Blonde Stereotypes

In the story “Blonde” by Katherin Min, a young girl named Jean struggles with her self image as she doesn’t see herself meeting the beauty standard that society had created. The world she is living in is telling her that she is not what they see as beautiful. You can see this in how she see’s the girls in the media like Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple becoming famous and wealthy, as well as a Barbie doll advertised as being the ideal girl. Along with this, the people in her community like her best friends Lisa Ogleby are all white and blonde.
Jean views being white and blonde as the equivalent to fame. You can see this when she exclaims, “That the dazzling blonde I was could be uncovered by a surgeon’s blade, that underneath the black
hair, the oddly adapted dark skin, was a girl of pure gold, Goldilocks or Shirley Temple, even, one day perhaps, Marilyn Monroe.” She can see that people with the ideal body are becoming well known. Any young girl wants to be famous, so naturally that added to her urge to live up to the beauty standards she is surrounded by.
Jean can see herself as being different from people in her community and she feels that she should be more like them. Even something as simple as playing with her best friend is influencing her. Lisa Ogleby was perfect in Jean’s eyes. You can see how desperate she was to be like her best friend when Jean says, “I would have given it all to look like Lisa Ogleby.” also when they were playing together and she “...would hold lisa is [her] sight like an assassin. [She] studied her movements, her laughter…” Not only was she just longing to be like her best friend, but she was actively trying to be like her by “Studying to be blonde.”
Young girl’s are constantly surrounding by sources saying that they aren’t good enough no matter what they do.
Between the media only advertising people they deem fit to be on the magazine covers, you have products like Barbie dolls displaying the same message. The 1960’s ads mostly displayed white women with blonde hair. You can imagine that Jean was seeing that as the ideal image at that time. In 2013 Vadim Rizov from the magazine Dissolve wrote “Just over three-quarters of all speaking characters are White (76.3 percent)” when talking about lack of minority representation in film. The same situation is seen in other forms of media such as fashion. The Fashion Spot said “this shift is similar to the slight improvements we saw on the Spring 2016 runways, which were 77.2 percent white as compared to the Fall 2015 runways, which were 80 percent white.” Girls are only seeing the same body types constantly, so naturally, they would think that's what people want to see.
In the story “Blonde” this young girl is surrounded by sourcing telling her that being white and blonde is more beautiful than her own race. This is not only happening in the story, but also everyday in the outside world. Girl’s of different races are not seeing themselves as meeting society's beauty standards. Today’s standards need to change to show girls like Jean that everybody is
beautiful.