Hair Color and Choice

For people who are not blond, you could be blond fairly easily if you wanted to. And yet based on the observation that most people are not blond, I come to the conclusion that most people don't want to be blond. There is an old saying that the only true blonds are bottle blonds. Natural blonds may embrace an attitude they wouldn't otherwise embrace, but they just as likely may compensate by acting extra-serious. Ones who choose the color are probably more on-board with the blond stereotype. This goes double for redheads.

Or maybe they would like it if they naturally had that hair color but either don't want to go to the trouble or think people would find it odd-looking on them. Whatever the reason, I think it is fair to state that all of us who still have hair (mine is thinning) could, if we wanted to, become blond. So, it really is a choice and we mostly choose not to.

This whole line of reasoning emerged from a post on Althouse about the relationship between being fat and being homosexual. One was supposedly a choice and the other not. It is not as clear-cut as that: It is after all, commonly agreed-to that loosing weight is very hard for most people to do. On the other side, it is unclear if all gay people are "born" that way. Most siblings of gay identical twins are heterosexual--though they are more likely to be gay than siblings of gay fraternal twins. This would suggest at least some predisposition. Which seems to be the case in obesity too. Just as a finishing touch, at least a couple of gay commenters indicated that they enjoy being homosexual and would not change even if there was a "cure". To my view, they effectively do have a choice since they can have the option they pick.

Here is another way of thinking about this: People can dye their hair purple. You would expect to get attention (good and bad) by doing this and that is probably the point of it. What if you were a one in a million genetic freak and your hair was naturally a wild shade of purple. You could leave it as is and you would be treated just like people who dye their hair. There are a couple of options: You could try and inform the "world" that it is natural and that you are not deliberately making a spectacle of yourself, or you could just dye your hair a common color and get on with your life. What if you did try and inform the world of this natural odd coloration? Maybe there are a lot more people just like you, who had been hiding their condition by dying their hair. Now they are inspired to let their true color show...