Originally Posted by
geek the girl 
Great pics, femme fatale! It's nice to finally be able to put a face on my fellow Swedish FORTer. :)
Here's a confession: I am blonde and blue-eyed by birth but have been dyeing my hair for so long that I've come to think of myself as a natural brunette. Truth is, post-puberty, I never felt comfortable as a blonde, and that had everything to do with stereotypes and the way people (some people, not all, thank God!) judge you by the way you look. I remember going to the U.S. at the tender age of fourteen - I had blonde hair almost down to my waist back then - and feeling incredibly uncomfortable with all the attention I got. So I literally got home, bought some hair dye and never looked back. Ever since then, I've felt so much happier with the way I look, and the men that approach me now are much more my type than the leering types I got back when I looked stereotypically Swedish. Most of them at least pretend they're interested in what I have to say, as opposed to back in my blonde days, when it was all bad pick-up lines and guys making me feel genuinely uncomfortable. It's sad, really, that the colour of one's hair should make such a drastic difference in terms of how you're perceived by the world in general and men in particular, but I certainly get much more respect as a brunette than I did back when I was au naturel. Even today, I notice a definite difference in how my blonde girlfriends are treated when we go out.
I realise that this is slightly off-topic - hey, this thread is called "What do you look like?"! - but I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experience with dealing with stereotypes based on hair colour or looks in general.
