Dumb Blonde/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A blond character is stupid.

  • Straight: Alice is a blonde character and is less intelligent than the others.
  • Exaggerated: Alice's hair is as colorless as corn silk and her head is as empty as a potted plant.
  • Downplayed: As a schoolgirl, Alice, the blonde, is Book Dumb.
  • Justified: She finds her blond hair beautiful and wants it to be all anyone pays attention to so she won't say anything that shows that she's more than a pretty face.
  • Inverted:
    • Whenever anyone has a problem they need an answer to, they go to the blonde because she is The Smart Guy of the Five-Man Band.
    • The blonde is at the top of her class and intends to remain there despite anyone who might try to compete with her, so she wants them to know that they shouldn't even bother, a Power Blonde.
  • Subverted:
    • The Insufferable Genius begins a Battle of Wits with the blonde character to bring attention to how dumb she is but she is smart enough to realize exactly what he is doing and call him on it.
    • She turns out to be using Obfuscating Stupidity, showing she knows a lot about something.
    • She is stupid, but her blonde hair was a dye-job. She's actually brown-haired.
  • Double Subverted:
    • He persists and she tries to match him but ends up saying something really stupid.
    • Except that she's just parroting some obscure facts that she memorized to impress. She doesn't even understand them.
  • Parodied: Blond hair dyes cause characters to grow stupid. Brown, black, red, purple etc. dyes restore IQ points.
  • Deconstructed: A blonde character has grown foolish owing to her lack of study, because no one will take anything she says seriously.
  • Reconstructed: Other blond characters cope; the Dumb Blonde had been weak to let it overcome her.
  • Zig Zagged:
  • Averted: The dumb characters of the story are redheads or brunettes.
    • Alice is equally as intelligent as all the other students.
  • Enforced: "You can't make her smart; everyone will think she's dumb no matter what you do."
  • Lampshaded: "Why are blondness and IQ genes linked?"
  • Invoked: "You expecting me to be smart? I'm blond!"
  • Exploited: Alice acts dumb, even though she is just as smart as everyone else, to lower their guards.
  • Defied: "I'm not letting my hair color limit what I learn!"
  • Discussed: "You see that blonde girl? I bet she's a moron."
  • Conversed: "Oh, a blonde character. I bet they've made her a moron."

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