“I’ve come to return the book I borrowed.”
“Finished already?”
“Oh, I couldn’t put it down, have you got anything new?”
Bookish, quiet, intelligent …and brown-haired?
The brainy brunette is embedded in our culture,
but WHY do we correlate female smarts with hair color?
Brainy brunette characters follow certain trends:
She’s single-minded, driven, and booksmart –
She’s exceedingly well-read.
“I checked this out weeks ago for a bit of light reading.”
“THIS is light?”
– but probably not so streetsmart or socially adept.
She’s out of place.
The intelligence of the brainy brunette often isolates her,
as if she’s too smart for her born society to ‘get’ her.
[Singing] “That girl is so peculiar!”
She doesn’t care that much about her appearance.
She’s interested in deeper things.
“Oh, screw beautiful, I’m brilliant.”
“If you want to appease me, compliment my brain!”
She’s a little boring.
While redheads are fiery, and blondes have more fun,
the brainy brunette’s focus on her studies
often gets her pegged as dorky and not exciting or desirable.
“I spent my junior year abroad in Frankfurt.”
“I partied so hard over there it was crazy.”
She’s the anti-blonde.
Sometimes her intelligence is cemented by the presence of a dumb blonde,
and these two stereotypes create a kind of feedback loop,
each intensifying the other.
“Pardon me, is this the way to Europe, France?”
[Confused] “Where?”
“Not ‘Europe, France’ honey; France is IN Europe.”
Here’s our take on the brainy brunette, and whether she’s actually smarter –
or why we’re trained to think she is.
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[Nasally]
“What’s wrong with the way I talk?”
“What’s the big idea? Am I dumb or something?”
In actuality, in terms of hair color, a 2016 study from Ohio University
showed that on average, blondes have higher IQs,
and are more likely to be classified as geniuses.
But regardless of whether brunettes ARE actually smarter,
what’s indisputable is that we THINK they’re smarter.
A study from Garnier in 2009 revealed that 75% of people
believed brunettes to be more intelligent.
[Incredulously] “I got a 740 verbal and a 760 math.”
[Feigning relief] “Oh, thank god you’re not an idiot.”
It’s a bias actual women have faced.
Silicon Valley CEO, Eileen Carey,
dyed her hair brown in order to impress investors,
who were put off by her blonde locks,
as there was a “strong pattern of recognition of brunette CEOs.”
“[I] made the decision based on research
to change my perception in a way so that it could
improve the likelihood of, you know, me being taken seriously.”
Even 2022’s Inventing Anna features a plot where Anna Delvey
abandons her babydoll blonde for a reddish-brown
in order to attract investors for her elite social club –
and this works!
“No one will consider my business proposal because of how I look.”
One reason for the belief that brunettes are brainer
might be the number of smart brown-haired girls
that appear in the first stories we come into contact with.
Beauty and the Beast’s Belle
immediately defines herself as a voracious reader and adventurer,
desperate to see the world outside of her small town.
And this makes her deeply misunderstood by the people around her.
“How can you read this? There’s no pictures!”
“Well, some people use their imagination.”
But despite this, Belle doesn’t change who she is
in order to fit into societal expectations.
It’s not just that she’s intelligent,
but it’s the fact that she values this intelligence over and above, say,
the status that would come from marrying Gaston,
the mindless hot guy every other woman in the town has their eye on.
Similarly, the moment she begins to fall for the beast
is when she’s shown his extraordinary library
and realizes that his intelligence is a match for hers.
“I’ve never seen so many books in my life!
“You…You like it?”
“It’s wonderful!”
With other brainy brunette heroines,
like Lemony Snicket’s Violet Baudelaire and A Wrinkle In Time’s Meg Murry,
their intelligence may be seen as strange in the story,
but they are ultimately aspirational figures
and offer a contrast to more conservative female heroines
whose value is seen predominantly through beauty, kindness, or status.
“Violet knew there was always something...
something she could fashion into nearly any device
for nearly every occasion.”
Like Belle, Roald Dahl’s Matilda is also a girl out of place,
a stark contrast to her vacuous family
and her dictatorial headmistress,
and books are, again, her much-needed means of escape
from her oppressive environment.
[Voiceover] “These books gave Matilda a hopeful,
and comforting message: you are not alone.”
Her intelligence is also tied up with this sense
that she is a completely unique person who needs protecting and nurturing,
and so the story gifts her another brainy brunette in Miss Honey,
who is prepared to do that.
“You were born into a family that doesn’t always appreciate you,
but one-day things are gonna be very different.”
The brainy brunette may be coded as typically the smartest girl in the room,
but her even more important qualities are also in the fact that she’s
independently-minded and sure of herself,
and she doesn’t center her focus on how she looks or who she attracts.
“This is the day your dreams come true.”
“What do you know about my dreams, Gaston?”
Often the brainy brunette actually is pretty –
Belle’s name literally means “beautiful” in French
and Gaston wants to marry her because she’s the prettiest girl in the town –
but most of the time people don’t really notice this
because she doesn’t put effort into her appearance.
When brainy brunette Hermione Granger does herself up for the Yule Ball
in Harry Potter Goblet of Fire,
Ron and Harry are shocked at how great she looks.
But this ultimately just reveals that a lot of what people interpret as “pretty”
comes down to a woman devoting a lot of attention
to dressing or presenting herself in a certain way.
The brainy brunette’s decision not to spend most of her time on that
speaks to her devotion to inner beauty and her understanding that things
like that pursuit of knowledge just matter more.
“I’ve developed an update.”
“Update? No. It worked perfectly.”
“How many times do I have to teach you?
Just because something works doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved.”
People may think her odd,
but ultimately, we see value in her being outside the norm.
The brainy brunette doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Her counterpart is the dumb blonde, and often these two stereotypes work
to intensify each other –
as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where Marilyn Monroe’s ditzy Lorelai
is paired with Jane Russell’s smarter, more acerbic Dorothy.
“How do you put it around your neck?”
“You don’t, lovey; it goes on your head.”
“You must think I was born yesterday.”
“Well, sometimes there’s just no other possible explanation.”
Even when blonde characters aren't stereotyped as dumb,
they’re often portrayed as struggling to keep up
with the superior intellect of the brainy brunette.
Blonde Lisa Simpson may be seen as essentially a child prodigy,
but she still gets shown up when a new, intelligent,
saxophone-playing brunette girl moves to Springfield,
and Lisa’s reputation of intelligence (and confidence)
quickly seem to deplete by comparison.
"I was just skipped ahead because I was getting bored with the first grade."
"You're younger than me, too?" [Hyperventilates]
In Gilmore Girls, too,
while blonde Paris seems to be the more driven, high-achiever,
for some inexplicable reason, it’s brunette Rory
who gets seen as the smart one a nd surpasses Paris academically.
Because for a long time onscreen “blonde” was a shorthand for “beauty,”
the pretty-but-dumb blonde versus brainy brunette trope
often was really about pigeonholing women –
saying they can be either intelligent OR beautiful.
So in that sense,
the brainy brunette can sometimes be used as a way to put other women down,
while also dissing the brunette herself
by suggesting she’s only focused on her studies
BECAUSE she’s less romantically desired than her blonde counterparts.
“Maybe werewolves and ghosts are just distractions to keep you
away from what really frightens you: intimacy with another person.”
“But I’m more comfortable in the world of logic and facts.”
The blatantly false assumption that a woman could only be pretty OR smart
is a way of limiting a woman’s power to just one avenue.
On another level, too, this paradigm is also implicitly showing
how the more feminine traits associated with blondeness
are shallow and empty,
while the more masculine traits associated with darker hair
are valuable and worthwhile.
In An Education, Carey Mulligan’s Jenny,
who has lofty aspirations of going to Oxford
and filling her life with fulfilling, cultural experiences,
is countered by Rosamund Pike’s uber-glamorous blonde Helen,
whose interests are more materialistic.
“Well, Chelsea's too expensive for me, too, really.
But we don’t have to worry about that.
If you want something from Chelsea, just get David to take you shopping.”
Similarly in 30 Rock, Jenna Maroney’s dumb blonde schtick
is associated with her vacuousness and self-absorption.
“Jenna, what’s wrong?”
“My niece drew a picture of me and I look so fat!”
Meanwhile, smarter and deeper Liz Lemon
is more often seen around the male characters at TGS –
bouncing ideas off Pete or being mentored by Jack,
and this subtle male coding of Liz is made even more explicit
when it’s revealed she’s been hiding her facial hair from her colleagues.
“I’d like you to all meet Tom: Tom Selleck. He’s my mustache.”
So this dichotomy feeds a message that more girly equals less intelligent
and that, in society’s eyes, you can never be both at the same time.
Legally Blonde was a watershed moment
in mocking and dismantling the tropes that associate
hair color with intelligence.
“There’s nothing I love more than a dumb blonde with daddy’s plastic.”
While at first Elle Woods is the typical dumb blonde,
and Selma Blair’s Vivian is the brainy brunette counterpart and love rival,
in the end, Elle and Vivian have a lot in common.
“Men are helpless, you know that.”
“I know, Warner doesn’t even do his own laundry.”
“I know, he has to have it sent out!”
They realize that Elle IS smart and Vivian IS fun, and Warner,
the man they were fighting for, isn’t good enough for EITHER of them.
Significantly, the movie shows them fighting more
over the ring to marry Warner than truly focusing on the guy himself –
and this reminds us that their blonde-brunette rivalry
is conditioned into them,
tied to the pressure they feel to obtain a culturally prescribed form
of womanly achievement.
And while the movie is playful about its mission
to tackle ‘hair color prejudice,’
it actually did hit on something true in our biases and tendency
to judge women’s brains based on their appearance.
“I need to marry a Jackie, not a Marilyn.”
“So, you’re breaking up with me because I’m too…blonde!?”
Grey’s Anatomy also plays with our preconceptions around
the brainy brunette in its first season.
Where Christina Yang is set up as the hyper-focused, prodigious talent
destined for great things,
Izzie Stevens has to work harder to gain people’s respect.
“You’re that..that girl from the magazine.
That…that red bikini?”
“Yeah, it was pink.”
However, the real reason the show introduces this binary early
is almost to get it out of the way,
because after that, all the doctors exist on more of a level playing field,
with each finding their own niche in which to excel.
And as if to further the point, Christina’s eventual mentor –
the person who gives her the final push she needs
to become a more well-rounded surgeon –
is the blonde-haired Teddy Altman.
“You had to be the best, and you had to be first,
but today…today I saw a different surgeon.
You put the patient before yourself.”
The end of the brainy brunette isn’t just signaled by blondes
playing smart characters, but also by brunettes playing…
not so smart characters.
In Derry Girls, it’s the brunettes Orla and Michelle
who take the stereotypically blonde roles,
being kinda spacy and kinda boy crazy, respectively.
“What about Orla?”
“I love my wee fingers.”
“Orla’s mental.”
Moreover, the blonde/brunette paradigm is often underpinned
by the fact that both characters are white.
As we get more diverse stories with a wider color palette,
the absurdity of basing personality type on a couple of hair colors
is brought right out into the open.
The result of these richer female characters
isn’t necessarily to completely abandon the brainy brunette trope,
but rather to show that it can be just one facet of someone’s personality.
In We Are Lady Parts,
the brainy brunette role is filled by the studious scientist Amina.
“That is me: 26, Capricorn, finishing a PhD in microbiology.”
But we learn that this is only one side of her -
the side of her she thinks she needs to be
in order to fulfill societal expectations
of what a young, Muslim girl should be.
The hidden, more creative, artistic side of herself
gets drawn out when she meets other Muslim girls
who show that she can make other choices.
She’s still the brainy brunette…
but she’s allowed to be more than that, too.
The brainy brunette trope has its problems -
in its intersection with
the black and nerdy or Asian and nerdy tropes,
it can sometimes lead to othered or cartoonish characters without depth.
“Then we’ll just head home.” [Making spaceship noises]
“I’ve done the math. It checks out.”
But it’s also been interpreted through many positive, aspirational,
and iconic female role models –
like Hermione Granger, Black Panther’s Shuri,
or Star Wars’ Rey, who’ve become heroes to countless young girls.
“You might need this.”
“I think I can handle myself.”
So much of being a young girl is being bombarded with messages
of who you SHOULD be.
The brainy brunette reminds you to think for yourself and ask –
who do you WANT to be?
“I have things to do.
I have school and Harvard to think about.”
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