What's Blonde got to do with it?

The headline reads: "RE: A Special Note For My Male Biz Advisors Who Want Me To Go Back To Brunette....

The post is from Kirsten, CEO and Founder of RE: INVENTION -a Chicago-based marketing company for women-led businesses and the corporations trying to reach them.

Seems that some guys suggested that if she went back to being a brunette she would   " "enhance my perceived level of intelligence and credibility."

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a client who said he wanted to bleach his hair but was concerned about the corporate ramifications. He happens to be a  gay male, working in a very rigid organization. At  the time I found it fascinating that as a gay male who had achieved great success in the corporate environment that he was censoring himself over hair color.

As a guy, he intuitively knew something that many women choose to ignore--men actually believe those dumb blonde jokes.

Ouch. Over at Blogher, Elisa Camahort shared Kirsten and Tara Hunt's blog posts about the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. They are great reads.

It makes me want to wear a skirt today and be very thankful that I chose that lovely pink shade for my manicure yesterday.

Here's more of Kirsten's response on going back to brunette.

"- ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
- Is this 2006 or 1906?
- Are we still in high school?
- Is this debate even significant when the woman in question has a Duke M.B.A.?
- Have you not seen Ann Coulter's Photo Page? Get a load of that girl's clever gams! And she only has a J.D. degree from Michigan.
- Apparently some people think bottled blondes have plenty of intellectual appeal.
- Besides, I'm a strawberry blonde (a shade that's synonymous with redhead).
- Maybe I should buy a fake pair of glasses too. Damn me for having 20/20 vision.

Geez. "

Over at the Skandi Forum which says its the largest Germanic online community there is an entire section devoted to blond history.It has a ton of fascinating facts like

"Roman Women used to dye their hair blonde with quicklime, wood ash, and old wine. They did this because they were jealous of the fair-haired German women brought back as captives by their husbands

Supermarket shoppers prefer Blondes as cashiers. A UK based Somerfield Shoppers Survey, found blondes were much busier than their darker haired co-workers. Apparently, the research stated that Blondes appeared much calmer.

Up until World War II, a woman who dyed her hair was considered "fast". Hollywood depicted the blonde as being dumb, naughty, and immoral. Because Clairol wanted more women to purchase their home hair dyes and also frequent the beauty salon, they came up with some of the most famous advertising slogans of all time.

DOES SHE OR DOESN'T SHE?

ONLY HER HAIRDRESSER KNOWS FOR SURE!

DO BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN?

IF I'VE ONE LIFE...LET ME LIVE IT AS A BLONDE!

Blondes sell more merchandise in TV commercials and are employed more in commercial print. Forty-five percent of people, including men, prefer to be dyed blonde.

So how does one interpret  these statistics?

If you work as a checkout clerk in the supermarket you may want to dye your hair blonde to get the job and then after a few weeks go back to being a brunette.---unless you don't mind working harder than your co-workers.

If you want to break into print advertising and TV commercials  -- that's a no brainer, go blonde . And, from what I've observed, TV newsreaders seem to get more air time when they are blonde as well.

If you want to be taken seriously as a woman business executive - produce results.It seems to be working so far, Google ranks Kirsten's blog as the #1 blog for women entrepreneurs.