Fashion Victim: It’s great being blonde – unless you’re green

Oct 9 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

IT COSTS me hundreds of pounds a year to maintain, goes green if I swim too much, and takes on the consistency of straw after a fortnight in the sun.

I am talking, of course, about my blonde hair, which – whisper it now – is not entirely the work of good old Mother Nature, but is now as much a part of me as my freckles or the bump on my nose (unless I win the Lottery and get it, well . . . bumped off).

I first dared to dye at the tender age of 13, and I can still remember the pain as I sat on a wooden chair in the middle of our kitchen while the hairdresser dragged my hair through the holes of a swimming cap, hoping for a head of subtle, shimmering highlights at the end.

What I got was more the bleach blonde of Madonna and Pamela Anderson, left, than the sun-kissed look I was hoping for. But I was hooked – pardon the pun.

Since then, I have had my hair pretty much every colour under the sun from peroxide white to chestnut brown to ravishing red and – on more than one occasion – green. I never chose for my hair to be green, you understand, but when you are DIY-ing, well, sometimes things don’t work out quite the way you hope.

Despite my journeys to the dark side, I always returned to blonde, and, for some 10 years now, I have never ventured further than caramel on the salon’s shade chart.

So I was delighted to read last week that, as I suspected, it is true blondes really do have more fun. It is a debate that has raged for years, but now it seems that researchers can finally put this one to bed.

A study by Nottingham Trent University asked more than 200 women how they felt before and after dyeing their hair blonde. Not only did the majority of the women questioned report feeling more confident and happier after dyeing their hair blonde, but they also felt more attractive and sexually attractive.

“Dyeing their hair seems to make women feel more confident, more sexually assertive,” said researcher Dr Mark Sergeant, who led the study. “They were more likely to solicit attention from people who they didn’t know, and there was definitely a shift in being much more sexually adventurous.”

One of the most striking findings of the Nottingham study, though, was that women were more likely to ask their boss for a pay rise after going blonde than they were before.

As if one good news story for blondes in a week were not enough, along comes American science journalist Jena Pincott with more. In her book, Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?, Pincott aims to uncover what really makes us attractive to the opposite sex and reveals that, yes, the “human eye is attracted to light, bright colours, so blondes stand out more than brunettes and even redheads. Blonde hair is also associated with youth and fertility, as hair colour naturally darkens with age.”

Take the two studies together and it sounds like peroxide blondes with male bosses are quids in. Which is just as well, given the cost of the up-keep.