It’s a Blonde Line Between Love and Hate

Sorry I’m so late…I’m on vacation and in low gear, plus, I kind of worked today. Anyway, no excuses, here’s this week’s post…Because I’m a white, raving liberal, I tend to give non-white, non-majority people the benefit of the doubt. But, ugh, majority white people? You’re going down. My perimenopause-induced, random anger likes to flare up at all kinds of white people, but today, I hate fake blondes.

Recently, I got off the train and as I was walking to work, I found myself stuck behind a group of youngish women walking four abreast on the sidewalk. They weren’t lollygagging, but they weren’t going at a get-to-work pace either. More like, “Oh, I’m on vacation, and I don’t give a rip how fast or slow I walk in front of you slobs who are going to work.”

You know the type.

I wanted to tell them, I don’t know how they walk wherever you’re from girlies, but that’s not how we do things here in Boston. Partly it’s because the sidewalks are hardly big enough for two people. But it’s also a personal space thing. We’re Bostonians. On sidewalks, we steer clear of others. We don’t touch or brush and we don’t walk four abreast. It simply isn’t done.

But there was no way for me to get around them, so I decided to quietly judge them instead. Oh my. Where do I begin?

First I noticed they all had similarly long, fake blonde hair with enough roots showing to start a goddamn botanical garden. Their hair reminded me of a declaration my friend Mike and I made the previous Sunday while dancing. There we were, swaying and jumping with the sea of dancing men, when a couple of girly women with long blonde hair stood on the dance floor, not on the edge, but on the dance floor, and one had a drink in her hand. Mike often laments, “Why, why, why do people dance with drinks in their hand?” Because they are amateurs, and Mike and I are there to dance, so don’t blame us if one of our cool little moves knocks your drink out of your hand. It’s a dance floor. If you want to stand around with a drink in your hand, go to where ever it is they do that. In any event, Mike did his cool little spin and sure enough he knocked girlie blonde #1’s drink from her hand. She glared at him, and Mike and I shrugged, kept dancing, and declared blondes should be banned from the club, unless it’s a wig and the blonde is in drag.

So as I was nursing a good dose of blonde hate, I next noticed they were all wearing short shorts — slightly different styles, but all the same length. So that gave me the opening to judge their bare legs of various levels of fitness, ranging from none to almost some, and colors, ranging from very white to translucent white. What a bunch of fake blonde losers. And how dare they come to Boston and obstruct my commute?

Finally, the sidewalk opened up enough for me to pass them. Hallelujah! I was about two steps in front, and could finally hear what they were actually talking about. Just as I was wondering what sort of vacuous conversation they would be having, I nearly tripped when my brain, clouded with nasty thoughts, finally registered what I was hearing.

They had British accents.

And instantly I was flooded with love for all four of those fake blonde ladies, as they hail from the land of drawing room dramas, bad teeth, afternoon tea, and the Queen. I’m a hopeless anglofile. As I pondered the ridiculousness of my reactions, I resolved to meditate more. Or send my myself to my room, or at least try to just think about unicorns and rainbows rather than be a judgmental, hypocritical witch, as fun as that can be.

But that’s what this is, right? Realizing how we can all be walking, talking, very nice judging machines, who are making snap judgments based on nothing more than a bad day of perimenopause hormones or a distaste of fake blondes. Many years ago, I was a grad student in a writing program, and I wanted to try out teaching. They gave us two semesters of freshman comp. God help those poor kids. Let’s hope all the money they were paying was well spent on the other teachers in their later years. The second semester was themed multiculturalism, and even as I write it now, I don’t think people even call it that any more. Christ, I feel old. Anyway, we had a couple of training session so we wouldn’t completely  traumatize those freshman. I remember one of my fellow teachers having this realization while we were trying to figure out interesting ways to teach mostly white kids about multiculturalism. She had caught herself in a moment of frustration waiting in a long line, saying something to herself that was not nice about the ethnicity of the person in front of her who was not moving up as quickly as she would have liked. And then she realized a lot of the shit we say about other people can be boiled down to “Get out of my way.” That always stayed with me, and I remembered it after my little hissy fit with the fake blondes who were in my way, but then ended up being something I love, goddamn it.

So next time I’m behind a guy with an annoying man bun or one of those huge, overly manicured beards (sorry dude, I’m still not kissing you, that’s nasty) and slicked back hair, I’ll just take a deep breath and try to remember they are not really in my way, and if all else fails, I’ll pretend they’re  British.

Photo credit:  Get your own bad dye job here.