15 Struggles Every Blonde Experiences

1. The reoccurring fear that you’re just in your “Zooey Deschanel blonde” phase and that your life will turn around once you go brunette. Every blonde sees the once-blonde-now-better transformation and deeply fears they’re in it without even knowing.

2. Roots. Even if you’re naturally blonde, once the summer sun is done lightening your strands, you end up with darker-shaded roots. This provokes a variety of questions regarding your natural hair color, stylist, etc.

3. The “dumb blonde” jokes that are, somehow, still a thing. I’m biased but I don’t understand how anybody finds those jokes funny. Actually, my theory is that it’s just how people cope with the beautiful, golden mavens of the world.

4. Price of upkeep. The price of highlights these days are insane (especially in New York) and I mean, when you’re dealing with bleach and your head, you usually want to play it safe.

5. Deciding between a full head, half head or 8 foil. Cool, so you can actually afford highlights, but you really don’t want to sit in a salon for 3-4 hours while someone either caps you and pulls little strands out or makes you look like an alien with a tin-foil-laden head.

6. The struggle when you’re pale. Light hair and light skin is a recipe to look washed out, and we all become acutely aware after holiday pictures show up online.

7. Looking up pics of blonde haired people to decide on a shade and freaking out if, by comparison, your is too brassy, yellow, platinum or dirty or not enough of any of those. There are hundreds of different “blondes” you can be, and if you ask me, they’re all very telling of one’s personality.

8. You don’t even want to think about what you could do with the time and money you spend in the chair, at the salon, at the whim of deep conditioners and regular trims.

9. Naturally blonde? Naturally blonde eyelashes. That’s all.

10. You’re always a little worried about where you are while walking the line between gorgeous bombshell and annoying fake bottle blonde. You know these are the terrible things terrible people say. You sometimes get swept up in it (but you do you).

11. Hair dye doesn’t do the same thing highlights do, and you realize this. You keep thinking a dye job from the drug store will work, but we all know the truth. So much for the $7 way out.

12. Stripes. Oh god, is there a fashion-faux-paus worse than the few defined white highlights on black hair? Doubtful.

13. “So what’s your natural hair color…?”

14. Trying to go brunette being a cluster fuck of  mixed feelings and people’s rude comments because you’re no longer conforming to the beauty standard expected of you. I once had a friend who dyed her hair brown but still had blonde hair in her ID, and someone once asked her if she was ever going to go back to looking pretty and blonde…

15. The association with “blonde” and “dumb and trampy” is diminishing, but “blonde and hot” are in full swing, and regardless, it’s degrading, stereotyping and generally falsely classifying a group of people who were just either born with a certain color of waste product growing out of their heads or care to make it a color. At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean anything unless you say it does. Don’t let ’em tell you otherwise.