Paul Johnson

Bottle-beauties and the globalised blond beast

Bottle-beauties and the globalised blond beast

issue 18 March 2006

The hair colour gene MCI-R has seven European variants, one of them blond. It is rare and becoming rarer. A WHO survey calculates that the last true blond will be born in Finland in 2202. Do you believe this? Nor do I. A different lot of scientists argue that this gene emerged over a comparatively short period about 10,000 years ago, with food shortages — and shortages of men — speeding up the natural selection process to the advantage of blonds. A touch of old-style Hollywood here? Certainly not the present dump — which Betty Grable would find unrecognisable, Marilyn Monroe chilly and Mae West distinctly hostile — making bad movies to advance its agenda: to them, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a racist insult.

Yet it is a historical fact that gentlemen, and cads for that matter, do prefer blondes, ceteris paribus.

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