, and was lucky enough to be loved in return sometimes too. But, obviously, relationships ended and people moved on. And if I review them with complete disregard to any complications therein (and it’s my blog so I can do that with no comments from the peanut gallery, thank you very much), reducing it to base needs/wants reveals that what was lacking was some sort of edge. I just never would have guessed that the one lacking it was me.

In researching this topic (nerd alert), I came across one study hypothesizing that blondes are more aggressive ‘due to constantly being harassed’. As a blonde, there are so many tired generalizations to be experienced, however peripherally. The dumb thing, the man-eater thing, the sticky slut thing... I hadn’t realized I was being pigeon-holed with every move I made, but I see now by its absence that when I was blonde I was evaluated on these things solely because of my hair color. Furthermore, I was probably responding to that sort of contact and judgment with aggression. Form of: vehement rejection. Cat-call me? Fuck off. Lovely.

Now, both men and women treat me with much more respect. Women approach me more, and with a smile instead of the hostile air of feeling intimidated. Men look me in the eye instead of 12 inches lower; they open with a non-sexual comment instead of the lewd remarks to which I had grown accustomed. As a brunette, there are now presumptions that I might be intelligent, I might not steal your boyfriend, and I might not put out on the first date (I said ‘might’). And it’s not that the cat-calls are gone. With similar frequency, now those sorts of comments have an air of deference: I hear ‘You’re beautiful,’ and my response is a much more likable Thank you. My new-found edge is that I’m much more appealing, even to myself.

Conclusion:
Whoa now, what just happened? All of a sudden this is a personal op-ed piece? What happened to measurable science? Well, friends, life just isn’t as easy as 3.14159265... We’re social animals, us humans. We act, we react, we interact. If I, as a blonde, felt like a piece of meat, I don’t as a brunette. And so my own poise is affected thusly. A chicken/egg argument, perhaps, but I sincerely feel as though the ‘respect’ came first. I continue to attract men in no smaller numbers, albeit a new type of man. Goodbye to Civics and popped collars; hello to tats and [gasp!] conversation. And so, I must conclude that my hypothesis was wrong.

Gentlemen, in fact, do not prefer blondes, and brunettes have way more fun.

Besides, a fair complexion is a recessive allele in the inherited genotype. I may be faking being a brunette, but I certainly feel preeminent.

(Credit where credit is due: many facts in this experiment were taken from my memories of university lectures. And, of course, Wikipedia. Photo from: http://myhairisemo.blogspot.com/2009/11/dye-black-hair-blonde.html. Thanks, Internet.)

The First Time

Sex. Of course we'd start off with sex. It's on everyone's mind these days. If you're having it, if you're not having it, when you'll have it next, and that always awkward how you can avoid having it with that guy you've been out with twice now... Without riding on the coattails of every social commentator out there, sex actually is everywhere. And why not? It's just so... FUN.

Sex has become perhaps the only one of 4 measures of compatibility that can, in one fumbling episode, trump the remaining 3. Social connection? Woo! Emotional connection? Aw. Spiritual connection? Amen. But lacking that physical connection? No, I don't want brunch - get out of my bed. And maybe it takes more than one time to test the waters. Maybe a little less wine, maybe a little more stretching beforehand to really get into the 'motion of the ocean' [cringe]. (Maybe a Gravol?) Besides, it's true that it's not the size of the [insert naval penile euphemism here] that matters. Only women with no emotional depth need, uh, girth.

So what is it, then, that fires off those synapses? That makes one neuron say to the other: 'Holler!'? Drum roll please...

Balls. Actual testicles. No, seriously - a man. And we don't mean of the ass-hat variety, although going through our recent trysts, you'd never guess... We mean the confidence to be a man and take control. Check it: we love to fuck (men, not each other... Hey now). We do it often, and with vigor. Sure, we're still delicate flowers, but if one more guy asks 'Is this ok?', so help us... Yes, we are confident. Yes, we know what we want, and we know what we like, and we know what we need. And don't worry, we'll tell you. We'll point this toe and raise that knee and ruin a clean set of sheets. And in our professional, spiritual, emotional, and social lives, we've got it all covered! We take care of business, of ourselves; we're successful; independent; if we want something, we go out and get it. We make every attempt to crash through that glass ceiling with a smile and a great push-up bra. But sometimes, sometimes we just want to be taken care of. Sometimes we want to feel, well, like women.

(I must pause here to exclaim that we are feminists of the truest sort. We, all of us, advocate for equality, choice, and the evolution of women's rights. We respect and love other women, and we respect and love men. Each of us has been lucky enough to enjoy at least one long-term relationship, and while we may not be desperate to get back into another one, we're all enjoying our current varied states. Some of us are in relationships, some of us are in love; for others 'it's complicated!' The point here is that just because the role of women in society is shifting, that doesn't mean that we want to fill the role of men, that we don't still want to be women. In fact...)

In this month's Atlantic there was an interesting article titled "The End of Men: How Women are Taking Control - of Everything." In all the tired analogies depicting women driving 425HP+ cars glossing their lips in the rear-view [how did they get into my car without me noticing?!], men were portrayed whimpering in the dust. Women, for all our past struggles, have necessarily developed support networks and niches in society since before our suffragist foremothers. Groups that have either been created organically, or displaced men in that role. There has been an interchange between men and women; whereas men once brought home the bacon to their apron-clad wives, now more and more men are ceding the bread-winning to their partners, are taking paternity leave, are in the very least collaborating on the important decision-making of the household. Even in areas of our own lives that were once filled by men, we have taken matters into our own hands. Like sex. Sex for procreation is no longer imperative thanks to in-vitro; sex for pleasure has long been in solitude. But what we can't recreate with a battery-powered oscillator is the rest of the, er, package - a man. Although surely some biometric lab is out there somewhere perfecting a prototype, we want a man who will fix the dishwasher (because Lord knows we're too damn busy to wash dishes by hand); a man who will kill spiders, rest their hand on the smalls of our backs, and at the same time that they recognize our vulnerability (and yes, it's there! Just don't tell anyone...), make us feel safe.

And of course, in order to make a man feel like a man, we, as women, need to let him! Sure, we'll make supper when we can. We'll clean house, ask him how his day was with sincerity, let him hold the remote. We might bear his children. We'll love him and honor him, protect his feelings and support him to the best of our abilities. And in daily banter: Can you change my oil, sweetheart? Would you mind opening this jar for me, babe? Could you hang this closet door, honey? While it's possible (nay, probable) that we could do those things ourselves, frankly it doesn't behoove us to fully negate the rubric: 'the fairer sex.' Especially when it comes to when we most desire a man: sex.

So, guys: man up to hot, sweaty, raw, and maybe a little bit dirty sex.

We'll still continue to climb corporate ladders. We'll actually write blogs about enjoying sex. We'll take the reins from 9-5, but afterhours we still need a man.

Just one that can change our flat tire, and then sit in the passenger seat while we floor it and apply fresh lipgloss.