*Insert Punny Blonde Joke Here*

I was born a blonde. In California. Blue eyes, pale skin and golden blonde locks. Life should have been a little fucking easier for me. Isn't that the Californian ideal? To be tanned and sunny looking, with some camera following me around, filming me in slow motion?

Yeah.... for those of you reading this that aren't from California, let me burst that bubble for you right there. I'm a rarity in California. Don't get me wrong, there ARE a good number of blondes that live here, but they're all transplants and their haircolor comes from a bottle. I'm a seventh generation (that can be proven on paper) Californian and I'm blonde to boot. Yet life wasn't as grand as you'll find in copies of US Weekly, on the latest sitcom or in the latest Johnny Knoxville "comedy" clunker. Being blonde in California fucking sucked.

I grew up, for the most part, in Oxnard, California, a city that had an overwhelmingly Hispanic population. Throughout grade school I was the only white kid in my classes, and one of the only blondes in the entire school. My grandmother came to pick me up one day and laughed as I got in the car, "I knew it was you from even far away, I just looked for that yellow head in the sea of brunettes!" As amusing as it was to her, it was torturous for me.

I was frequently cornered by the other girls in school and called derogatory names. The most common complaint was that I was "stuck up," an insult that they would hiss at me as they plucked at a lock of my hair. I think I heard the term "Pinche Rubia," more times than is humanly possible. But the worst part was that I heard "Rubia" catcalled at me by men that were old enough to be my father as I walked home from school. No wonder those girls hated me. And no wonder I hate the sound of a rolled "R" to this day.

I started begging my mother to let me dye my hair dark from about the age of 12, when the abuse started reaching its pinnacle. She would whine that I needed to be proud of my hair color, that she wished she had hair as nice as mine. I just wanted to blend away. I already stood out enough as the kid who read 5 grade levels (or more) above everyone else in the class, the girl who didn't fit in because of her whack-job personality. I wanted to make a change where it was possible. But she would steadfastly deny me that year after year.

It wasn't just the insults and the catcalls that drove me nuts. Having blonde hair seems to be an invitation for any schmuck to walk up and start telling you their favorite blonde joke. Most were lame in one way or another, all were unsolicited and a good number were also fairly filthy. Didn't seem to stop the grown men from telling them to a young teen. Joy. I had to feign laughter to avoid having them growl, "What? You got no sense of humour?" at me. I can appreciate a good blonde joke just as much as the next person, but when you can't escape them, they get more than a little annoying.

A couple of months before I turned 18, I issued my mother an ultimatum. Take me to the salon to have my hair dyed and be able to have some imput over the color, or I'm going to buy myself a few tubes of black and be done with it. She relented and I walked out of the salon later that week with a head glowing a brilliant strawberry blonde. Amazing what even a small change to the basic blonde will do.

People stopped approaching me to tell me blonde jokes. Women complimented the color and thought that it was real. I started hearing about how they knew someone in their life that was a red-head and blah blah blah blah blah. FUCK. I'd managed to make myself stand out even more. It was a little improved this time, as I was receiving a little more respect and common courtesy, but now I was standing out in a whole other way.

Ever seen porn that's directed at red-head enthusiasts? Yeah. Those people are freaky. Scratch that. Those people are fucking freaks. At 18, I never would have guessed the strength of  the perverse nature of someone with a fetish for red-heads, but I learned damn quick. There were ones that would come onto me and launch automatically into the "Redheaded women are so sexy" diatribe, punctuated by offers to have me drag my hair across certain - ahem - body parts. They would sound like a crack head trying to score when I would decline and walk away. "Come on! Please!! I'll pay you!!" WTF??? All of this nonsense just for red hair??

After a year of this insanity, I started to step up the coloring without mom's imput. The strawberry blonde gave way to the crimson red, then to the cinnamon-brownish red and then to the black-ish plum color, which is where it stayed for a couple of years. Through every dark color, I learned more and more about men. Things I never would have learned as a blonde. Smart men don't generally associate with blondes. Good, hard-working, decent men tend to flock to brunettes, or women with darker colored hair. The quality of men that were interested in me went up as the shade of my hair got darker. I was standing out in a different way; My brains were finally showing through.

Some people that will read this are going to tell me that I'm putting too much thought into hair color, and I suppose I am. But facts are what facts are. Being a blonde when I was younger was rough. Trying to learn your romantic and sexual identity when the entire world has decided it for you, based on what Hollywood represents, is a uphill struggle. I occasionally ask myself if I would have gotten similar attention regardless of my haircolor, but I've thought long and hard about it and I highly doubt it. Blondes are the joke of the world. They are our society's entertainment, not to be taken seriously and not to be appreciated for anything other than the concept that they represent.

I'm mostly blonde again now. I'd been dying my hair for so long that I'd forgotten what the natural color looked like. I decided to stop and let the damage grow out. My roots are a good 6 inches long now, and the color is a dishwater blonde. (For those of you not in the know, "dishwater" is like a dull shade of blonde.) The color suits my complexion much better than any of the darker colors did, although my eyes certainly don't "pop" like they did when my hair was super dark.

More importantly, I've gotten to an age where I don't give a shit if someone thinks that my haircolor has anything to do with my personality, because I know that it doesn't. Blonde, red, brown, pink, blue, green, I'll always be the exact same Zara.

I still haven't figured a way how to get them to stop telling me the blonde jokes, though.