HISTORIANS PREFER BLONDES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 230, 19 November 1943, Page 14

HISTORIANS PREFER BLONDES

Lloyd George's New Wife Starts A Train Of Thought

we have a_ smouldering brunette, a few others and there is a glowing blonde or a fiery red-head. Then something happens in history. For example, something happened recently to Lloyd George. At the age of 80 he married his secretary-a woman whom the cables described as the "blonde bewilderment" of Versailles in 1919. Well, history’s cavalcade of bewildering women is long. There was Deborah, whose chant of triumph was sung in the congregation of the people; Semiramis, who led her armies to battle: when King Ninus faded from the scene; Lucretia, by whose virtues the Tarquins were ousted and Horatius kept the bridge; Tarpeia, who betrayed the Capitol; Margaret of Lancaster, who \ FEW genes get together and

fought in her husband’s stead for the crown of England; Catherine of Russia, powerful enough in intellect and will to dominate her masculine contemporaries; Marie Antoinette, the tinder which ignited the French Revolutionand so on. Had the colour of their hair anything to do with their power? We Start With Helen Let us start with Helen of Troy"daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair’ as Tennyson has sung. Helen was apparently a blonde, a most bewitching blonde, and thanks to her blonde charms and troublesome personality, she plunged her country into war. Whether Paris would have been so smitten with Helen if she had been brunette, no one can say. All we can say is that the rage of those days was glowing blondes with dazzling fair skins. A Greek woman of a different type was Sappho, greatest of lyric poets of antiquity, and founder of the first women’s club. There is, however, doubt. as to whether she was tall and fair, conforming to the Greek ideal of beauty, or whether she was small and dark, Alma-Tadema, the artist, has fixed the current tradition in his representation of Sappho’s school at Lesbos. There she is small, dark, beautiful, intense: and the artist, as one romantic commentator has said, has "subtly caught the prophetic light of her soul, her eager intellect, her unconscious grace and the slumbering passion in her eloquent eyes." Our artist, on the other hand, is one of those gentlemen who prefer blondes. Perhaps it is as well that we are not sure of her colour. Blondes can still say "And then there’s Sappho . . ." while brunettes can claim her in precisely the same words.

Spartan Ox-Throttlers One of history’s biggest groups of dominant women were the Spartan mothers, and they are said to have been blondes — but they had none of the qualities of the traditional glowing blondes. They were rude health and nothing else. Listen to this extract from a play by Aristophanes. Lysistrata is greeting Lampito, the delegate from Sparta for a woman’s conference: "O dearest Laconian, O Lampito, welcome. How beautiful you look, sweetest one! What a fresh colour! How vigorous your body is! Why, you could throttle an ox!" Enter, a Brunette! Blondes haven’t had it all their own way, however: one of the most bewitching women in history is reliably reported to have been a brunette-none other, of course, than Cleopatra. Although a book has been written to prove that her hair was red, the accepted tradition is that she was tall, brown-skinned, her eyes and hair like jet,.and as glossy as the raven’s plume. At the age of 18 (continued on next page)

(continued frem previous page) she came to the throne of Egypt. At the age of 21 she had Caesar at her feet. Then she turned to Mark Antony. Boadicea, the ancient British Queen, was a red-head. Everybody knows how Lady Godiva made history, and there seems to be justification for concluding that. the hair with which she made it was a beautiful gold, as was Joan of Arc’s. But the Maid’s hair had very little to do with her amazing story. On the other hand, it is possible that Queen Elizabeth’s hair did. A Change in Fashion The fashion for colouring has changed often through the ages. Perhaps the biggest swing over was in 18th century France. Louis XV. favoured brunettes with brown eyes, and in spite of what Nature may have intended, a vast preponderance of these dark beauties sprang up _ overnight. Unfortunately, when he died, and Louis XVI. came to the throne, it wes decided that blondes with blue eyes were the criterion for beauty, and so all the brunettes became blondes. To obtain the much admired pale complexion, women had themselves bled. Their dresses corresponded to their complexion-light materials and pure white being much favoured. In this period two women stand out. First, the Marquise de Pompadour, the natural daughter of a butcher. One description of her reads thus: "She had a complexion of the most striking whiteness, lips somewhat pale, eyes which blended and compounded the seduction of black eyes with the seduction of blue eyes. She had magnificent chestnut hair, ravishing teeth, and dimples when she smiled." No wonder that she eventually wielded almost more power than Louis XV. himself. It is said that economy and domestic morality came to an end with her accession, and that she was responsible for the Seven Years’ War. But in spite of her power, she was finally ousted by a blonde. She died in 1764, at the age of 42, and the day of her burial being wet, Louis XV. callously remarked, "The Marquise is having bad weather for her departure!" The blonde who was next favourite was Mme. du Barry. Her hair was long, silky, ashen blonde in colour, her brows and lashes brown, her nose small. A conternporary compared her complexion to "a roseleaf fallen into milk." Du Barry became the favourite of artists and musicians, and all over Europe people began to talk and write about her. Her life was a constant whirl of pleasure and extravagance, but in spite of her charms, she died on the scaffold. Nell Gwynn’s chief glory-apart from her wickedly witty mind-was her redbrown hair. Lady Hamilton, on the other hand, was a brunette. It would certainly appear that history has been kindest to blondes, then brunettes, with red-heads coming last, but before you draw any conclusions from this, remember the power of modern science. It will probably be possible soon to decide just what you want to be from birth, which will be all right so long as you don’t change your mind half-way, and so became a half-and-half beauty like the one in our illustration.

ET us meet our critics in advance. This is not history. Certainly it is not serious history. Some of our "facts" _ are popular legends. They are true as far as we know, but we are not prepared to say that they would survive exhaustive research.