teeth

Let me begin by saying that people are compulsive about their grooming habits.

I met someone in college that would brush (pronoun) teeth the way that some people smoke cigarettes.  If there was a quiet moment, or a moment of transition, it would be used as an excuse to brush.

My grandfather had about seven toothbrushes that he would cycle through, I assume a different one for each day, and I also assume so that they would stay cleaner and last longer.  It's also possible that each of them had a different function... some for lighter jobs and other for having lots of stuff in your teeth.  As far as I know, the man never used a computer, but he seemed to stay on top of toothbrush technology advances.  Let me correct that.  He read books on DOS at the very beginning of "PCs" and had a pretty comprehensive understanding of how those directories and commands worked (truly astounding for someone who never really sat at a terminal).

But I digress.

Women spend significant amounts of time on their hair and subject it to all kinds of stress.

I could write a lot about this and still not be covering the topic adequately (from a lack of knowledge) but I'll just focus on one thing.  And that is dyeing.

I've always been pretty satisfied with my hair color.  I mean, I can only think of a couple of times (read - 2) where it even occurred to me to change the color of it at all, and when I talked to my girl friends about it they strongly and immediately dissuaded me from doing so.  Odd.  Anyway.

Again, I could go into the subject of dying at some depth and still not do it justice, so again I will focus on just one effect that seems to be regularly sought (and, arguably, achieved) - blond hair.

How many girls with blonde hair out there actually have blonde hair without chemical intervention?  I don't think about this that often and certainly don't go out of my way to look at hair to try to determine it on a case by case basis.  However, conservatively, I think it would be fair to postulate that less than 20% of girls with apparently blonde hair actually grow blond hair.  I don't get it.  OK, command decision, I'm going to actually try to take this one on, heads up.  *deep breath*

I'm fairly certain that fair hair and skin (F) are recessive traits, or, at least less likely to express themselves than dark pigmentation (D) in a cross between D and F.  So, that means that the F phenotype is not only rare but is getting rarer.  This is self-evident and reveals my absurdly huge cultural bias.  I wonder what percentage of people in the world have legitimate blond hair.  I doubt that information is available to me.

...

OK, this is humbling but double-convinces me I've hit on an interesting topic.  On the wikipedia article for "blond" there are 11 adjectives listed for different types of blond hair.  Blond hair represents about 2% of the world population's hair color, according again to wikipedia, which I take as a font of all knowledge.  I'm just going to leave red hair alone in this discussion.  Not too many people dye their hair red anyway so it's not as interesting to me.  Goodness.  I've (again) opened a can of worms far too large for me.  Check out the article for yourself.  I'm not even going to try to speculate as to how blond hair developed or what other traits might accompany it.  I'm going to merely focus on how blond hair is perceived aesthetically.  Even this is too big.  But I'm pot-committed at this point.

Blond hair is clearly something that European/American cultures consider beautiful and cultures without naturally occurring blond hair have found fascinating and even other-worldly.  Understandably so.  Rare is often taken as beautiful.  When I try to come up with examples of beauty that everyone recognizes I always go with sunsets.  I'm not sure that every sunset is beautiful, but once in a while the setting sun dramatically changes it's color from the bright yellow/white we are used to and fills a huge portion of the sky, coloring everything it touches and striking awe and humility.

Natural processes are beautiful at least partially because they are difficult to predict and yet often lead to astounding order and recognizable patterns.  Living things are not only suitable for human cognition, they are the most relevant things that we can observe.  Living things have historically represented the biggest threats to our survival, sources of food and thus continued survival, and in the case of inter-species, social interaction including mating and procreation.  The amount of brain tissue that is dedicated to recognize faces alone is striking.

But why blond hair?  I'm leaning towards the idea that the fascination is cultural rather than instinctual.  Royalty in western European cultures has possessed the trait in unnatural proportions, and later, famous people (another version of royalty) have over-expressed it.  Romances written early in the history of the English and French languages have glorified it.  Blond hair is most highly expressed in Northern European countries (Norway, Holland, etc.) and when you move out of this area it drops off almost exponentially.  I think it's interesting that Americans find blond hair beautiful but are not fascinated by hardly any other aspects of these cultures.

I don't want to go into the whole Germanization and eugenics issue because it upsets me.  The whole idea that such a small part of the world's population was somehow superior is absurd and not worthy of serious treatment.  But it is an extreme example of this fascination.  

Blond hair does nothing for me and indeed I haven't dated or even hooked up with a person of blond hair - maybe one but my definition of blonde is pretty strict.  In my younger years I remember finding it appealing but somehow I have grown out of this.  I won't take my psychology as a further example or give it any further attention here.  For those who really know me maybe it could be meaningful. (a reaction to my prior tastes?)

Personally I think this fascination is fading in general.  It's rarity increases on a daily basis, but Americans have seen plenty of it, so it's not striking anymore.  I guess we can thank all the people who have attempted to imitate blond hair for this shift.  

One more thing.  I have known people with brown hair to get a lighter color during the summer or in general after prolonged and regular exposure to sunlight.  Color is determined by a mix of pigmentation in humans as it is plants.  Maybe in some way it is functionally advantageous.  Meh.

Gentlemen prefer blondes.  Ha.  A true gentleman would not discriminate between people based on something as trivial as their hair color.  An opinion.

I have a feeling I will return to this subject in some way.