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  • 2006-03-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Did WHO Study Conclude That Natural Blondes Are Likely To Be Extinct Within 200 Years? (en)
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  • Some factoids are just too intriguing, their hold on our imaginations too tenacious, for us to let go of them — no matter how often or how thoroughly they may be debunked. One such factoid, about a scientific study's supposedly predicting that the naturally blonde-haired segment of the human population will die out within the next few centuries, gets trotted out when something prompts a mention of blondes in news stories. Take, for example, this concluding paragraph from a Sunday Times article about the origins of blonde hair: As factoids go, this one is generally accompanied by a fair amount of detail, such as: But all that detail can’t make up for the fact that the WHO never announced or conducted any such study. The blondes are going extinct factoid sprang from a spate of news stories that were aired by major news outlets in September 2002 (such as BBC News) and attributed the information to a study by the World Health Organization or the even more vague source of experts in Germany. As the Washington Post noted shortly afterwards, the source of the story appeared to be an article of questionable provenance published in a German women’s magazine two years earlier: Where did the blonde extinction idea originate? Normally we’d be tempted to chalk it up to the work of an anonymous prankster, or expect to find it began as yet another Weekly World News story that made the jump from a supermarket tabloid to the mainstream news media, but we were surprised to discover the notion of blondes’ being completely supplanted by brunettes has been bouncing around for a very long time. For starters, we learned that in 1961 a number of newspapers reported a similar study predicting blondes might be disappearing from most parts of the world within 50 to 140 years: Going back even further, we find the same concept being expressed in 1906, with this example anticipating the demise of blondes within the next 600 years: Backing up further still, we find evidence that the possible extinction of blondes was a subject of discussion in the 19th century as well, with this 1890 article anticipating their downfall due to a stronger male preference for brunettes as matrimonial partners: This excerpt from an 1865 article approving of recent Parisian fashion changes favoring the blonde look dates rumors concerning the extinction of the fair-haired to at least as far back as the American Civil War: No matter how old and ingrained this extinction belief may be, however, blondes and blonde-lovers probably need not fear the imminent demise of natural blondeness. Most scientists asked to comment on the faux study in recent years have opined that although the proportion of blondes in the population might decrease a bit in coming years, it won’t drop to zero any time in the foreseeable future. (en)
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