HOW I BECAME A BLONDE
I had that hair color no one has a nice
name for. Indistinct browns, duns and taupes muddled
about in it. Brunette was really too dark to describe me
Redhead or Auburn was all wrong. And Blonde: never.
Until I went to college.
I=ve
since found my hair described by the Romans when they
arrived in Ireland and encountered my Celtic ancestors:
A...being
in three colours, darkest near the scalp, and lightest
at the extremities, with an intermediate colour between.@
But in my Charlie=s
Angels adolescence I failed to appreciate this
heritage and longed for a niche. In the TV world,
beautiful women were brunettes, redheads and blondes. I
wasn=t
any of these. A true brunette has almost black hair and
dark eyes. Lacking a name for my own attempts at beauty,
however, I aligned myself with the brunettes against the
blonde-loving world. This was the era of Farrah Fawcett,
Cheryl Ladd, Charlene Tilton, Bo Derek. Feathers, braids
and beads abounded in their sunny locks. I mouthed off
about blondes constantly, how overrated they were.
Blonde jokes weren=t
in then, but I would have relished telling them. I
admired Kate Jackson, Jacklyn Smith and Jane Seymour.
Now those were quality women. Not like the
flighty blonde bimbos who hogged the attention.
T.G.E. Powell. The Celts. Thames and Hudson,
London, 1958.
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