The Blond Identity

As a tyke, I had bright blond hair. I don't know that I felt "beautiful," but I was often told both explicitly and implicitly how special it was to have blond hair and blue eyes. This was Connecticut, not Nazi Germany, so it wasn't a matter of life and death or anything, but it made me feel good to have traits that were considered desirable. I relished being able to use a yellow crayon to complete the top of my head in childhood self-portraits.

But then my body started to change! Don't worry, this isn't some TMI puberty tale. Long before that, actually, my hair started getting darker. While this flux wasn't exciting, it wasn't exactly a deal breaker either. Us blonds have a term for this condition: dirty blond. I was willing to accept the sloven association, so long as I could remain a blond. I adjusted my elementary school art class self-portraits accordingly: a base coat of yellow crayon with some brown scribbles thrown in to match my hair.

As the years passed, the dark highlights of my hair continued getting darker. I had reached an age where I was too old to regularly color self-portraits, but even if I had been assigned to do so, it would have been hard to admit that I needed more brown than yellow. Granted, my blond hair was dirty. Really dirty, even. I would even tell people, "I have very dirty blond hair." It's so ridiculous in retrospect, but I was grasping at straws. It's like someone who gains 50 lbs. and still thinks of emself as that skinny person ey was a year previously. "I mean, maybe you could say I'm pleasantly plump..." I was born a blond and I'd die a blond, damnit.

When I was about twelve or thirteen, I went on vacation in Maine. We planned to go fishing with some family friends, so I had to obtain a temporary fishing license. I filled out the form asking for my vitals. Eyes? Blue. Hair? Blond. After I returned the paperwork to the woman who processed the license, she glanced over the boxes I had checked. She gave me a concerned look, then said, "Honey, you're not a blond."

It was so pointed! And mean! No one had ever called me out on my hair like that before. Clearly, people in Maine are stupid and blind and can't even recognize a blond person when ey's standing right in front of them. I was too flabbergasted to actually respond, but a lot was running through my blond-topped head. My hair might be the dirtiest blond you've ever seen, but it was still definitely blond. There were still hints of gold in there... somewhere. Kevin may be a lot of things, but he sure is not a brunette.

Once I received my Maine fishing license, I noticed that the woman had taken the liberty of changing my hair color to brown. Sure, the license would expire within a week, but this slip of paper had much longer ramifications. It was official: I had brown hair. When I maintained a "dirty blond" status, I was fooling no one but myself. Sure, it may have been dirty from infrequent showering, but the blond part was just a delusion formed by me unwilling to let go of the identity I had already established.

I don't recall whether I caught any fish that trip, but I did return home with a couple new things: brown hair and the realization that I was now just as ugly as all my dark-haired cohorts. At least I had several years of blond glory before losing it all. Also, I can confirm that blonds do have more fun. When I was still a blond, there was playtime every day, yet as a brunette, I'm faced with responsibility and stress.

Don't worry, I've come to terms with having brown hair. To this day, however, I am still unwilling to draw a picture of myself. I'll save my brown crayon for sketching things like trees and poop, thankyouverymuch.