In contemporary Western literary and artistic works, the image of blondes is always so unsatisfactory, they are gold worshippers in comedies, conceited cannon fodder in horror movies, and they are also synonymous with brainlessness and vulgarity.
So why there is a prejudice against blondes in Western culture, which may be traced back to the film art that just started in the last century, and the sexy blondes with facial faces.
In the early twentieth century, with the increasing maturity of film technology, a large number of vivid and interesting screen images were created by filmmakers, and in 1921, the silent film "Anna Thor Rhymes" starring Grovia Swanson was released in the United States, and Swanson used his outstanding acting skills to create a stupid and naïve blonde image.
The success of "Anna Tor Rhymes" made filmmakers at the time realize that it was easier to make a movie with a sexy blonde than to seriously make a story, and instead of expounding ideas in the movie, it was better to cater to the mainstream patriarchal ideas of the time and write a few facial female characters.
So in the 1950s, a large number of similar movies were listed, and a number of blonde actresses took the stage, and the best of them was the famous Marilyn Monroe.
On September 16, 1955, Marilyn Monroe stood in the subway vent on the street of New York to shoot the movie "The Seven Year Itch", and Monroe was dressed in a white group, wearing a pair of white high heels, and was lifted by the cold wind from under the vent. This scene became a classic in the history of world cinema and established Monroe's status as a sexy goddess.
The Seven Year Itch established Monroe as a superstar. In the film, Monroe's character has the characteristics of blonde hair, blue eyes, pure ignorance, innocence and happiness, sexy and seductive, etc., which constitute a golden sign in European and American culture - blonde brainless beauty, a unique image that usually has a mature and beautiful body that can arouse male desires, but is accompanied by childlike intelligence and soul.
Later, Monroe's works made the image of the blonde more perfect. In the two comedies "The Gentleman Loves the Blonde" and "Willing to Marry the Golden Turtle", Monroe plays the blonde with more material gold worship characteristics, and in these two works, Monroe's character uses her charm to make countless men fall under her pomegranate skirt.
Since then, Fox Pictures has made sexiness the biggest selling point of Monroe's films, and its role is the same blonde. Monroe's image in the film becomes increasingly simple and fickle, which further reinforces the stereotype of "blonde brainless beauty".
Since Monroe, blondes have been formally associated with the word "sex", and by the 1960s and 1970s, female consciousness began to rise, and feminists saw the image of blonde as a negative, watched object of male desire, and its sexiness was in the service of male visual pleasure.
Although the original intention of feminists is to express the oppression and change of women's image in the patriarchal society, their behavior of discriminating against blondes in their hearts is tantamount to aggravating the stereotype of blondes, but making blonde women suffer more criticism and discrimination in life.
Although the image of blondes in contemporary Western literary and artistic works is not pleasing, after all, human beings are the purest visual animals, and the impact and beauty of blonde hair are far greater than other hair colors, which is also the fundamental reason why many European and American women are keen to dye their hair blonde.
The Westerners' fervor for blondes was born more than two thousand years ago in ancient Greece, when in the temple frescoes of the time, Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty in ancient Greek mythology, was imagined by the painter as a blonde woman who exuded the temptation of carnal desire.
Hundreds of years later, after the establishment of the Roman Empire, which had absorbed Greek civilization, the enthusiasm of the Romans living in the Mediterranean sea in southern Europe reached its peak for blonde hair. After successive conquests of Gaul and Britain, the ancient Romans came into contact with Celtic nomads with tall stature and blonde hair and blue eyes, which caused the diminutive and dark-haired Romans to have a deep sense of inferiority.
The romans, who considered themselves noble, naturally could not lose to the barbarian herders they conquered in this respect, and in order to satisfy their own little vanity, a wave of blonde hair was set off in the city of Rome, and at that time, the barbers in the city were already proficient in the technique of beech decolorization, and a large number of Gaul and Celt captives also provided the Romans with a steady stream of wigs.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Christianity ruled all of Europe, and the clergy repeatedly issued warnings to prohibit this so-called unhealthy trend, claiming that dyeing hair was immoral and that blonde women were the embodiment of uncleanness.
However, the warnings of the clergy did not change the aesthetic concept of Europeans, and even the clergy themselves could not escape the "law of true incense" that was keen on blonde hair, and we can still see a large number of religious murals depicting blondes in ancient western monasteries.
And this also shows that the stereotype of blondes in contemporary times is not achieved overnight, in ancient times, people based on the most traditional aesthetic perspective, there is not much malice towards blondes.
In the final analysis, the "blonde brainless beauty" is a female image established according to male desires in the patriarchal society of the first and middle of the last century, becoming a sexy machine dedicated to serving male audiences, and the blonde person has become a victim of the negative nature of the powerful society under the absolute power of the right to speak.
"Blonde beauty with a big chest and no brain" means that the female subject's desire is expressed, and it is only a male vassal with a beautiful skin bag, making it impossible for female audiences to identify with blonde brainless beauty.
At the same time, "Blonde" is only an illusory image created by literary and artistic workers, and it is an empty fetish tendency under the patriarchal society, which can be seen from the early films of the last century, and the exaggerated plot and exaggerated performance methods mean that the image of "Blonde" does not conform to real life.
This kind of artistic expression that is not realistic can be said to be a confrontation between the patriarchal society and the rise of feminism at that time. It shows that under the wave of post-war ideological emancipation, traditional patriarchy was impacted by the women's liberation movement, which led to cultural anxiety.
Traditional male power can only try to do a sneaky concept action by creating a false female image, trying to make women face, promoting incorrect values, and choosing "blonde" as the main object is precisely because of its important position in the human heart, stigmatizing the original beautiful femininity, thus achieving the fundamental purpose of subverting the women's liberation movement.
Perhaps in the eyes of literary and artistic workers, blonde = big chest and no brain is a way of artistic processing, and does not include malice and personal attacks on this group. But stereotypes of blondes have been formed in society and have more or less had an impact on the lives of such groups.
In 2004, a study from the Royal Academy of Social Sciences showed that blonde women who had been exposed to stereotypical evaluations of blondes for a long time had a more or less downward trend in their minds, so the study was also named "stereotype threat".
Admittedly, this stereotype can cause immeasurable psychological harm to the person concerned, and to this day, we still can't believe that Monroe would be interested in the works of hemingway and other literary figures. In our minds, she is nothing more than a beautiful and brainless fool who only knows how to cling to men, and the word "blonde" has long since become a shackle that restricts her soul, and this has become an inducement for her final death.
The stereotype of blondes in Western culture also contains racial problems in European and American culture, and to become the object of men's desires, it must be a white woman, and blondes and blue eyes hint at the purity of race. The so-called white woman is considered the highest value property owned by white men.
This "material" possession would be the envy of other populations, while blondes evoked feelings of protection or sadism among macho in patriarchal societies, where blondes could only be sexual objects, imbued with racist tendencies.
Today, blondes are still stupid, gold-worshippers and clinging to men in contemporary art, as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
Although the current women's liberation movement is in full swing, the stereotype of blondes is no longer the oppression of women in patriarchal societies, and women themselves will use "blondes" as a tool for recreation. Rather, it is the deliberate discrimination against minorities by society as a whole.
The root cause of the formation of stereotypes is the incomprehension and discrimination of minorities by those who occupy the mainstream discourse in society, such as the stereotypes of American society on Asians with small eyes and good learning.
In our society, the misunderstanding of cosmetic surgery and the lifestyle of some people has formed stereotypes of minorities such as "net red face" and "green tea".
Although implicit Chinese society does not discriminate against such minorities on the surface, and there are few contemporary stereotypes in literary and artistic works, stereotypes of minorities have penetrated into all aspects of our lives.
In the job search process of minorities, unprofessional HR is easily attracted by its appearance or characteristics, and ignores its work ability and career matching degree, while in the marriage market, minorities will be labeled as low-quality users because of social stereotypes, and the harm caused by these unprofessional and superficial stereotypes to minorities is immeasurable.
In today's extremely developed Internet, the Internet has become an important source of information for people, and people can also express their views on the Internet. But the internet has also brought a flood of information, and the network has gradually changed from a communication platform to a tool to control the direction of public discourse.
Roland Barthes once said: People exist in this era of contradictions reaching their limits, and all satire and ridicule become the truth that everyone admires. It can be said that the development of the Internet and literary and artistic works has exacerbated the current society's neglect of rationality and excessive pursuit of entertainment.
In contemporary society, the more rational views and content are difficult to attract the attention of most people, and the media and literary and art workers do not hesitate to make up fake news, write war articles, and compile some nonsensical funny paragraphs in order to obtain clicks and benefits, which have formed stereotypes of a certain group.
When we see images of people such as green tea, blondes and female drivers in news and literary works, we must understand a truth, what we can see is what the media and literary and artistic workers want us to see, these are the results carefully selected by the media and literary and artistic workers, and also the result of the selective acceptance of media content by the information audience.
Stereotypes bring about two-way mutually beneficial consumption by media and information recipients, creating a negative cycle. And this cycle has also deeply rooted stereotypes in contemporary society.
Whether it is "blonde" or "female driver" or "green tea", it is a superficial speculation on a single group, a naked stereotype attack on minorities, and an attempt by traditional patriarchal society to oppress some female groups. In the middle of the last century, the negative stereotype of "blonde" was laid down through only a few films and literary works.
Then in today's era of information explosion, stereotypes are more likely to be formed in society, and in contemporary news reports and literary and artistic works, a large number of eye-catching network news and strange plots emerge in an endless stream, and the female image is gradually fixed and prejudiced.
Although we cannot ignore the psychological and physiological differences between men and women, the prevalence of consumerism has seriously affected the image of women in society, such as "luxury goods", "worship of gold" and other labels are becoming more and more common in this materialistic society, and even women themselves are unconsciously labeling themselves with stereotypes.
We must knock on the high wall of stereotypes, maintain our own hearts in the era of information explosion, and be good at using our own brains to think, rather than being led by the nose by so-called literary and artistic works, and even becoming the mouthpiece of their voices. Only by retaining one's own thoughts and not being easily swayed by others can we truly destroy the social wall of stereotypes, prevent prejudice and consensus, and truly reduce the persecution and discrimination of minorities.