Dumb Blonde

Those glasses aren't fooling anyone, Pola.

"For, though very beautiful, with large grey eyes and the hair the colour of ripe corn, the heroine of a thriller is almost never a very intelligent girl. Indeed, it would scarcely be overstating it to say that her mentality is that of a cockroach -- and not an ordinary cockroach at that, but one which has been dropped on its head as a baby."

—P. G. Wodehouse, "Do Thrillers Need Heroines?"

Blondes are dumb. Perhaps no more than a Foil to the Brainy Brunette, but can also appear as The Fool, The Ditz, or even the Brainless Beauty. Extreme cases can make her the Cloudcuckoolander. Her character is otherwise flexible; the Dumb Blonde ranges from a Love Freak, to a sweet, wholesome blonde whose lack of interest in education only shows she is more concerned about people, to a vacuous, mean-spirited and often lazy bimbo, to The Vamp.

The Dumb Blonde may be less worldly-wise, or she may have decided to skate through life on her looks, leaving intellectual pursuits to her darker-haired counterpart because she does not want to spend the effort to cultivate her mind. It may be even a deliberately cultivated act, to appear in need of help before men. Whatever the reason, she tends to be scatter-brained and lacking in Common Sense.

Very prone to subversion now, with the characters who assume the blonde is foolish paying for it dearly. This may be a form of Obfuscating Stupidity, with the blonde playing off the stereotype, or she may have both strengths and weaknesses, and the blonde hair causes characters to overestimate the weakness and underestimate the strengths.

The stereotype seems to have originated from the fact that some Caucasian children have blond hair that darkens as they grow older—and, hopefully, wiser.

Arguably an Undead Horse Trope.

Oddly enough, this trope seems to apply to bottle blondes more than natural ones. Perhaps dyeing her hair is a sign of her natural shallowness, or it's one of the ways that she tries to get out of doing any thinking, studying, or other action to develop her mind. This is sometimes references, with another character asking "Has all that hair dye you use finally seeped into your brain?"

(When the blonde is innocent rather than stupid, the trope is Hair of Gold.)

Examples of Dumb Blonde include:

Anime and Manga

  • Sailor Moon and Sailor Venus. (Sailor Moon manages to get blond-pure and blond-ditz in the same character.)
  • Mihoshi, the Dark-Skinned Blond from Tenchi Muyo!
  • Male example: Gourry Gabriev of Slayers. Played with a bit, though: he isn't wholly naive, having been a mercenary in his late teens, and has sharp observation skills (as shown in revealing Xellos as a high-level demonic being), good knowledge on swordplay, and high morals. He's more airheaded in regards to common sense and is Oblivious to Love.
    • Also, due to his aformentioned background, he probably never had the chance to dive into magical knowledge and intensive literature, whereas Lina (from a family of sorcerers), Amelia (from a royal family that specializes in White Magic), and Zelgadis (raised by and was the follower of an extremely powerful priest) did.
  • Averted for the most part with the titular character of Candy Candy.
  • Averted with Lisa Gordon, a Mazinger Z secondary character. Her father was a scientist and she also was a perfectly competent scientist on her own. In fact, Professor Gordon bluntly stated he needed her help to upgrade Mazinger-Z into a machine capable to swim and dive.
  • Takuya from Animerica, whenever he's not being shy or Badass.
  • Naruto, zig-zagged.
  • Vash the Stampede pretends to be this as Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • Cutey Honey is a borderline case, because she's blond only in civilian ID (and not in live action). Ditziness (and whether it's real or Obfuscating Stupidity) will also vary depending on the version of the character.
  • Misa Amane from Death Note. Then again, next to L or Light, pretty much anyone would look dumb by proxy.
    • Also, she's not so much "stupid" as "completely insane".
  • Feliks/Poland from Axis Powers Hetalia is a perfect example...he needed someone to turn the table while he was standing on it to screw in a ligthbulb.
    • Poland was still smart enough to buy time for Lithuania to pull his Crowning Moment of Awesome in the Battle of Tannenburg, doing so and remaining more or less calm while Prussia was pointing a sword at him. That, and the whole series pokes fun at stereotypes of all kinds; his supposed stupidity is actually Played for Laughs, and nations with other hair colors can be just as dumb (re: Italy, a brunette (redhead in the anime) who's pretty much The Ditz).
  • Miki Hosokawa from Hell Teacher Nube is pretty street-smart and typically Genre Savvy enough to take advantage of situations(repeat: typically)...but she has an endless curiosity and just won't stop poking any Artifacts of Doom she comes across, testing Urban Legends, going into haunted places, or teasing the eldritch powers just for the fun of it. Or daring others to do the same.
  • Ayaka plays with this trope in Mahou Sensei Negima. She's a bit shallow and slow on the uptake, and quite dense when it comes to recognizing when people are in love (besides herself, of course), but actually gets good grades and is apparently a little smarter than average. This trope is than slammed to the ground and stomped on into a pulp by Evangeline and Arika.
  • Miria Harvent from Baccano!, dumb enough to be a poster girl.
    • Her partner, Isaac, would be in this too, if not for the fact that he's not blonde (we're just not sure what hair color he actually has).
  • Eleanor Mercer in the Hentai series Honey Blonde is an american student in Japan...who is the only one in her class who can not speak English.
  • Tamaki. Of course, he is also a Genius Ditz.
  • Astraea in Sora no Otoshimono. Of course, it's not her fault, each Angeloid can only excel at two things and be bad at the third, and she's good at fighting and emoting, so she lacks intelligence.
  • Erica Hartmann has elements of this on the ground, although it's not so much dumbness as laziness and lack of proper military protocol. In the air, she is anything but incompetent.
  • Inverted in Great Teacher Onizuka with the Child Prodigy Urumi Kanzaki. Later on, it's implied that Urumi's dirty secret is that she was conceived from an American sperm donor based solely on his intelligence.
  • Noelle.
  • In One Piece, Nami calls the CP 9 agent Kalifa a dumb blonde when she mistakes Chopper's Monster form for Nami.
  • Tiger and Bunny has Keith Goodman/Sky High, a superhero whose skill and popularity is eclipsed only by his amazing Ditziness.
  • Averted oh-so-hard in Fushigi Yuugi, where blond beauty Yui is the intellectual genius and brunette Miaka is the idiot who's Too Dumb to Live. Blond Nakago is also intelligent.


Comic Books

  • DC Comics example: Dumb Bunny of the Inferior Five is typical, but with superhuman strength.
  • Very averted with Brainiac 5 from the Legion of Super-Heroes - not only is he blonde, but he's got twelfth level intelligence to most people's second level. Also, blond Saturn Girl and platinum blond Dream Girl both make good leaders respectively, although, in the past, Dream Girl was something of this trope.
  • Chase from Runaways is a rare male example. Karolina from the same series gets treated like she's one, but she never really does anything to earn the reputation other than be blond and not a genius.
  • The eponymous Cherry of Cherry Comics.


Fairy Tales


Fan Works


Film

  • One of the earlier movie examples would be Jean Harlow's character, Kitty Packard, in Dinner at Eight. When she mentions to Marie Dressler's character that "I was reading a book the other day," Dressler literally stops in her tracks in astonishment.
  • Played with in Legally Blonde: the heroine is less dumb than materialistic and naïve, and when she discovers her hidden depths, she does become a force to be reckoned with.
  • Cindy Campbell in the latter Scary Movie films; she is just as dim in the first two films, but was originally a brunette.
    • Most of Anna Faris' roles, most recently Observe and Report, probably fall under this. At last count, she has played a dumb blonde in at least seven movies (three of them as the lead character) and a recurring dumb blonde on Friends. Faris doesn't only play ditzy blondes but she has a reasonable claim to be the (living) actress who most embodies this trope in her roles.
  • Marilyn Monroe in several of her roles; probably one of the most well-known is Pola in How to Marry a Millionaire
  • Jayne Mansfield was also extremely smart (she was a talented amateur violinist with an estimated IQ in the 160s) and got stuck with this in her roles.
  • Judy Holliday frequently played this type.
  • Blonde and Blonder, a female version of Dumb and Dumber starring Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson, the latter of whom is yet another actress who specializes in dumb blondes.
  • Romy and Michele's High School Reunion: the two main characters are dim but loveable blondes with a snarky brunette foil.
  • Karen Smith, by far the dimmest character in Mean Girls, is a blonde. In fairness, so is Regina George, who is fairly sharp - at least in terms of manipulation.
  • Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane. Apparently, even the Greatest Movie of All Time isn't above this.
  • Buttercup in The Princess Bride; she also has Hair of Gold. But she's not nearly as dumb in the movie as she is in the book.
  • Inverted in the movie version of My Favorite Martian: The vain, shallow Brainless Beauty is played by the brunet Liz Hurley while the smart, likable, funny Girl Next Door love interest is played by the blond Daryl Hannah.
  • Subverted in Superman III. Pamela Stephenson's character displays all the traits of a dumb blonde when other people are around. When she's alone, though, she likes to kick back and read philosophy. Interestingly, the actress herself tired of playing blond comedy bimbos and is now a psychologist.
  • Nicole Kidman plays a rare outright villainous Dumb Blonde in To Die For. Rarer yet, she is also the main character.
  • Rocky Horror is a male example of this. He's also a nearly literal example of Brainless Beauty (he's only got half a brain, folks).
  • "Do you even understand what is going on here, or is the whole world just colours and shapes and the occasional noise in your head?"
  • Mia from Stan Helsing.
  • Both Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy have had fun playing with their public image as ditzy blondes, and have played exaggerated versions of this trope in several films, including together in Scary Movie 3.
  • "Cause I'm a Blond" from Earth Girls Are Easy sums up the the stereotype quite nicely.
  • Parodied with Lt. Tawny Madison in Galaxy Quest.
  • Many of Sarah Jessica Parker's roles before Sex and the City consisted of playing airheaded blondes, including SanDeE* in L.A. Story, Sarah in Hocus Pocus, and Natalie in Mars Attacks!.
  • To show that this doesn't just refer to women, look at just about every role Owen Wilson has had.
  • The main character's college fiancée, Emily, in Definitely Maybe doesn't know how to tell the man she cared about that she didn't want the same things as him any more so she admitted that she did it the most cowardly way possibly. Ever since then, she felt lost, especially when it came to relationships.
  • Tatum Riley from the 1996 film Scream falls into this category, especially during her death scene - the prime example of this being that, when confronted with the garage door as her only means of escape, she chooses to try and squeeze through the small pet-flap instead of simply lift the door and run away. And to top it all off, she doesn't even call for help until she's already trapped, with the garage door taking her upwards, moments from death!
  • Kevin in the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters is an extremely rare male example of the Dumb Blonde who is so dumb that they shouldn't be allowed out without a minder.


Literature

  • In the novel The Godfather, Carlo Rizzi is a blond, blue-eyed Northern Italian (though he has brown hair in the film), and it is implied that his being a blond is connected with his less-than-stellar intellect.
  • Joy Chant's Red Moon Black Mountain features an entire race of Dumb Blondes.
  • Tawny the inept succubus from Succubus Dreams, the third book in the Georgina Kincaid series. Although, by the end of the book, it is revealed that at least some of her stupidity is an act.
  • Subverted heavily and deliberately by Dr. Sarah Winchester, aka Trigger of the Seekers of Truth; being blond himself, the author wanted to make a blond woman the most intelligent member of the team.
  • Olivia Ryan from The Clique.
  • Inverted in the Col Sec Trilogy: the one blond female character is Samella, who's The Smart Girl, an empath, a Wrench Wench, and described as average-looking.
  • Inverted by Annabeth Chase in Percy Jackson and The Olympians, who is probably the most intelligent of the main characters.
  • Inverted by Astrid Ellison in Gone (novel), aka Astrid the Genius.
  • Raziel, from Christopher Moore's books Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff and The Stupidest Angel. Biff, the narrator of the first book, says Raziel is the Ur Example of the trope and the reason the world has dumb blonde jokes today.
  • Lauren Mallory from Twilight is a shallow, vapid Alpha Bitch. Mike, the male blond, is a Dumb Jock who routinely skips homework and is pathetically jealous of Edward. Rosalie, the only blond female vampire who doesn't want to gut Bella (or at least refrains from trying) isn't stupid, but she's also pathetically jealous and vain. In fact, until minor characters Tanya and Kate appeared in Breaking Dawn, the only blond in the series who wasn't an idiot, evil, or at least nasty was Carlisle.
    • Tanya was also vilified and portrayed as shallow and vain in the narration, presumably for having a crush on the protagonist's lust interest.
  • Special Circumstances: despite the main character being a strawberry blonde, she's shown to be quite intelligent.
  • Georgina Talgarth in Sorcery and Cecelia is often referred to by her cousin Cecy and her sister Kate as a peagoose. In all fairness, she never challenges that perception.
  • In John C. Wright's Fugitives of Chaos, a character describes a location as easy enough for Amelia -- "blond brain"—to find. (He intends it as an insult; other characters have particularly marked her out as the clever one.)


Live Action TV

  • Lilly, from Hannah Montana.
    • Subverted in that she gets a scholarship to a prestigious university at the end of season 4, while Miley fails to get in (though it's due to Miley's lack of participating in extracurricular activities, which she was unable to attend due to having to work as Hannah Montana). Lilly might have her ditzy moments, but academically is of at least average intelligence.
  • iCarly: The portrayal of Britney Spears expy Ginger Fox throughout iFix a Popstar:

Carly: She should be here four hours ago!
Ginger Fox: You said 2 o'clock.
Sam: It's 6 o'clock!
Ginger Fox: Well, I didn't know if you mean o'clock AM or o'clock PM.
Sam: You're o'mazingly stupid.
Ginger Fox: What did she say?

    • In the first season, Carly's friend Sam was cast as a dumb blonde like when, in iWin a Date, Carly is telling Shannon everything and Sam still says "Shhh. It could still work," but as time went on, she became more lazy and less stupid.
  • Goldie Hawn on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In
  • Loretta Tortelli on Cheers is a well known example.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer set out to subvert this trope with the titular character; she comes off on first acquaintance as a stereotypical Dumb Blonde, but turns out to be a clever, wisecracking Action Girl. On the other hand, many of the villains and minor characters (most notably Harmony) played the trope straight; and Buffy herself, though savvy and intelligent, was a mediocre student (of course, she never had much time to study) and not nearly as brainy as her redheaded friend Willow.
    • Glory from the fifth season is another example and also the Big Bad.

Buffy: Spell it out for me. I feel an attack of dumb blonde coming on."

Salem: I'm blond! My IQ just dropped 20 points!
Zelda: (Indicating the three witches in turn, then Salem) Blonde. Blonde. Blonde. Dead.
(Salem jumps off the table)

    • Another episode had Sabrina getting hit with an airhead virus that turned her into the stereotypical dumb blonde.
  • Kelly Bundy on Married... with Children.
  • Well and truly inverted with Samantha Carter in the Stargate Verse (who isn't merely competent, but unquestionably The Smart Guy).
    • Later spoofed by Rodney McKay:

McKay: I wish I wasn't so attracted to you. I've always had such a weakness for dumb blondes.
Sam: (Looks shocked for a minute, then glares) Go suck a lemon. (Exits)
McKay: Sexy. Very, very sexy.

  • Also inverted in CSI: Miami, where brunette Natalia is less intelligent (relatively speaking) than blonde Calleigh.
  • Completely inverted in Smallville with blonde Chloe Sullivan, who is easily the smartest recurring female character on the show and one of the smartest characters overall (though this might not be saying much all things considered). Meanwhile, brunette Lana Lang is definitely NOT brainy (despite what the writers would like you to think).
    • The aversion is lampshaded when Chloe refers to herself as the "sharpest blonde you'll ever meet." However, her natural hair color was actually brown.
  • Amanda on Ugly Betty.
    • Also, in Yo Soy Betty, la Fea, Patricia Fernández (whose stupidity was in Ted Baxter style) and Aura María (who was simply ditzy and a bad judge of character). Averted with Catalina Angel, one of the smartest, sweetest, and most sensible characters, who is peroxide blond.
  • Harmony on Angel.
  • Averted on Desperate Housewives. You'd expect the bitchy and stripper-rific Edie to be brainless as well, but she's as bright as the other housewives (definitely brighter than Susan) if not the brightest. Lynette is also blond and clever. However, most of their intelligence goes into manipulating people in bizarre situations.
  • Sketch actress Carol Wayne specialized in playing this type on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, as with the Matinee Lady in the "Art Fern Tea Time Movie" routines. Even on those occasions when she chatted with Johnny "as herself", she affected this persona.
  • Several dimwitted blondes turned up on Friends over the years (Ross briefly dated one) but the two most prominent recurring ones were played by veteran dumb blond character actresses Christina Applegate and Anna Faris.
    • It's also both played straight and subverted with the main characters. Phoebe might appear to some as this but she's actually a pretty smart Cloudcuckoolander (and often a Crazy Awesome one at that).
  • On The West Wing, Lt. Jack Reese breaks a $400 ashtray (for submarines) to show Donna why it costs so much money. He wishes he hadn't done it and says to Donna (jokingly), "It's...'cause you're blond."
    • As that quote implies, Donna neatly and completely subverts the trope through the entire series, often entering into heady debates with her boss and winning more than half the time because of how smart Josh is about not-politics.
  • In That '70s Show, Laurie Foreman is a dumb blond; might also be considered the skanky blonde.
    • There was also Midge Pinciotti and Annette, played by guest star Jessica Simpson.
  • Cheyenne and Barbra Jean from Reba both have plenty of "blonde" moments, though Cheyenne is pretty smart most of the time, whereas Barbra Jean embodies this trope to the point where most of the characters (usually Reba) make fun of her craziness and lack of intelligence.
  • In The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, this trope was deliberately subverted as Ashley Tisdale was asked to dye her natural brown hair blonde so they could provide an inversion of the Dumb Blonde, Smart Asian stereotypes. As such, London embodies every characteristic of the dumb blonde apart from the actual hair color while Maddie is a good student, very logical, and has the most common sense out of all the characters. One episode featured an alternate reality where things in the hotel were swapped around with Maddie being the heiress and London being the candy counter girl. Here, the trope was played straight with Maddie.
    • Also is played straight with Zack but subverted with Cody.
  • Bridget in 8 Simple Rules. She has quite a few ditzy moments, such as Kerrie banging on the table and Bridget answering the door to find nobody there and remarking that it keeps happening. Bridget is shown to be quite a capable girl when it comes to things she's interested in, such as fashion and boys, but she's definitely a little spacey.
  • Phoebe in Charmed went blonde in the third season and, while she was already a bit of a ditz, whenever she had a moment, Prue or Piper would call attention to her being a blonde. Paige - the ditziest of the sisters - went blonde in season 6, but nobody ever referenced it.
    • Billie sometimes uses Obfuscating Stupidity but, like Bridget above (played by the same actress), is shown to be capable enough.
    • A season 6 episode had three evil blonde witches who were completely dim. Their entry in the Book of Shadows said there was no need to vanquish them because of how incompetent they were. One of them was indeed played by Jenny McCarthy
  • Jessica Simpson portrayed herself as one of these in MTV's Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.
    • Really, Jessica has played one of these in pretty much everything she's done.
    • Yeah, 'played'...
  • On Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, Victoria Jackson frequently played this type.
  • Averted by Loni Anderson's Jennifer on WKRP in Cincinnati. (The character supposedly was originally written as a stereotypical Dumb Blonde, but Anderson refused to take the role until she was reworked as smarter and savvier.)
    • One episode had a 'radio doctor' consultant assessing the station - as he was intent on extorting Andy for a good review, Andy made sure his report would come off as completely unbelievable, and had everyone act way out of character...Jennifer played the 'dumb blonde' Up to Eleven.
  • Terri on Glee, as well as her sister Kendra. The other main blond characters, Sue and Quinn, meanwhile, have fairly normal intelligences. However, all of them follow Blondes Are Evil to various degrees
    • Brittany had difficulty finding her right arm...
      • What, you mean the square root of 4 isn't rainbows?
      • And then there's that one time where she took all of her antibiotics at once and couldn't leave the choir room...
      • Everyone thought Brittany went on vacation during the summer, but she was actually lost in the sewers.
      • Brittany thinks her cat is reading her diary.
        • She also got mad at it when she thought it had started smoking again.
      • Brittany doesn't brush her teeth and instead rinses her mouth out with Dr. Pepper because she thought he was an actual doctor.
      • She doesn't know how to read a calendar.
      • Will had to teach her the second half of the alphabet because she felt M and N were too similar and got frustrated.
      • More examples of Brittany's dumb blondness can be found here.
    • An Alternate Character Interpretation of Brittany is that she's not actually dumb, she's completely insane and everything she does and says would make perfect sense if you were under the same delusions that she is. This interpretation is the one held by Heather Morris, the actress who plays her.
  • Played oddly straight (though possibly accidentally) on Robin Hood with the Too Dumb to Live Kate. Even more strangely, the actress was a natural brunette. For them to have actually dyed a woman's hair in order to make her a blonde, and then portray her as such an idiot that there was serious fan speculation that she had a mental disorder, led to several Unfortunate Implications.
    • But also several moments of unintentional hilarity: when the outlaws are about to be burnt at the stake, an angry crowd begins chanting "burn them, burn them!" Kate joins in, but is slightly out of sync. Obviously two whole syllables were a bit much for her.
  • Rose from The Golden Girls is a rare senior citizen example.
  • Inverted on All in The Family, where blonde Gloria is very smart and her brunette mother Edith is a scatterbrained dingbat.
  • Averted hard with Veronica in Veronica Mars.
    • Dick Casablancas is pretty much the epitome of a male dumb blonde.
  • The season five winner from Canadas Worst Driver. Any of the contestants with yellow hair could apply due to shocking ignorance about simple rules of the road, but how else do you describe someone who doesn't know how to get the gas cap off? Yes, that was shown, and yes, the door over the cap was open.
  • Averted with JJ in Criminal Minds. But according to most fans, Ashley Seaver is this.
  • Detective Ishihara of Trick is this in spades. The man is so off his rocker that he would have trouble holding down a job at McDonald's, let alone become a detective with the Tokyo police, even if he's in a comedy series. Then, in the season 2 finale, when the cast goes to a forest that makes hair grow, his natural black hair grows back, displacing what must be gallons of bleach, and he not only becomes competent, but downright intelligent. One can only imagine he started bleaching his hair after becoming a detective...
  • Both inverted and played straight with the titular characters on Hope and Faith. Hope is blond, but has the most common sense out of anyone, Faith, on the other hand, fits the stereotype perfectly as she's so dumb that she almost steps over the line into being an extreme ditz. She's also a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander.
  • Serena van der Woodsen on Gossip Girl.
  • Paisley in A.N.T. Farm.
  • Taken to its logical extreme on Arrested Development when Micheal romances a beautiful blonde who, unbeknownst to him, is actually mentally handicapped.
  • In season 1 of Degrassi, Emma Nelson, while book smart, was introduced as lacking common sense and went on to be scatter-brained on multiple occasions and was always so narrow minded that she, in Sean's brother's words, would not understand that there are two sides to every story.
  • Quendra on Community. It's made abundantly clear Jeff wants her in the study group only for her physical attributes.
    • Averted with Britta, though. Most of the time. Though she didn't realize Jeff was speaking bad, bordering on nonsensical, Spanish in the pilot.
  • Inverted in Gilmore Girls with the intelligent and ambitious Paris Geller, who was played by actress Liza Weil who actually dyed her hair blonde to underline her character as a foil to Rory Gilmore, who, interestingly, is herself a Brainy Brunette.
  • The producers of The Amazing Race manage to cast at least one ditzy woman in most seasons. They are usually, but not always, blondes:
    • Subverted hard in Season 10, where the team of Dustin & Kandice, a pair of Beauty Queens (Miss California and Miss New York respectively), were immediately dismissed by everyone (fans and other teams) as dumb blondes, but then ended up being one of the most feared teams to ever run the race and even dominated a large portion of the All-Star season.
    • Taken to new heights in Season 16, with Jordan Lloyd and Caite Upton.
    • Subverted again in Season 17, with Brook, who, along with brunette Claire, were considered an airhead fodder team pre-race, but finished 2nd overall behind Doctors Nat (who was also blonde) & Kat.


Music

  • Julie Brown's "'Cause I'm a Blonde".

I just want to say that being chosen as this month's Miss August is like a compliment I'll remember for as long as I can. Right now I'm a freshman in my fourth year at UCLA but my goal is to become a veterinarian 'cause I love children.

  • Hoku's "Another Dumb Blonde"
  • Dolly Parton has been quoted as saying that dumb blonde remarks don't bother her, "because I know I'm not dumb...and I also know I'm not blonde."


Recorded and Stand-up Comedy

  • This trope is endemic in German-speaking comedy. This is possibly due to the fact that the German word for dumb, "blöd", is spoken very similar to the word "blond". And, of course, "blauäugig" (blue eyed) is used as a synonym for "naive".
    • This casts an entirely new light on the plan Those Wacky Nazis had for the "Master Race"...
  • Chanel West Coast from "Ridiculousness".
  • Double Subversion: a ventriloquist is performing a routine with his dummy, telling a series of dumb blonde jokes. Suddenly, a well-dressed platinum blonde business woman stands up and says "How can you judge people based on their hair color? It has no bearing on intelligence!" The ventriloquist says, "Lady, please, I just—" The blonde snaps, "You stay out of this! I'm talking to that jerk sitting in your lap!"


Theater

  • Glinda from Wicked fits this trope, at first anyway. When Elphaba writes home and tries to find a word to describe her room-mate, all she can come up with is "blonde".
  • Holly from both the movie and musical versions of The Wedding Singer is both slutty and slightly dim, if sympathetic. However, in the original movie, Julia herself was intelligent with Hair of Gold in contrast to Robbie's stupid brunet ex, Linda. The musical reverses Julia's and Linda's hair colors, with Julia a Brainy Brunette/Girl Next Door type and Linda an even bigger Dumb Blonde than Holly, and dabbling into Blondes Are Evil.


Video Games

Flonne: "Nice to meet'cha, I'm an assassin! ...Oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

  • Miki Hoshii from The Idolmaster. When she gets serious, though...
  • Berri the Chipmunk, Conker the Squirrel's girlfriend from Conker's Bad Fur Day, was a stereotype of this trope. She couldn't recognize Conker when all he was wearing was a caveman's hat. She does disable an alarm system toward the end of the game, though I think it was part of the Matrix parody heist level; she and Conker were the only two in the room at the time to use for the cutscene.
  • Candy from Space Colony ticks all the boxes. Blonde? Yep. Cheerleader? Apparently. Obsessed with shopping? Yes. Dumb? Definitely.
  • Rock from Harvest Moon. He's, well, dumb as a rock. Muffy may count at times, but she's more naive than dumb.
  • Cassandra in the Soul Calibur series behaves in a slightly ditzy, clumsy, and purportedly cute manner. Her just as blonde older sister Sophitia, on the other hand, is quite a bit less silly...and also an Action Mom.
  • Tess from Jak and Daxter acts like a typical ditzy yellow-haired bimbo, but she is a genius when it comes to building weapons.
  • Nell from Atelier Iris 3 is a classic example: ditzy, very busty, and quite foolish.
  • Tiffany Lords from Rival Schools, who mixes this with Genki Girl and Spoiled Sweet...and a huge dose of Foreign Fanservice.
  • Septerra Core. Inverted. Led, the only blonde in the team, is almost as smart as Grubb.
    • Only female blonde. Of course, Corgan isn't particularly dumb either. The Chosen princess toys with this, though.


Visual Novels

  • Clannad: Youhei Sunohara arguably counts as a male example. Then again, he dyes his hair from its natural onyx to bright blond. When NOT blond, he is actually a very positively received person, but serves as the Butt Monkey most of the time WHEN blond.


Web Animation

  • Marzipan, that limbless Granola Girl, from Homestar Runner.
    • Of course, the Old Tymie Marzipan may be smarter.
  • Averted by Sophie of Liv World; a certain brunet friend could be the real klutz. :D


Web Comics

  • Illumina in Sidekick Girl
  • Carol in Suburban Tribe is actually a dumb redhead, but because most of the comics are uncoloured, many new readers mistake her for a blonde. This has been Lampshaded.
  • Kim of Kim & Jason may qualify, as despite being 4 years old, she once ran a presidential campaign — with a toy skunk as her running mate.
  • Gertrude from The KAMics, although Word of God is that if he knew she would end up that dumb, he would have given her another hair color.
  • Susan of El Goonish Shive is a heavy inversion. She is a natural blonde who dyes her hair black/blue/some dark colour and is, in fact, one of the smartest and most sensible people in the comic.
    • However, a side character named Sandi is a straight example. The author has said that he doesn't feel particularly guilty about having her fit all the ditzy blonde stereotypes because she always seems to appear around perfectly intelligent blondes.
  • Played in a humorous way in an early The Wotch arc. A blond schoolgirl complains about all these "blonde jokes" to her (also blond) friend and wishes that the non-blondes would be the stupid ones. She says this within earshot of a genie who's currently unable to not grant any wishes she hears. Ironically, this happens just as Anne (the Redheaded Hero) has found a way to stop the mayhem...which she promptly forgets.
  • In the Order of the Stick strip The Start of Darkness, when Xykon throws Lirian to the brain-eating zombies, he says that, being a blonde, she might not have brains enough for them.
    • Elan would be a rare male version of the trope (a Dumb Blond).
  • Oggie, a Cute Monster Boy in Girl Genius, may fall into this category.

"You cannot possibly be as stupid as you act."
"Ken if I vants to be!"


Web Original

  • Sarah of Lonelygirl15 and LG 15 The Resistance is a subversion of sorts. While she can be pretty ditzy (e.g., holding maps the wrong way up), she also repeatedly shows herself to be competent, manipulative, and prone to being a Deadpan Snarker. She also frequently plays up the "dumb blonde" stereotype to her advantage.
  • Survival of the Fittest: Charlene Norris is a blonde and noted to not be particularly intelligent, having needed tutors to pass classes at all before (out of both said lack of intelligence and partying all night). She also has been shown to make very unwise decisions on occasion.
  • Clarabelle of Disney World of War is this, but she has moments of being a Genius Ditz when her brain decides to kick in.
  • Side character Aiofe of Notting Cove series.
  • Aphrodite in Thalia's Musings, full stop. But she does have a certain shrewdness to the matters of heart. For example, she can see right through Apollo and Thalia.


Western Animation

  • In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is contrasted to three blond bimbos.
  • Johnny Bravo.
  • Melody Valentine on Josie and the Pussy Cats.
    • She got her start as a comics Dumb Blonde.
  • Bubbles on Jabberjaw
  • Brittany from Daria, although she is smarter than her Dumb Jock boyfriend, Kevin. (He's a brunet, for the record.) Brittany's stepmother Ashley-Amber as well, though a tie-in book mentions she's managed to learn joint-property laws without her husband knowing.
  • Nurse Bendy from Moral Orel shows a more depressing side to the stereotype in Season 3, which reveals that she's often mistreated (not to mention being possibly sexually abused) for being a pessimistic dumb blonde. It isn't until she is reunited with her equally unintelligent son, Joe, that she finally finds someone who accepts her for who she is in quite a heartwarming fashion.
    • Although when she met her son, she told him she dyed her hair - it's really black like his.
  • Lindsay from Total Drama Island is pretty much the definition of this trope. And she isn't even naturally blonde...
    • Geoff isn't exactly the sharpest crayon in the box, but he acts like this sometimes.
  • As is Jillian, Brian's ex-girlfriend from Family Guy.

Stewie: Now, why in the world would you be embarrassed about dating her?
Jillian: Oh, my God, Brian, I was watching something on TV about this guy named Hitler - [gasps] somebody should stop him!
Stewie: [To Brian] Are her parents brother and sister?

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