What did the blonde say when she saw the Cheerios? “Hey, look! Doughnut seeds!”

What do you call ten blondes standing in a row? A wind tunnel.

How did the blonde try to kill the bird? She threw it off a cliff.

Ah yes, the blonde jokes. They’re quite popular these days. We’ve all heard them. Most of us have probably told them. And they’re pretty funny - unless, of course, you happen to be a blonde.
Although I have dark hair - it’s brown with more than a touch of well-earned gray - I am not a fan of blonde jokes. In fact, they irritate me tremendously. Part of the reason for my animosity is personal. My daughter, a niece, and one of my sisters are all blonde to varying degrees. Many of my friends and their children are blonde.

But there are broader reasons behind my quarrel with blonde jokes than my own personal animus. First, blonde jokes are, to some extent, racial by nature. With few exceptions, people with naturally blonde hair are of Northern European extraction and have white skin. Moreover, the blonde jokes are direct descendants of the ethnic jokes popular up to 30 years ago, particularly “Polack” jokes. To test this connection, simply substitute the old racial slurs for the word blonde in the above jokes. “What did the Polack say when he saw the Cheerios?” gives us the exact same sort of joke told in my youth. Other ethnic prejoratives for Italians, Blacks, Hispanics, or the Irish may also be substituted into blonde jokes to form the same jokes popular until the 1970s.

Some may rebut this line of reasoning by arguing that blondness is a physical condition unconnected to race. Really? Suppose we substituted the words “slant eyes” into the above jokes? Or suppose we take blonde out of the above jokes and put in “nappy-headed boys,” as in “How many nappy-headed boys does it take to change a light bulb?” I haven’t mentioned any nationality or race in these jokes, but the bigotry is apparent to all but the most racially biased.

Perhaps more importantly, blonde jokes are blatantly aimed at putting down women. Back when people told Polish or Irish jokes, most people hearing the jokes conjured up a male image in their minds, even though the joke itself didn’t often mention the specific gender of the protagonist. If you had asked “How can you make a one-armed Polack fall out of a tree?” the reply was “Wave at him.” No one using the ethnic jokes thought of gender except in the terms of the traditional masculine use of the third person singular pronoun.

Blonde jokes, however, always conjure up women. How many blondes does it take to change a roll of toilet paper brings to mind a crowd of women, not men. In blonde jokes where gender is specifically mentioned it is always feminine rather than masculine. We would never ask "What did the blonde say when he saw the Cheerios?" This joke stated in the masculine would puzzle rather than amuse the listener. No - when we think of blondes, we think of women. (The spelling blond, incidentally, traditionally refers to males or males and females together, while blonde with an e is specifically female).

My third and final reason for disliking blonde jokes has to do with children. How many African Americans would think that black jokes might amuse their children? Would a Pole like his child to hear again and again how stupid he was? Why should boys and girls with blond hair be told repeatedly through jokes that they are dumb as ditch-water? Suppose you have a 10-year-old daughter who has blonde hair? Do you want her to hear again and again at school how stupid blondes are? Do you think the laughter of her friends would hurt her feelings?

Some readers will think I’m overreacting, that I’m playing the kill-joy here. In December I was with a group of friends in a car for an evening. Someone began telling jokes. Soon we all started adding our own favorites, turning the next hour into a Canterbury Tales of joking. When one man got around to telling a blonde joke, I noticed that every person in the car laughed except for the driver. His wife - one of the sweetest ladies I know - is a blonde.

Anita Loos once wrote that gentlemen prefer blondes. Whether that statement is true I leave to the determination of pollsters, sociologists, and gentlemen. What I do know for a fact, however, is that all real gentlemen - and all gentle ladies, for that matter - prefer to steer away from hurtful jokes, blonde or otherwise.

( Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars Bookstore in downtown Waynesville.)

 

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