14 DAY TRIAL // Jokes about how blondes have more fun but are generally rather “challenged” from an intellectual point of view seem to have been around forever. A new study comes to show that these jokes are not necessarily inspired from real life, but rather used by men as a defense mechanism when they meet attractive women to whom they might feel inferior, the Daily Mail says.
Apparently, making a dumb blonde joke helps men feel superior, thus more confident in their own strength whenever they meet an attractive woman, whose presence might make them uncomfortable for one reason or another. In a 4-page study, researchers Dr. Limor Shifman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dafna Lemish of the Tel Aviv University argue that the blonde stereotype perpetuated in such jokes is not grounded in real life, but rather in men’s inability to confront an attractive woman.
“The secret to the success of dumb blonde jokes, say the researchers, could be their ability to put men at ease. If men feel threatened by attractive blondes, ridiculing them makes them seem less intimidating. Alternatively, telling dumb blonde jokes may generate a sense of superiority,” the Mail writes of the findings. Given the rise in popularity of the Internet, this type of jokes is now becoming popular in parts of the world where researchers did not even expect it to appear, thus contributing to enforcing the dumb blonde stereotype.
“The stereotype is still alive and kicking in the third millennium, not only in the movies but also in contemporary advertising and prime time television. […] The blonde is flying across the globe to places in which blonde jokes have never set foot. Such places include Brazil, China, Japan and the Arab world. Blonde jokes are now becoming prevalent in Scandinavian countries such as Finland and Norway. One of the first things Finns did with their mobile phones was to use them to send jokes about blondes,” the two female researchers say of how the phenomenon is spreading.
The latest study is meant to illustrate how humor is subject to globalization by means of the Internet, by having dumb blonde jokes appear in areas where blonde is the predominant hair color.