Blonds and Blood
by Jennifer Kesler
March 16, 2010
Does it seem to anyone else there’s a disproportionate number of blond white women playing victims and corpses in TV crime shows? This may be partly due to TV’s disproportionate representation of white people in general, but white lead actresses frequently have hair colors other than blond.
While I acknowledge I’m not going to sit down with stacks and stacks of DVDs and catalog all the victims and their coloring, I have been watching DVDs of Criminal Minds lately. Even accounting for the reality that white men who prey on women of their own race are the majority of known serial offenders, I’m seeing an awful lot of long blond hair on corpses and victims. In addition, they’re all (hardly surprisingly) slim, Hollywood-pretty and young or youngish. I recently watched two episodes in a row (Season 2′s “Open Season” and “Legacy”) in which the serial killers were hunting people of every description. But who were our main victims in these two episodes? Two Hollywood blond women, slim, white and young.
I remember forming the same impression with other cop shows, including the well-above-average Davinci’s Inquest, which centered a couple of seasons on the serial killing of mostly First Nations prostitutes, but chose a pretty, healthy-looking young white blondish girl for the prostitute we actually got to know (Sue).
Is this just because blond is the beauty standard for actresses? Does this argument even make sense, given how many popular lead actresses have hair of other colors? Or is it that someone thinks blonds look more vulnerable somehow? Or that it’s a more tragic waste when the victim is blond? What’s the thinking here?
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Posted in Mystery on March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010 at 10:52 am
Sorry, but I didn’t know how else to submit a link to you: Women buy more movie tickets than men. So any day now, films will be target primarily at women, and only dumb actioners will be made for men. Right? right?
Or the studio executives will see that and think: “See, we’re doing it right. Women go to the movies even when we don’t make films for them, so why should we start.” Because either way, women do it wrong.
March 16, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Blonde is considered the most feminine hair color. And our cultural definition of femininity includes weakness, vulnerability, being (theoretically) protected, and being a target of sexualized violence. So yes, blonde female victims are cast to pull most effectively on a whole tangle of viewer emotions.
March 16, 2010 at 12:19 pm
One possible reason might be that blood shows up better on blonde hair. (And on virgin-white clothing, too.)
But yeah, I think there’s a blonde = more innocent thing going on. Naturally blonde hair is more common among children than adults. Also, lighter colouring (hair, skin, eyes) seems to be less intimidating-looking, except when it’s icy-pale. So a blonde woman is more approachable-looking, more friendly in appearance. Makes for sympathy. Being very small and delicate looking would also work, if that’s what they’re going for. Or you could just use women with nice faces.
I think in general, though, there are more women with dark hair on TV/in films than there used to be, which is a good thing.
March 16, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Hmm. All the writing workshops/websites/books I’ve seen tell us to create a protagonist that the reader (in this case, viewer) will (1) identify with, and (2) feel sympathetic toward. I can’t find the reference, but somewhere it has been proposed that we identify with characters who are either like us or *who we’d like to be*. This is just Hollywood taking a shortcut and assuming that we all want to be fair and svelte, instead of taking the time to develop deeper characters we will actually care about.
March 16, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Is this just because blond is the beauty standard for actresses? Does this argument even make sense, given how many popular lead actresses have hair of other colors?
It makes about as much sense as the argument I heard about a show filmed in Vancouver which was so, so white (except for villains): But the demographics of Vancouver don’t lend for a lot of color!
B to the S.
Criminal Minds seems to be fairly well researched, so I’m more inclined to think the casting is deliberate because of the data set they use. But I should acknowledge that viewpoint is probably skewed because I’m a fan of the show.
March 16, 2010 at 2:14 pm
But the demographics of Vancouver don’t lend for a lot of color!
It’s true. We’re only 50% non-white. The other one I hear is that Asians can’t act, for some reason. Probably because they don’t act like North Americans of European descent? That’s it. They’re not loud enough. Can’t act worth a darn.
March 16, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Oh, cool comment thread! I can only nod thoughtfully along with the various theories about why victims are so often blond – they all make sense, but in a way that makes the whole situation even more curiouser!
Vancouver’s overwhelmingly white? That’s a LOL if it weren’t so infuriating. Wow, the Stargate franchise must’ve spent so much money importing all those people of color who worked as extras in the background.
Asians can’t act? I’ve never heard that stereotype, and I would’ve been perfectly happy never to hear it.
March 17, 2010 at 2:13 am
Since a lot of these crime shows base story lines off of what is in the headlines, perhaps this reflects bias for missing-pretty-white-girl stories in the news?
RE: blonde-as-innocent… Then there’s the twist, where Blonde Victim is secretly engaged in some sordid business, typically sexual. And also blonde-as-typical, wherein blondness indicates that the victim could be any young woman. Being white female and blonde may also indicate privilege, as blondness taps into the dynamic of the “Golden Girl” (or Boy). And then the perception that white women are particularly vulnerable may encourage scriptwriters to put the bodies of white women at the center of their mini morality plays. Or, conversely, the feeling that crime typically occurs to people who are not white may lead to the assumption that dead whites = more unusual = more dramatic/important.
March 17, 2010 at 6:33 am
Maybe that’s because Hollywood likes to cast brunettes as the smart/capable girl and therefor the blonde is the stupid/vulnerable girl.
It reminds me of how Cordelia on Buffy used to be such a great girl. Shallow, but not stupid, a mere mortal yet perfectly able to take care of herself (most of the time). When Cordelia appeared on Angel the show she was still a great character with lots of development. Yet when she dyed her hair blond she apparently also took stupid pills because she fell for Angel (even though she was right there when his romances with Buffy and Darla turned into desasters), she let a demonic god take over her body, slept with Angels son and eventually died.
None of this would have happened to the brunette Cordy from Buffy and Angel season 1-2.
March 17, 2010 at 8:00 am
Cordelia wasn’t that blond on Angel, was she? Some highlights in some hairstyles, but not what I would call *blond*. Though yeah – I much preferred Buffy Cordy to Angel Cordy.
March 17, 2010 at 8:29 am
“Is this just because blond is the beauty standard for actresses?”
I think that is definitely part of it. Crime victims on procedurals are generally played by young, unknown actors, since they’re willing to be hired for parts that are mostly just playing dead. The perception Hollywood was perpetuated is that aspiring actresses are cute blondes, so many young actresses go blond in the hope that it’ll make them more likely to be cast. And then the casting directors have mostly blonde actresses to choose from. Kind of a self-perpetuating cycle.
Although Anemone’s theory about color contrast probably holds some merit, too. Any large quantity of fake blood will show up as almost black on camera, so having as a light a background as possible will make it more apparent. Not the best excuse, though.
March 17, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Perhaps because of Hollywood’s love of blonds, and its assumption that everyone else loves them above other colourings too, suggests that the death of a blond is some kind of bigger tragedy when it occurs. It’s almost tied into some kind of cultural mythology that links Marilyn Monroe with Hitchcock’s use of blonds. So for a male viewer, it’s suggesting to him that it’s a great tragedy for the world to lose another blond, because they are valued more? Kind of like ‘what a waste’! Not nice but just a thought..
March 29, 2010 at 7:50 am
Well, in the western world, the idealised woman tends to fall into one of two categories: Either the pretty blonde Barbie-looking cheerleader (or occasionally porn-starlet) type, or the “exotic” super-sexy ethnic type. Serial offenders overwhelmingly tend to prey on those of their own race, and also tend to objectify or idealize women to the extreme.
In addition, think of all the high-profile cases of missing or murdered girls and women in the last several years. Even if you accept that white victims get the majority of media coverage, a huge proportion of the victims are still blond – off the top of my head, I can think of high-profile cases concerning one redhead woman, one brunette woman, one girl of color, and at least half a dozen blond girls and women. So, your average television viewer is used to seeing blond girls and women as the victims of such crimes, but I don’t know whether it reflects real statistics (at least among white women, as I know it isn’t accurate across all racial or ethnic groups) or it just reflect’s the media’ obsession with pretty blond girls.