Basic Trope: A blond character is stupid.
- Straight: Alice is a blonde character and is less intelligent than the others.
- Exaggerated: Alice's hair is as colorless as corn silk and she is Too Dumb to Live.
- Downplayed:
- As a schoolgirl, Alice, the blonde, is Book Dumb.
- Alternately, she may be academically book smart, but she lacks common sense.
- Justified:
- She finds her blond hair beautiful and wants it to be all anyone pays attention to so she won't say anything that shows that she's more than a pretty face.
- Alice has a learning disorder, and the fact that she's a blonde is a complete coincidence.
- Inverted:
- Whenever anyone has a problem they need an answer to, they go to the blonde because she is The Smart Girl.
- Alice, a pretty blonde is at the top of her class and intends to remain there despite anyone who might try to compete with her, so she wants them to know that they shouldn't even bother.
- Subverted:
- Bob begins a Battle of Wits with Alice to bring attention to how dumb she is but she is smart enough to realize exactly what he is doing and call him on it.
- Alice turns out to be using Obfuscating Stupidity, showing she knows a lot about something.
- Alice is stupid, but her blonde hair was a dye-job. She's actually brown-haired.
- Double Subverted:
- He persists and she tries to match him but ends up saying something really stupid.
- Except that she's just parroting some obscure facts that she memorized to impress. She doesn't even understand them.
- Parodied:
- Blond hair dyes cause characters to grow stupid. Brown, black, red, purple etc. dyes restore IQ points.
- Every hair of blond deducts an amount of IQ points — even if it's only one hair!
- The Fiery Redhead dyes their hair yellow to fit in with the cool kids. However, their IQ swiftly drops and occasionally their old hair color instincts come back.
- Zig Zagged:
- The blonde character is always coming up with stupid comments and moments of insight, until neither the audience nor the characters know whether she's a Genius Ditz, Obfuscating Stupidity, or Too Dumb to Fool.
- The blond has some common sense, stupid or no, and so is given Dumbass Has a Point moments throughout the series.
- Averted:
- The dumb characters of the story are redheads or brunettes.
- Alice is equally as intelligent as all the other students, if not more-so.
- A person's hair color is no measure for their intelligence.
- Enforced: "You can't make her smart; everyone will think she's dumb no matter what you do."
- Lampshaded: "Why are blondness and IQ genes linked?"
- Invoked:
- Evulz overhears a prophecy that a blonde will try to rise up against him. So he makes sure every blonde is kept ignorant of the rest of the world, especially his evil dictatorship.
- Alice dyes her hair to make herself more attractive. With her lack of smarts looks are the only thing she has going for her.
- See subverted #2.
- Stupidity-Inducing Attack on a blonde, or Stupidity-Inducing Attack followed by blonde hair dye, if the target wasn't blonde to begin with.
- Exploited: Alice acts dumb, even though she is just as smart as everyone else, to lower their attention and catch them off-guard when needed.
- Defied: "I'm not letting my hair color limit what I learn!"
- Discussed:
- "You see that blonde girl? I bet she's a moron."
- "You expecting me to be smart? I'm blond!"
- Conversed: "Oh, a blonde character. I bet they've made her a moron."
- Deconstructed:
- A blonde character has grown foolish owing to her lack of study, because no one will take anything she says seriously.
- Alice is intelligent and has a job that requires being reasonably smart, but her colleagues assume she’s stupid because she’s blonde. She gets fired and ends up being homeless.
- Alice can't hold an intelligent conversation with those around her or do anything right. People are polite when she's around, but when she's gone, they complain about how worthless she is. This takes its toll on her self-esteem.
- Reconstructed:
- Other blond characters cope; the Dumb Blonde had been weak to let it overcome her.
- Alice gets her job back. It turns out she’s Book Smart, but lacking in some other areas of knowledge.
- Alice does her best to improve herself intellectually...at least most of the time.
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