September 2000
A poster on alt.polyamory (who I'm going to call Al) offered what he thought was a blonde joke that might have been more appealing to those of blonde persuasion coz the blonde in the joke comes out on top. This was my response.
Uh-oh, you've pushed a button of mine! [grin]
}}An annoying individual and a blonde are sitting next to each other on a long flight...
}} [snip actually rather good joke]
Now Al, I just want to make it clear that I'm just using your joke to springboard off to make a point of my own. Your joke was funny, and I (mostly) enjoyed reading it. Please don't take my comments personally...I'm not dumping on you, just ranting a little on a topic that you reminded me of and I wanted to babble on about. :-)
I've got a problem with blonde jokes on general principle. See, being blonde (for some values of blonde, anyway) I have over the years heard an awful lot of them. I'll cheerfully admit that this is the first I've heard where the blonde comes out on top; and thus it gets an extra brownie-point for that; but the clueless clot in the joke still has the assumption that blondes are stupid.
I realise it's just a joke; but so are all the thousands of others out there, and it does get old. 'Speshly when I have in the past been assumed to be stupid coz I had long blonde hair and a large bust. And no, I don't think in retrospect that I was being oversensitive since I wasn't really very aware of such issues back then. It was just that I was so often patronised, talked down to and treated as a Not Very Bright Individual that it started becoming rather obvious. Consequently, I tend to take the blonde=dopey thing rather personally.
Blah. Stereotypes suck, especially if you're on the receiving end of them. One of the things that annoys me most about blonde jokes is that they could be reframed quite successfully as "clueless person" jokes without hurting the joke at all, but they never are. I guess it's the power of the blonde stereotype that gives the jokes their popularity At any rate, I thought Al's joke was great; but I probably would have enjoyed it even more if the obnoxious clot had been annoying the person in the next seat because he thought he was sooo smart, rather than because she was blonde. I think it would have worked really well, and done so without needing to bring up stereotypes (even to "disprove" them!)
Then again, maybe I'm just swimming upstream on this one. I seem to be the only person I know who reacts negatively to blonde jokes. Probably I had just better get used to 'em coz they're not going to be going away any time soon.
Still, a person can hope.