Daily MOS: Blondpocalypse?!

Hey blondes, the internet said you’re going extinct. Which is super weird since everything on the internet is obviously true.

Today’s Moment of Science… the last of the blondes.

In 2002, the BBC reported that scientists in Germany claimed the genetics for blondes would be gone in two-hundred years. Ominously, they somehow knew the last blonde would likely be a Finn born in 2202. The alleged reasoning behind this is that the gene for blond hair is recessive. Given enough generations, all those recessive blonde alleles would be hidden in the dominant brunette landscape, the distinct flaxen color disappearing entirely. The story was repeated in several British outlets, reporting it as a study from the W.H.O.

Bullshit travels at the speed of broadcast television, and it wasn’t long before the story was picked up in the US. Charles Gibson said on Good Morning America, ”there’s a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blondes are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blondes, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunettes.”

So.

The W.H.O. was like “excuse me we did what now?” There was no prediction that the pigmentally challenged were endangered, and no German scientists- anonymous or otherwise- had actually expressed concerns to the BBC about replacing the blonde population. Uh, at least not in that particular decade.

Aaaawkward.

This is one of those weird scientific urban legends that shows up every few decades or so. There are articles dating back to 1865 expressing concern that “the blonde was rapidly becoming extinct.” In 1906, it was suggested that blondes were “doomed,” with only 600 years left. In the 1960s, rumors circulated in the press that by 2100, even Swedish blondes would be a thing of the past.

The possibility of the trait of blonde hair going away entirely has been debunked over and over again. Not sure what exactly it says about us that this rumor just won’t quit.

This has been your daily Moment of Science, suggesting that if natural blonde hair did go away, the only people who would notice would be hair stylists.

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