Book review: British Blonde by Lynda Nead examines post-war Britain’s obsession with blondes

Anyone reading the rush of articles which greeted the death of Brigitte Bardot at the end of last year will be in no doubt of the unique position blondeness holds in our culture. When Bardot first began dyeing her hair in the mid-1950s, her blonde waves quickly became central to her star power. Bardot’s luxurious golden hair was a symbol of abundance, liberation and free-spirited sexuality which foreshadowed the coming revolutions of the 1960s. Bardot was the new woman; and Bardot was blonde. 

The timing of Bardot’s ascendence was no coincidence. As Lynda Nead argues in her new book British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain, the importing of “American blonde glamour” (epitomised most potently by Marilyn Monroe) can be seen “as part of [the] package of US foreign aid” which entered Europe as 1940s austerity gave way to newly affluent consumer society. This influx of advertising, investment and pop culture was fuelled by US money, aesthetics and values. And at the heart of it all, stood the aspirational 1950s woman, hawking movies, clothes and (of course) hair dye – voluptuous, inviting, and, more often than not, blonde. 

If Monroe is the ultimate US blonde, and Bardot her French equivalent, who is the quintessential British blonde? In her lushly illustrated book Nead considers four candidates, each indicative of a different facet of post-war British identity. Actors Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor represent the pop cultural evolution of the blonde across the 1950s and into the 1960s. 

These chapters, perhaps the book’s strongest, present the two performers as smart professionals, unabashed in their fakery and flagrant sex appeal (at one point Dors labels a red carpet portrait of herself as “me in drag”), who bamboozle a media unable to parse the “dumb blonde” charade from the self-aware women underneath. Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain offers a tragic real-life embodiment of the “Blonde Noir” archetype, while both the paintings and media persona of pop artist Pauline Boty, are used to illustrate the British blonde’s transition from carefree sex object, to Women’s Lib. Along the way a parade of other notable blondes cameo – Carol White, Julie Christie, Myra Hindley, Pamela Green – as Nead’s argument carries us from the Cannes red carpet to Pinewood Studios, down to Soho’s sleazy backstreets, the nightclubs and dodgy photography studios, where the British blonde finds her natural home. 

Blondeness has its fair share of problematic associations and in unpicking these, through analysis of newspapers, magazines and films, Nead arrives at her most illuminating conclusions. While a discussion of the links between blondeness and racial purity (note Bardot’s later evolution to far-right figurehead in France), could be taken further, Nead’s exploration of the associations between bleach, aspiration and self-invention is highly convincing, leading us into a very British discussion of class identity.  

Here, as is often the case, the tabloids emerges as the real villain. While canny operators such as Dors and Windsor translated the press’s obsession with blonde women (tinged with snobbery, racism and misogyny) into money and fame, others – most notably poor Ellis, whose platinum glamour was leveraged as evidence of her duplicity – were consumed by the machine. Ultimately, what emerges from this absorbing study is a picture of blondeness as a mysterious, uncontainable force, a superpower to be wielded with caution. This lifelong brunette, will be staying off the hair dye for now. 

► British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain by Lynda Nead. Published by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.