True Blond

One of the reasons I chose to do my surgery rotation at the county hospital was because I heard that you could “get lost” there; meaning, the doctors were so busy, and there was so much going on, that as a medical student, you could just hang out all day and not be missed. “They don’t even notice you’re gone,” the upperclassmen told me. Perfect! I thought. Surgery does not interest me in the least; I looked forward to showing up for a quick surgery, and then leaving early like everyone else.

“WHERE’S BLONDIE?” I heard my attending doctor bellow as I hustled down the hallway, late for evening rounds.

“I’m right here Dr. Barkley, the ENT clinic ran late, I’m sorry.”

“Well I’m glad you decided to grace us with your presence, we’ve been standing around waiting for you.” I glanced around at the surgery team. Besides the residents, only one other student was there; six were AWOL.

“Why is he always on my case? He never asks about the others…” I whispered to my one friend resident, a tall, handsome man with golden curls, who I would imagine the angel Gabriel to look like.

“The blondies can’t hide!” Gabriel whispered back with a wink. I felt momentarily comforted by these words of understanding from a fellow blond.

I have never had the privilege of being inconspicuous, not even for a moment. I must mention that I not only blond, but platinum blond—a result of Nordic heritage mixed with God’s idea of some genetic fun. Since I was an infant, people have been commenting on my hair. My mom tells me strangers would reach into my stroller to pet my head, before she learned to snap at them not to.

“Is that your real hair color?!” Yes.

“Do you know how much people would pay for that?” Not really…

“Wow, you’re soooo blond!!”

“Yes…” Smile and shrug.

“Can I touch it?” No, but I see that you’re going to anyway.

These are the daily questions and comments but I’ve heard the gamut. Yet for some reason, despite twenty-five years of attention, I still feel awkward and slightly embarrassed receiving it. My usual response to a compliment is simply, “Thank you,” a phrase that is far underrated.

I’m sure some of my awkwardness regarding hair color was born around the time of puberty, when there was nothing cute about having glasses, braces, and being pale as a ghost. Growing up, I had to endure Casper comments or kids asking if I bleached my hair (ironically, by girls who now bleach their own hair in their twenties). One boy who sat behind me in my ninth grade math class used to whisper “soft cornsilk” into my ear, and occasionally would stroke his fat fingers around a lock of my hair before I flung myself forward, out of reach.

I remember praying to God to give me brown hair. Around puberty, I started losing huge amounts of hair. I would shower or comb my hair and handfuls would come out. My hair was all over the house. Then I started finding random dark brown hairs in my scalp. I panicked. God was replacing all my blond hair with brown hair! “Dear God, please, please, I changed my mind! I want to stay blond! Please let me stay blond!” I pleaded pathetically. I now know that the variations in my hair color was simply from hormones and growing, but it took an event like that for me to start appreciating what I had.

Thankfully, I have outgrown that wretched stage, but as any ugly duckling (or self-perceived ugly duckling) can attest too, the self- consciousness that developed during youth dies, but never truly disappears. Today, I am at peace with having platinum blond hair. The truth is, now I love being blond! It suits my personality and style. Not that I have much experience having dark hair.

I dyed my hair once, before embarking on a six month teaching stint in Qatar. “You’re a target, Cece.” My mother has been drilling this phrase into my head since the age of twelve, when I first started going to Manhattan alone with friends. In some ways she was right; I walk down any city street and I hear countless men call out, “Hey Blondie, wassup?” “Blondie, where you goin’?” “I’ll carry that bag for you, Blondie!” I’ve learned to handle this, however. All a girl has to do is wave and smile. Assault/mugging averted. I’m probably the only girl you’ll see smiling at bums and drug dealers, but I assure you, it is all in self preservation! So, to avoid being a “target” in an Arab country, where women don head to toe black abayas, I dyed my hair brunette. Well, it was more of a honey color. “You’ve made yourself worse!” my mother lamented. Although the hair color was pretty, I did not feel like myself. I was happy when the color started fading out. It was also fun seeing the reaction of my Arabic friends as my hair became lighter and lighter as the weeks went on. The lighter my hair got, the more free things I seemed to receive—coffee at Starbucks, VIP tables at clubs, invitations on random princes’ yachts… As it turns out, the Middle East may treat blonds better than anywhere else on earth!

My hair color may even have saved my live once. I was three years old, and we were visiting family friends out on the East End. They lived on a farm, with endless fields of cabbage. My mom lost sight of me for a few minutes, and I disappeared into the fields. (Later, I informed my parents I was searching for the Cabbage Patch Kids.) If it were not for the reflection of the sun on my head, my mom may never have found me, already a far distance away!

The other day in clinic, as I presented a patient to Dr. Barkley, a resident interrupted to ask the doctor a question. “Excuse me!” Dr. Barkley yelled. “I’m talkin’ to Blondie here!” Dr. Barkley stared at me, distracted by the interruption. (Face reddening begins.) “You’re a true blond, I can tell. Do you know how you can tell if a girl is a true blond?” he asked the audience of residents. (Face now catching fire.) Dr. Barkley has a reputation for being extremely inappropriate, and is probably the most chauvinistic person I have met. I feared the worst, and memories of being cornered in a frat house and being asked if the “curtains matched the carpet” came flooding back.

“She has no roots.” Oh thank you Jesus.

Dr. Barkley slapped me with a medical question. Mercifully, the answer reflexively came to me. (If I think too hard about something, sometimes the answer escapes me!)
“So perhaps, the old saying about blonds being dumb may be proving to be false…” Dr. Barkley concluded. Perhaps…

I guess the lesson in all this is to own up to who you are, no hiding, no shrinking away. And being different has its perks—people can find you in a crowd, or even in a cabbage patch.