Pretentious economists

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald (20/07/07) entitled 'When you weigh it up, it can be smart to be dumb' makes the rather tenuous arguement that blondes are in fact , contrary to popular speculation, smarter than the rest of us minions of other follicular shades. The piece itself is written by Jessica Irvine, who rather boastfully includes a disclaimer at the end of the article outlining the fact that she has an honours degree in Economics, and you guessed it, is herself a blonde.

Taking into account the possibility that since the article is published on the back page of the Herald, and thus may not be serious by intention (indeed, im all for the trashing of stereotypes), its hard to shake the feeling that Irvine truly believes in her simplistic, unidimensional, 'economic market' view of the world. As succinctly as I can put it, the jist of her arguement is as follows: In the 'flesh market', inteligent men 'innately prefer' attractive women (evidently some sort of pseudo evolutionary assumption) and that as blondes are characterised in many Western societies as being attractive, the biproduct of this union is, yes thats right..the smart blonde. This insight is supported by the New York Times economist Robert Frank, and both writer and referee come across as being completely oblivious to the complexity of human interaction, particularly that of courtship (although many patterns do exist). Add to that the neglect of empirical evidence and the contentious application of economic principles to human behaviour and you have what i like to call the economists syllogism: economics explains the world, the world is composed of people, therefore economics explains people.

Irvine further attests that blondes are more susceptible to problems associated with 'opportunity costs' (the benefits you concede from not doing the best of your other alternatives). This is apparently so because of the fact that they are attractive, and thus have more alternatives from which to choose. They therefore do not invest in university education, as the opportunity cost is 'higher than for a non-blonde'. It is thus supposed that blondes make a rational choice to be dumb, or as Irvine says 'sometimes it is smart to be dumb'. Its difficult to know where the faulty logic begins, so everything seems plausible for a while in this mumbo-jumbo explanation of life through the economists lens.

Confused yet? Well ill end this rant here, and at the risk of stooping to perhaps a similar base level of faulty logic and pretentious assumptions, heres some evidence that perhaps not all blondes can be considered attractive (base assumption of aforementioned article). I apologise in advance for any resultant damage to a readers vision.