On being blonde in New York City

One friend told me I’m the blondest woman he knows in the city. Another friend told me to wake up to myself and know that blondes get more attention in this city.

The other night I was minding my own business walking somewhere along Sixth Ave and trying to find the entrance to the subway.

A young-ish man came up behind me and said, “Excuse me, are you a movie star? Cause you look like one.”

Huh?

“Umm.. no. What? Why?” I fumbled.

He asked me what I was doing in New York, did I speak French because he did and whether I could get cabs easily because I was blonde.

I flubbed my way through some lame responses to have him launch into a sidewalk lecture about how blonde women have it so much easier in this world. According to him, blondes are more beautiful thanks to their eyes often being blue and because they have symmetrical faces.

“This guy is so full of it,” I thought to myself. “Blonde doesn’t always mean beautiful. What do you even know?”

I started to think about how I was a blonde little girl that morphed into an ugly teenager practically overnight. That when I was younger I got picked on and teased incessantly. I had braces, terrible pimples and a giant Wicked Witch of the West nose. I was gangly and shy and sucked at being social.

When you spend your teenage years awkward and unattractive, there’s a part of you that always believes it, no matter what happens to your appearance later in life. I am stuck with the mindset that I grew up with — the world doesn’t owe me anything because of how I look.

Since I was a teenager I’ve had to work hard to attract anyone, be it friends or romantic partners. That has always forced me to pour more of my efforts into developing my brain, interests and personality, rather than relying on and having others fawn over my looks. Why then would I even care what my hair color is?

I said none of this, of course, to the guy standing in front of me giving me his blonde = beautiful mantra. When he finally finished he closed with, “Here’s my card and oh, by the way, my office is on 15th. Do want to get coffee sometime?”

I was waiting for that last line. New York men are such opportunists. He shoved his card into my hand and walked off.

I stood in the street, somewhat perplexed. Did that guy really just think I was a movie star? I looked down at his card. It said Dr. Michael Parker Benjamin — Psychotherapist** in black sans serif type. Did that guy just think I’m nuts because he could read my mind just now?

I told a couple of my New York friends, both male and female about what happened and why.

One friend told me I’m the blondest woman he knows in the city. Another friend told me to wake up to myself and know that blondes get more attention in this city. People assume you’re foreign. Because most New Yorkers are descendent in the most part from immigrants with southern European or Jewish backgrounds, that is, people not generally known for having blonde hair.

That explains why, in this city at least, I am often referred to as ‘the blonde’. Because I’m usually the only one. I’m the blonde in ballet class. I’m the blonde at the office. I’m the blonde on the subway. I’m the blonde in the line at Chipotle.

The same kind of blonde reference doesn’t work in my native Australia because lots of people have blonde hair where I come from. It also explains why in this city I often get asked if I’m from Sweden. Or Germany. It’s not until I start talking and people hear my accent — that’s usually enough to kill the ‘you must be from Scandinavia or whatever’ references.

And so, if being blonde in New York City isn’t all that common, and considered by random men on the street as a rouse for hitting on strangers, what does it all mean?

If you believe this New York Times article, a ‘New York Blonde’ (note the capitalization) should have these adjectives attached to her; ‘dazzling’, ‘rare’, ‘gold’, ‘status’. She also does this..

“The New York Blonde embodies a lot of the values of our materialistic society.. she is thinner, blonder, richer than the rest of us, and she has better shoes. Hair that gorgeous is hard to attain. She creates in the viewer a sense of lack, a message that says, ‘I have more than you.’ This is power.”

I rolled my eyes when I first read this. This kind of instantaneous judging and pervasive shallowness is chronic in this city and it’s probably what I dislike the most about the social culture in New York.

But I recognize now that if blondes were more abundant in New York, their perceived worth would likely diminish. The reality is that even in a city as big as this one and so choked with beautiful people, rarity adds value. Therefore the kind of superficial nonsense outlined in the Times article above is probably more accurate than I want to give it credit for.

Does having blonde hair in this city help me get dates? Probably. Does it help me when I walk into a business meeting full of men who work in tech? I don’t even want to know. It is just the color of my hair. Even in the socially stunted and superficial playground that is New York City, I refuse to let something shallow like the color of my hair define me. Instead we’d all be better off sticking to what I’ve had to do since I was an awkward teenager — to focus inward to find real meaning and work on what’s there instead.

** Not his real name!

This post first appeared on sarahjukes.com on 13 January 2015.