By Marilyn “Mary” Monroe-Culpepper, Ph.D.
Our guest blogger Marilyn “Mary”
Monroe-Culpepper, Ph.D. is a noted sociocultural anthropologist, the world’s
leading blonde studies scholar and a natural born blonde (we swear). Her
research has been published in a bunch of really important international
science journals and she frequently appears as a contributor on the Antiquities
Channel.
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I am so excited to be a BIRTE guest blogger ahead of IRTE’s production
of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY BLONDES presented by Theater for the New City's
Dream Up Festival from September 16 to 20.
As the world’s top blonde studies scholar, I am always thrilled to see
the celebration and proliferation of pro-blonde sentiments.
When I got the call from IRTE, I was on the heels on making a huge
discovery in my cutting edge research on blondes. I mean, I was literally in
the middle of examining a strand of Pamela Anderson’s hair underneath a microscope,
and when I say I dropped everything, I mean it. I spilled everything in my
petri dish when I reached for my iPhone. That’s
how important IRTE’s League of Extraordinary Blondes is to the movement, and I
am just happy to be a part of it.
A little bit more about me, I am not only a scholar but also a natural
born towhead. Really, I am! Really! I am a native of the Indonesian Islands
where you can find the world’s only dark-skinned people who are naturally
blonde people. You can attribute our fair locks to the TYRPI gene, which is
completely different from the gene that causes blonde hair in western and
European populations. Bet you thought you knew everything there was to know
about blondes!
Here’s a
bunch of other facts you maybe didn’t know about us blondes:
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| Strawberry Head! |
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| A Natural Blonde |
- June is Blonde Appreciation Month!
- But September is the month when IRTE’s League of Extraordinary Blondes comes to the Dream Up Festival at the Theater for the New City
- Strawberry blonde, the mixture of blonde and red hair, is the rarest type of blonde hair.
- Only two percent of the world’s entire population is naturally blonde!
- The highest concentration of natural blondes are found in—you guessed it!—northern Europe.
- Blondes have a higher strand count than people
with other hair colors, and blonde beard hair grows faster than beard hair of
any other color.
A lotta Latvians - Every year, a bunch of people converge in Latvia for a festival dedicated to dyeing your hair blonde.
- The “dumb blonde” trope reportedly originated in France in the 1770s however modern science has not established any links between levels of intelligence and hair color.
- Germans were held captive in the Roman era, and their blonde hair was used to make fashionable wigs for ladies.
- Ancient
Romans used pigeon dung to lighten their hair; Venetians of the Renaissance
period used horse urine.
Beauty at any price
Go see The League
of Extraordinary Blondes in the Dream Up Festival in the Theater for the New
City. It gets my seal of approval. It’s action-packed, it’s sexy and they’re
making blonde history out there. You’re going to want to listen to me—I am the
single most important blonde scholar of the 21st century.
The League of Extraordinary Blondes runs September 16 - 20 at Theater for the New City, Cabaret Theater, 155 First Ave., New York, NY 10003
