Stereotypes are nothing unique to the Poles - every nation has them; stereotypes make life easy. The Scots are stingy, the Swedes are uncommunicative and the Russians are always drunk and so on...
The unusual bit, though, appears to be the fact, that Poles seem to exaggerate the "problem" with the hair color just a (fair) bit more than the rest. The redheads, just like the cats - for some unexplained reason, the men more often than the females - are by the Poles believed to be false by nature, and the blondes are cast as totally unintelligent, dumb, and stupid - unbelievably stupid. (Strangely enough the other hair colors do not seem to reveal or influence any other character traits.)
True, the blondes are dumb even by US standards. A sign of a blonde starring in a Hollywood movie tells you all you need to know about her mental capacity or the lack of such, the platinum head being an obvious signal of deficiency, signaling the kind of girl that will laugh loudly at anyone's pointless jokes and stare at you, no matter how trivial the conversation, with her big blue eyes wide open, as if you were Casanova's next of kin, which you are obviously not, judging by your image in the mirror.
The Polish blondes do not compare to their American compatriots. Being a laughing stock is one thing, being a complete imbecile, yet another. The Polish blondes excel at stupidity, according to the Polish (male) lore. In this context, I still find it incomprehensible why the color of one's hair would influence one's mental capacity.
The matter becomes even more mystifying taking into account that very few Polish females are real platinum blondes. (Marilyn, where are you?) In general the natural hair color of a Polish female is what you could call dark blond (which is a bit ordinary and not at all exciting shade of blond). It is a bit hard to describe in words but if you have seen a (female) sparrow, you get the idea.
True, the real Polish country girls are often depicted as blondes equipped with suitably pigmented pigtails, but this is all simply a poetic license.
So why are the Polish males having so much fun on the account of poor blondes, while not fearing any repercussions? Could the explanation be, that since there are no real blondes in Poland, the jokes about them are safe to make. The dumb blondes are not your sisters, mothers, girlfriends or wives, thus making fun of poor blondes in the land of Poles is totally risk free. Any girl can join in and laugh.
This is not a new phenomenon. The jokes about the blondes have been around for as long as anyone can remember. Sometimes the blondes are stupid when they drive their cars, as if car driving required a special kind of advanced (read male) intelligence, but in general, they are stupid under any circumstances.
A point is case is that it is mostly men, that conceive jokes about blondes and laugh at them. To illustrate the point, let me tell you an old one about two blondes driving a Fiat with an engine in the rear. One of them is having a problem with her car. She opens the hood and gasps. Another blonde in the same kind of car stops to help. "What's the trouble," she asks. "Look here," replies the first one. "Someone stole my engine."
"Relax," says the other. "I just checked my boot in the morning, and I found out that I got a spare one. You can have it."
Obviously the "blondes" are too stupid to understand the complexity of the men's world of motoring. Seeing it this way, the jokes are not about the blondes at all, but about women in general. The blondes are just a symbol of a stupid female, a dumb cow that is neither bright, nor capable enough to master the intricacies of the male world. In this context the blondes are simply a convenient metaphor employed to denigrate the females in general, not only the blonde ones.
I am afraid the jokes tell us much more about the Polish men than about the Polish blondes. They do seem to reveal the true nature of the very macho men of Warsaw or Krakow in their wonderful machines whistling loud when seeing yet another, not necessarily blond, female behind the steering wheel.
Females behind the wheel? Men, they do all look blond to us!
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Contributed by Steven
The unusual bit, though, appears to be the fact, that Poles seem to exaggerate the "problem" with the hair color just a (fair) bit more than the rest. The redheads, just like the cats - for some unexplained reason, the men more often than the females - are by the Poles believed to be false by nature, and the blondes are cast as totally unintelligent, dumb, and stupid - unbelievably stupid. (Strangely enough the other hair colors do not seem to reveal or influence any other character traits.)
True, the blondes are dumb even by US standards. A sign of a blonde starring in a Hollywood movie tells you all you need to know about her mental capacity or the lack of such, the platinum head being an obvious signal of deficiency, signaling the kind of girl that will laugh loudly at anyone's pointless jokes and stare at you, no matter how trivial the conversation, with her big blue eyes wide open, as if you were Casanova's next of kin, which you are obviously not, judging by your image in the mirror.
The Polish blondes do not compare to their American compatriots. Being a laughing stock is one thing, being a complete imbecile, yet another. The Polish blondes excel at stupidity, according to the Polish (male) lore. In this context, I still find it incomprehensible why the color of one's hair would influence one's mental capacity.
The matter becomes even more mystifying taking into account that very few Polish females are real platinum blondes. (Marilyn, where are you?) In general the natural hair color of a Polish female is what you could call dark blond (which is a bit ordinary and not at all exciting shade of blond). It is a bit hard to describe in words but if you have seen a (female) sparrow, you get the idea.
True, the real Polish country girls are often depicted as blondes equipped with suitably pigmented pigtails, but this is all simply a poetic license.
So why are the Polish males having so much fun on the account of poor blondes, while not fearing any repercussions? Could the explanation be, that since there are no real blondes in Poland, the jokes about them are safe to make. The dumb blondes are not your sisters, mothers, girlfriends or wives, thus making fun of poor blondes in the land of Poles is totally risk free. Any girl can join in and laugh.
This is not a new phenomenon. The jokes about the blondes have been around for as long as anyone can remember. Sometimes the blondes are stupid when they drive their cars, as if car driving required a special kind of advanced (read male) intelligence, but in general, they are stupid under any circumstances.
A point is case is that it is mostly men, that conceive jokes about blondes and laugh at them. To illustrate the point, let me tell you an old one about two blondes driving a Fiat with an engine in the rear. One of them is having a problem with her car. She opens the hood and gasps. Another blonde in the same kind of car stops to help. "What's the trouble," she asks. "Look here," replies the first one. "Someone stole my engine."
"Relax," says the other. "I just checked my boot in the morning, and I found out that I got a spare one. You can have it."
Obviously the "blondes" are too stupid to understand the complexity of the men's world of motoring. Seeing it this way, the jokes are not about the blondes at all, but about women in general. The blondes are just a symbol of a stupid female, a dumb cow that is neither bright, nor capable enough to master the intricacies of the male world. In this context the blondes are simply a convenient metaphor employed to denigrate the females in general, not only the blonde ones.
I am afraid the jokes tell us much more about the Polish men than about the Polish blondes. They do seem to reveal the true nature of the very macho men of Warsaw or Krakow in their wonderful machines whistling loud when seeing yet another, not necessarily blond, female behind the steering wheel.
Females behind the wheel? Men, they do all look blond to us!
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Contributed by Steven