ES

Characteristics of blondes and brunettes--The _ingenue_ and the
villainess--Which of the two do men like better?--Sauterne and
Burgundy--I like both--All women cannot afford to be blondes--
Blondes with dark eyes--Brunettes with blue eyes.

The ideal beautiful woman of the painters is a blonde.

Eve, Venus, Helen of Troy, all the celebrated beauties of antiquity and
mythology, are invariably represented as blondes.

Only Cleopatra escaped it.

The reason is no doubt that the very colouring of the blonde, her fair
white skin, her light blue or gray eyes, suggest in her the possession,
the embodiment of all that is womanly. The blonde is the woman _par
excellence_.

Some people declare that blondes appeal to the imagination, to the
heart and to the soul, and brunettes to the senses--that the former are
sentimental, sweet, modest, good-tempered, obedient, nay, angelical,
whereas brunettes are strong-minded, assertive, conceited,
quick-tempered, passionate, often revengeful, and sometimes devilish.

I have known brunettes to be perfect angels, and sweet blondes to be
perfect little devils, and so have we all.

However this may be, most women desire to be blondes, and the proof of
it is that, whereas a blonde never dyes her hair black, many brunettes
dye theirs gold, _blond cendre_, light mahogany, and other hues of the
blonde family.

On the stage the ladies of the ballet and the chorus wear blonde wigs,
and the only possible reason to give for this is that managers believe
they will look more attractive to the audience as blondes than as
brunettes.

In the modern melodrama, the _ingenue_ is blonde and the adventuress or
villainess is dark, especially in England and America, where every
member of the caste has to be well labelled from the beginning. If the
villainess were a blonde, the gallery would take her for the heroine,
and things would get terribly mixed. The gallery would no more
understand a blonde villainess than they could take for a villain a man
who did not wear a chimney-top hat and patent leather boots, smoke a
cigarette, squint all the time to the right and to the left, and hiss
like a snake every time he took breath.

Poets are quite as partial as artists to blondes. Alfred de Musset sang
of her who was _blonde comme les bles_. Petrarch's sonnets were
addressed to the blonde and blue-eyed Laura. The ancient Greeks used to
call young blondes 'children of the gods.' For that