We blondes face prejudice every day of our lives

It is time someone spoke out against the vicious discrimination casually meted out to blonde women in all areas of life. Attractive blonde women are especially liable to be subject to open and unapologetic abuse in the most ordinary of circumstances. Somehow, in this dark corner where the exposing floodlight of feminism has yet to shine, it is still acceptable to make sexist ‘jokes’ and it is still acceptable to state that a person’s appearance makes them unsuitable for the job.

Blonde humour is the last bastion of the Bernard Manning (may he rest in peace) –style sexism that women have fought against for so long. Anyone so much as dimly aware of the work of Sigmund Freud knows that there is no such thing as ‘just a joke’. Humour is often a barely disguised way of making one’s views known without having to own them. And, in the case of gender- and race-based hatred, the humour is liable to be a plain insult with a mirthless laugh to follow.

Q. How do you confuse a blonde?

A. You don’t, they’re born like that. One only has to substitute the word blonde for ‘woman’, ‘Arab’, ‘Jew’, ‘Black’ or ‘Asian’ to realise the grotesque attack that is now indisputably intended. The fact, however, that such a substitution needs to be made before the full force of the joke’s underlying hatred can be felt is testament to the uncomfortable truth that women in this category are still acceptable targets.

Depressingly, women collude in the open hatred of their own gender, perhaps in the hope of being more acceptable to male friends and colleagues or, perhaps, in the misguided belief that other women are competitors who must be vanquished in order to win the prize of a man.