"Dumb blonde" a no-no
Australia:
"A primary school teacher accused of calling a pupil a "dumb blonde" is among those to be hit with discrimination complaints. A confidential payout and apology was made after the girl's furious mother consulted Victoria's discrimination watchdog, the Herald Sun has learned. The teacher, accused of repeatedly making demeaning comments in class about the girl being blonde, was counselled. The pupil was transferred to another class.
The case is among 488 education-related discrimination claims investigated by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission in the past five years.
Source
I am inclined to agree with that one. It sounds like it was the teacher who was dumb. I know of no correlation between hair colour and IQ. I think some people are jealous of blondes, however.
I myself rather admire red hair. The fact that my father was a redhead may have something to do with that. So I was quite horrified to read that redheads are discriminated against in Britain. I have never heard of such a thing in Australia or the USA.
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My daughter - who happens to be a PhD candidate in Molecular Pathobiology - died her hair dark brown so people - including professors - would stop treating her like a dumb blonde. She says the difference is amazing. In her undergrad studies, she had a professor who always referred to her as a dumb blonde, even tho she was top in his class. Go figure.
IIRC, the hypothesis is that blonde hair prob evolved as a visual proxy for youth/fertility, which is also why it evolved in colder climates: in warmer ones a man could see a woman's physical attributes more directly, but not so in cold ones where she wore heavier clothing.
Anyway, since blonde hair connoted youth, it also connoted the innocence and naivete that went along with being very young. Think of just how young girls were, when married off, then factor in their relatively sheltered lives to that point, and you get the idea.
Thus did the "dumb blonde" jokes begin.
I wonder if I'd get compensation if I didn't get a job because I don't fit the recruitment poster profile of the young, physically fit, male (or preferably female) person...
I doubt it, as being overweight is seen as being anti-social so it's fine to discriminate against people who are overweight...
And being a Caucasian male with blue eyes only makes it worse, as everyone knows that that's the typical person who discriminates rather than is being discriminated against.
People have used any difference as a reason to discriminate. When there aren't large reasons like skin color (or the large reason is denied somehow) then they look for other differences like hair color, height, weight or even how they dress.
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