Some wise women take the opposite tack and embrace the assumption that they are idiots. They play it up, deliberately acting naïve and unknowing. These blonde ladies know full well that they are smart and savvy, but they don’t need to answer to anyone or seek outside validation of their intelligence. They’d rather fly under the radar and play the role of a dumb blonde, then come out on top because of incorrect expectations. It’s a brilliant negotiation tactic. Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson are two perfect examples of this phenomenon. Both ladies are assumed to be moronic nitwits who are all boobs and big blonde hair. In reality, both Dolly and Pam are savvy, self-sufficient businesswomen. Dolly Parton was one of twelve children raised in a one-room shack in the mountains of Tennessee and grew up to be a wildly successful singer, songwriter, actress, musician, and philanthropist. She laughs off the naysayers and jokes about her plastic surgery and style, saying, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” Pamela Anderson is a Canadian-born actress, model, and activist who has used her celebrity platform to share her struggles (hepatitis C) and support the issues that are important to her (veganism and animal rights). With her roles in the hit series Baywatch and V.I.P. and the film Blonde and Blonder, Anderson’s self-awareness and ability to laugh at herself are refreshing. But not everyone wants to play up the dumb-blonde stereotype, and that’s understandable. I find it more enjoyable to decimate expectations and assumptions immediately when faced with judgmental pricks.
The modern blonde is inquisitive and alert, eager to learn more and unafraid to get intellectual when the situation calls for it. If you aspire to be this self-assured but aren’t quite there yet, arm yourself with these five-star vocab words to boost your confidence in any conversation. And don’t stop building your lexicon at the end of my list—collect new words like Carrie Bradshaw collected heels!
myopic: short sighted, narrow-minded. Smart people love dropping this one. To describe something as myopic (and it’s an adjective, so it’s used as a descriptor) is saying that it’s self-centered and simplistic. For example, you know John Cougar Mellencamp’s song “Small Town”? Great song. The anthem of small-town pride across the nation. But Mellencamp showcases a pretty myopic worldview through the lyrics of this song. Born in a small town, parents still live in a small town, you admit that you’ll probably die in a small town? That’s a great example of a myopic life.
debacle: a complete collapse, a train wreck, a chaotic mess. I’m convinced that the only reason I was accepted to my wonderful alma mater is because in the interview I referred to my high school’s delayed building renovations as a “chaotic debacle.” I’m often tempted to refer to something as a “shit show” or “train wreck,” but when judgmental, uptight people are listening, I’ll sub in the word “debacle” instead.
Faustian. Get ready to blow judgmental people’s minds when you drop this gem. Faust is a character from a classic German legend who makes a deal with the devil, trading his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Sound familiar? It should since this premise has been used time and time again in film, plays, songs, and more. Two of my favorite uses of a Faustian deal with the devil are Tenacious D’s “Tribute” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band. An example of a Faustian bargain would be if I sold my soul in exchange for perfectly blonde hair for the rest of my life (I suspect that some people think that I have made this agreement, but I assure you I have not. I have good genes and a great colorist.)
Dickensian: like the conditions in a book by Charles Dickens, which is to say bleak, squalid, poverty-stricken. As you probably know, Dickens was all about depressing stories of poverty, orphans, and debtors. In the way that Michael Jackson was known for his one bedazzled glove during the 1980s, if Charles Dickens were known for any type of glove, it would be the fingerless glove.60 There’s just something so broke and dirty about fingerless gloves. So if something is described as Dickensian, it’s probably pretty dark and broke. If you find yourself at a super-swank cocktail party, you might hear a comment like “Did you see the cloak room? It was freezing and horribly lit—positively Dickensian!”
Machiavellian: characterized by sleezy, cunning moves; dishonest. I love words like this. It’s derived from the name of Italian renaissance diplomat and author Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince, but you might recognize it as (almost) the pseudonym of rapper Tupac Shakur: Makaveli. (More on Tupac in a minute.) Psychologists can assess and measure a person’s Machiavellianism, which indicates that the person is sociopathic, has no regard for others, and is only focused on his or her own self-interest.61 So, in cocktail party conversation, you might refer to a coldy pragmatic, ruthless politician as “Machiavellian.” Tupac Shakur was inspired by Machiavelli’s book The Prince and its assertion that a leader could eliminate his enemies by all means necessary. Machiavelli: code for a tricky, selfish, dishonest person and the pseudonym of a great West Coast rapper whose talent was snuffed out during the East Coast vs. West Coast rap battles in the 1990s.62
Shakespearean. Another gem of a million-dollar word. This can be used to describe many things, as poet-playwright William Shakespeare invented many literary phenomena that we now take for granted. For example, many films and TV shows will use stormy weather to portend doom or to build tension—that was totally Shakespeare’s idea first! It’s known as “Shakespeare’s storms,” and now everybody’s doing it! He was an innovator and you can still feel the effects of his ideas on theater, poetry, and literature. A lot of his comedic plays are about hilarious and elaborate misunderstandings, so keep the descriptor “Shakespearean” in mind when you’re at a cocktail party and someone is rambling on about a misunderstanding with his wife’s car and the babysitter and what time to pick up the kids. That sounds like a Shakespearean scene! (A very boring Shakespearean scene.)
pedantic: excessively academic, showy in one’s smarts. I get a nerd high from using the word “pedantic” around people who I find pedantic. Double word score! (Or something.) A lot of ugly, straight, white dudes whose mothers doted on them too much during childhood eventually grow up to be pedantic adults. They’ve got to name-drop their academic achievements because they are clueless about social interaction. A pedantic person might go out of his way to detail his résumé and academic achievements while you are making small talk at a cocktail party. Shut it, guy. Let’s just focus on chugging these free gin-and-tonics, OK?
puerile: childish, immature, trivial. You can remember this one using the handy trick that Purell (hand sanitizer) is good to use after you have been around immature children (because they are usually filthy and their fingers are covered in germs). Use Purell around puerile kids. In cocktail party banter, you might say something like, “My friends and I recently enjoyed a day of paintball—a totally puerile activity but lots of fun!” People will be thinking, “Whoa—she’s smart, active, and has great hair.”
bourgeois. You don’t grow up with a mom who teaches French and not learn a few French words (and eat a lot of madeleine cookies). Originally, the term “bourgeois” signified a member of the upper class (within Marxism). Over time, though, it has come to mean a person who is flashy or ostentatious with his or her wealth. Now, “bourgeois” and “nouveau riche” (French for “new money”) mean the same thing essentially: newly wealthy people who show off their wealth. In James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, Kathy Bates played the role of Margaret “Molly” Brown (an actual person, not just a character in the film), who was nouveau riche/bourgeois. The other first-class passengers on the Titanic looked down on her because she was categorized as “new money,” which they deemed vulgar and loud. Margaret Brown was indeed new money—her husband, James Joseph Brown, was a wildly successful engineer, and she went from growing up as a poor kid from Hannibal, Missouri, to being a wealthy socialite and philanthropist. If there’s one thing that old money hates, it’s new money. So, despite its original definition, today the word “bourgeois” has a negative connotation and means a person who has
new money and is ostentatious with it.
nostalgie de la boue. Let’s stay on this French kick with “nostalgie de la boue,” which translates to “a yearning for the mud” and means an attraction to what is crude or degrading—a romanticized notion of the class below you. If a person at a cocktail party is telling a story about when he was twenty-one and lived with five friends in a tiny apartment and they subsisted on ramen noodles, and he’s marveling at how simple and fun those times were, that’s definitely nostalgie de la boue (and you should identify it as such, so the guy knows you’re smart and thinks you’re multilingual). Be careful with this phrase, though, because correct pronunciation is imperative here. So if you’re shaky on your high school French, don’t use this one.
louche. This one is pronounced “loosh,” and it’s an adjective that means dubious, shady, or disreputable. You see it often in modern literary reviews, but you almost never hear it in conversation, which will win you points from the judges.63 I would say that my favorite dive bar, with its oddball characters, unmarked entrance, and honky-tonk jukebox, has a certain louche appeal. Or you might say that you don’t usually go to a certain neighborhood because it’s quite dangerous and filled with louche characters.
zaftig. This adjective is a poetic way to call a woman fat. Well, not straight-up fat but proportionately and pleasantly plump. One might say that Rubenesque models are beautiful and quite zaftig. A similarly impressive word with the same meaning is “embonpoint.” “Embonpoint” can be a noun or an adjective.
zeitgeist. That last Z word reminded me of another killer Z word: “zeitgeist.” “Zeitgeist” means the spirit of the times, the current cultural movement or pulse. One might say that AMC’s hit show Mad Men accurately represents the cultural zeitgeist of the 1950s and ’60s. Trashy as this sounds, one could even describe the month (or so) in 2009 when Snuggies (those body-covering blankets) were popular as a time when Snuggies were part of the cultural zeitgeist. They were the hip thing, even if for a moment.
twee: something that is sweet to the point of being sickeningly sweet. I’m a cynic, so I find many things overwhelmingly sweet or sentimental. For example, if you saw a grown woman on the street carrying a lace parasol and wearing all pink, you might say, “That’s a twee display.” I find it horribly twee when a new parent writes a thank-you note from the perspective of the baby, writing something like “Thank you for the nice book. My mommy and daddy love reading it to me!” So twee it hurts.
Sisyphean. A personal favorite, and I really mean it this time. Like “Machiavellian” earlier, the word “Sisyphean” has a great origin story. Sisyphus was a character in classical mythology. Sisyphus pissed off a god, and his punishment was to roll a huge boulder up a hill, but as soon as he had completed his task, the boulder would simply roll back down the hill again. Sisyphus would have to start over again and again and again ad nauseum. So if something is Sisyphean, it’s an unending labor that is never truly completed—a life sentence, of sorts. In small talk at a dinner party, you might refer to a horrific project at work that feels never-ending as a “Sisyphean task.”
nebulous: hazy, vague, or confused. Fantastic word because it has to do with astronomy and I love reading my horoscope. (Are these different things? Huh?). “Nebulous” is a great million-dollar word to drop instead of using “confused.” If you are asked to retell a funny story during a dinner party, you might kick it off by saying, “Gosh, I have a somewhat nebulous recollection of what happened, but here goes nothing,” then launch in on a story of the time that you and your best friend almost vomited at the hotel pool during your last party weekend in Vegas. That Vegas story makes you sound like an irresponsible, party machine, but your use of the word “nebulous” will balance things out.
reify: to convert into or make into a concrete thing. You might say, “If you’ve ever walked out of the colorist’s salon crying, that trauma serves to reify the importance of communication between client and colorist.” Drop that one and watch their heads spin.
ablutions: washing of hands, body. A weird word to drop in conversation, but it’s a personal favorite thanks to one of the many wonderful high school English teachers I had the pleasure of learning from. He used to speak frequently about the importance of “morning ablutions,” which struck me as funny and quirky at the time, but in retrospect perhaps he was encouraging me to shower more. Either way, it’s a hell of a word. Drop “ablutions” in conversation and people will probably think you’re pretty weird . . . and wicked smart.
So remember our strategy: Talk about topics that you know about (when possible), and if that isn’t an option, drop some million-dollar vocabulary words. If you still feel overwhelmed by a conversation, then it’s time to heed the advice oft-repeated maxim “Better to remain quiet and seem a fool than to open your mouth and erase all doubt.”
CHAPTER 13
RULE: Be Mindful of the Attention that Blonde Attracts
Blonde hair is undeniably eye-catching. As Anita Loos wrote in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes back in 1925, “Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes.” There’s a reason that Madonna and Lady Gaga—the two most in-your-face, attention-craving, envelope-pushing performers of the past few decades—are natural brunettes who switched to blonde: Blonde is what gets attention. Pale hair reflects light and catches the eye. But make no mistake—that attention is of both the positive and negative variety.
The adjective “blonde” is a loaded descriptor. You rarely hear someone described as “great with children, really generous, blonde, thoughtful,” and so on. The adjective “blonde” is usually paired with “dumb” or “leggy” or “bombshell.” Take the quick (but telling) mention of a blonde character in the song “Amen” by the country trio Edens Edge. This song is about the singer’s elation that her crush has finally escaped from a bad relationship. The lyrics go: “I heard Mary Jane down at the Powder Puff Beauty Shop / Sayin’ that blonde in her tube top / She left our Jimmy for a boy in Illinois / Someone give me an amen.” The song goes on to say how both her crush’s mother and the entire town are relieved that he finally woke up to the evil of the blonde in the tube top. Of course the Beelzebub character is a blonde in a tube top! What else would she be? We’d never hear a description of this evil heartbreaker as a “brunette in a tube top”—it just doesn’t pack the same punch as an evil blonde in a tube top. This widespread disdain for the sexy blonde is fueled by the perception that blondes have it easy: They’re (somehow universally considered to be) clueless (so others take care of things for them, which makes them . . .), spoiled, and entitled, plus they get all the attention.
But this blonde quandary is a chicken-or-egg question: Are blondes universally prejudged and hated because they get so much attention, or do blondes get so much attention because of these universal prejudgments and assumptions?
To explore this question within the world of Internet surfing, I reached out to professional web-click maximizer (and brilliant storyteller) Jeff Simmermon. He shared with me some interesting information about how blondes catch the eye and get positive attention online. Jeff used to work in AOL’s Communities section, which was essentially a precursor to today’s social media. On this site, people would have forum discussions and read articles. It was Jeff’s job to manage those forums and maximize clicks on AOL’s web content. AOL’s research-and-development department studied how to maximize these clicks and gathered a ton of data about the online behavior of visitors to websites. This data was aggregated across the United States, the world, and millions of different web pages. It revealed what items, pages, or pictures people tend to click on or interact with more than others. Based on these findings, Jeff organized AOL’s home pages a certain way as far as imagery, articles, text placement, and so on. The findings were this: If you have an article that you want people to read, you must post some sort of a photo along with the headline. That is, links to articles that included a photograph “viewed better” (got more clicks) than links to articles that were simply text (jus
t the title of the article). So photos seem to draw web surfers to an article—OK. But AOL’s findings dug much deeper. Just one step further, the data shows that photos of people get more clicks than photos of other items (still lifes, landscapes). To go another step, photos of women get more clicks than photos of men. (Let’s take for granted that the models in these photos are all extremely good-looking.) And further still, photos of blonde women get the most click traffic—more than photos of beautiful women with any other hair color. Beyond all of that, photos of celebrities get even more click traffic than anything. So web designers’ formula for maximizing click traffic is to find a reason, any reason, to post a photo of a blonde female celebrity.
So, for example, if AOL had an article called “What to Know Before Saying ‘I Do,’ ” they might want to put a photo of a blonde Jessica Simpson with text to draw a thin connection between the article and the photo, perhaps something like “Jessica and her man should read this one!” This photo of a blonde female celebrity would maximize clicks on an article that isn’t actually related to Jessica Simpson at all. So you see, blonde hair catches eyes on the computer screen. But it isn’t limited solely to the digital world—it also happens in the real world. And, as we touched on before—this eye-catching can be of the positive or the negative variety. As Voltaire (and Stan Lee and FDR and Churchill) supposedly said, with great power comes great responsibility. And nowhere is that adage more applicable than in the world of blondeness. Blonde power should be wielded wisely, for it can have catastrophically bad or stunningly good results. I have experienced both bad and good things as a result of my blondeness.
I certainly have gotten some useful attention or perks as a result of my light hair. I’ve had many nights out with pals when a guy would come over and chat me up, specifically, when I’m out with a mix of ladies. Some guys have even admitted that my hair caught their eye so they thought they’d buy me a drink or introduce themselves. On a summer Saturday night back in high school, Suzanne and I were cruising around the suburbs, looking for something to do, and we stopped into a local convenience store for soda and candy. As luck would have it, a crew of cute guys was in the convenience store, and they invited us to their party, saying, “We looked over and two blondes had just pulled up, so we had to come over and invite you.” We went to the party and were not murdered, despite what Dateline NBC would have predicted, and we had a wonderful time! Score one for blondes getting positive attention!
The New Rules for Blondes Page 13