'It's almost like a weapon': How the blonde bombshell has symbolised desire and danger

BBC News

2 days ago

From the American sweetheart to the platinum ice queen, and Jean Harlow to Sydney Sweeney, the blonde bombshell has been a multi-faceted - and controversial - figure in popular culture.
Women's hair has long been endowed with an intoxicating power, from the snake-headed Medusa of Greek mythology, whose arresting appearance turned victims to stone, to Victorian paintings of wavy-haired temptresses and gothic predators, with wild, untamed locks. Embodied by heavily made-up femme fatales such as Theda Bara and Louise Glaum, the predominantly dark-haired "vamp" made her way into the early films of the 1920s, until the advent of hair bleach saw her elbowed out by a bold new cultural icon: the platinum blonde, her immaculate coiffure glowing from the monochrome film.
Alamy
A new book, British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Postwar Britain, by cultural historian Lynda Nead, examines how the bleached blonde became a complex symbol of both desirability and danger, from her US origins, most famously personified by Marilyn Monroe, to her diverse British incarnations such as Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor. "Blondeness seemed to be so significant, it wasn't just a little detail that you could ignore, it seemed to me what was defining these familiar faces and images," Nead, who is Professor of History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, tells the BBC.