'Blonde is beautiful' mystique

By Sheryl McCarthy
Thu Jan 19, 7:15 AM ET

"Is it politically correct for us to see King Kong?" a friend joked when the latest version of the movie classic opened. A movie clip that shows Kong staring mesmerized at the fair Ann Darrow, played by Naomi Watts, caused me some uneasiness because it's hard not to see the subliminal racism in a story about a big black beast falling tragically in love with a pale blonde beauty.

But lured by reviews touting the special effects and the dramatic story, I went to see the movie anyway. While it certainly has racial overtones, I was more disturbed by its gender message: that fair-skinned blondeness is the essence of female beauty, so powerful an aphrodisiac that it can tame a savage beast.

King Kong is just the latest ripple in a cultural tidal wave of celebrations of a certain kind of Caucasian beauty. Pick up a newspaper or magazine, or watch the entertainment shows on television, and you're bombarded with a profusion of blondes: Paris, the Nicoles (Ritchie and Kidman), Scarlett, Charlize, Ashlee, Gwyneth, Mary-Kate and Ashley, to name a few. Even the African-American hottie of the moment, Beyonce, has golden skin and flowing blonde hair, while Halle Berry, the African-American actress most celebrated for her beauty, is fair with white features. Even in movies with predominantly black casts, the female objects of desire are consistently fairer than their male counterparts.

A step backward

"We move forward on things, and there are ways we keep stepping back," says Kathe Sandler, an African-American filmmaker whose 1992 documentary, A Question of Color, explored African-Americans' hang-ups about skin color, hair texture and facial features. Lately, she has noticed the extreme sexual objectification of women in popular music videos and the "European premium" placed on the women of color in them. "They've got to have really long hair, and I've never seen so much wig-wearing going on," Sandler says.