Originally read aloud at Read Some Shit in Chicago, September 2023.
I’m standing at the bar of a neighborhood hole-in-the-wall and a man ordering a drink next to me has asked me what my type is. I shrug and say, “Eh, I don’t really have a type.” He says he doesn’t buy it. Oh come on, everyone has a type.
I think I can trace this all back to fourth grade when I first learned about Sun In. All the girls had their moms buy it for them at Walgreens over summer break. Sun In sold an empty promise that you too can be blonde, bubbly, and carefree by dousing your scalp with this lemony chemical concoction. The only problem was that my adult blonde mom refused to buy it for me, so I took an alternative approach. I furiously rubbed lemon wedges onto my thick, dark hair and then sat in the sun in my gauchos and awaited my transformation into Blake Lively.
I was a chubby Filipina girl that loved stringed cheese and talking in weird voices. My affinity for blondes and dairy likened me more to Cinderelly’s mouse Gus-Gus than Serena Van Der Woodsen. To complicate things even more, I was mixed race, which meant that I’d move through the world a bit like a chameleon. As a man once crassly put it, I looked “white but not quite.” At that age, I had no concept of internalized Western European beauty standards or why I didn’t always fit them. I just knew that Melissa, Abby, and Kaila were considered the prettiest and most popular girls in school. They moved through the world, our middle school hallways (which are the world), with ease. Their common denominator: they were blonde.
The seed was planted: the key to their proximity to power was their golden hair. I became this weird, prepubescent Rumpelstiltskin in a Catholic school jumper. My desire for being a bubbly, carefree blonde and wanting to be liked by bubbly, carefree blondes collapsed in on itself. The result: a massive, bubbly, carefree blonde black hole. All the wonders and terrors of the universe exist in the minds of middle school girls who want something they can’t have. It’s led me here.
Here’s a sentence that brings me absolutely no joy to say aloud: I think my father has something to do with this. He was born in Bacolod City in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. when he was a child. He lived out his American Dream: he learned English from comic books; he excelled academically and professionally; and he dated blondes. He accidentally had a child with one (ta-da!), and he moved on to a different adult blonde not long after. Let me tell you: out of all the things to inherit from your father, a thing for blondes? Not on the bingo card. I wonder if we’re both after the same thing — and if it’s more of a concept than it is a complexion.
I know that woven in the fabric of my immigrant lineage is a desire to assimilate, to pass, to lighten, like dousing a family tree’s roots with bottles of Sun In. I wasn’t taught Tagalog or taken on trips back to our farm in The Philippines. I was our family’s first American girl, a physical representation of diaspora, and I was mixed, a physical manifestation of a big, fat crush on an adult blonde. Life would be different for me. I would be born with choice. I could want instead of need.
And, at the risk of my Filipino ancestors rolling in their graves and despite my better judgment, there is one thing I still really want….
I have no interest in chasing after “The American Dream” – whatever the hell that even is – I just want to make out with it. Give me the felt letters on your varsity letterman jacket. Give me the plastic crown from your suburban high school’s homecoming court. Give me your lake house and your boat with your nuclear family and your golden retriever. I want to playfully take that silver spoon out of your mouth and place it in mine.
I’ll meet your parents. I’ll bring flowers and compliment their newly remodeled kitchen. I’ll point to your mom’s Barefoot Contessa cookbook and say I love her. Show me your childhood bedroom with your signed baseballs and navy blue bedspread. I want to grab your high school yearbook off its shelf and flip through its pages to discover that your senior superlative was “Best Smile”. Best smile? An award that is equal parts genetic blessing and orthodontia. I want to date someone who’s physical attributes can only be described with beach jargon. I want to run my fingers through your sandy waves and stare suggestively into your sparking, ocean-blue eyes. I want to plant one right on the lips of your “Best Smile”.
In college, I moved next door to a blonde boy who had broad shoulders and a Teva tan on his feet year-round. His longest lasting relationship was with his bicycle, which I later learned cost 6 month’s worth of my rent. He contained multitudes: he was both cerebral and clueless. And, despite insisting that he didn’t have it easy, he always seemed to get exactly what he wanted, which, for a year, was me. Heavy and blonde was the head that wore that crown. When things between us blew up spectacularly, shocking absolutely no one, I left for southern Spain and bleached my hair. I became an adult blonde, which could be spun as inspirational; however, I developed this brain-eating disease where I was convinced I looked 25-30% hotter as a blonde, and it plagued my early twenties.
This summer, I spent a week trying on a different life in Brooklyn when I met an adult blonde named Graham. He was from the Bay Area and studied Economics at a good school. His two-story Williamsburg loft had floor to ceiling windows, interesting art on its walls, and a messy coffee table littered with party drugs. His phone screen was his family dog, a golden retriever named Stella. He looked like he had the word analyst in his job title — which he did — but he had the voice of a laid back surfer. Every sentence slowly dripped off his lips and ended like a question. This was going to be very bad for me. He did a bump off of a 600 page book about Marxism. “Good read,” he said in-between lines. What was it like to be this confident and careless in your body? To be so at ease? I felt like a midnight intruder tiptoeing into his gilded life through the backdoor after bar close. He took my face in his hands and asked where have you been my whole life, which would not be the first time an adult blonde said those words to me. He asked if I would stay the night. I nodded. He asked if I would stay forever, and I thought about my single mom and I living just at the poverty line on three square meals of frozen Eggo chocolate chip waffles; and I thought about families who had cable, walk-in pantries, and summer homes in places I’d never heard of; and I nodded again. I’d stay forever. Easily. At the end of the week, I boarded a flight to O’Hare and he texted me: safe travels xo. I could feel the cool breeze from the doorway to another echelon of wealth as it shut in my face — and for a moment, it was refreshing.
Adult blondes, I’m speaking directly to you now, I love you. (Call me.) I also hate you. (Call me.) It’s complicated. I promise, it’s not you — let’s be honest this was never about you — it’s me.
Around this time a little over two years ago, I made two decisions: to move back to Chicago and to stop bleaching my hair. For the first time in my life since I was a child, I let my roots breathe. What would become of me? Would I depreciate in hotness by 25% or more? I asked myself every question imaginable other than the most obvious question of all: when I finally recognize myself, will I like what I see?
The bleach in my hair has completely grown out by now. I look the same as I did when I was in fourth grade with lemon wedges and delusions of grandeur. When people ask me why I did it, I tell them it’s cheaper and easier and I wanted to see what I’m actually supposed to look like. We’re just talking about hair, so I don’t say the quiet part out loud: that I’m realizing, sometimes, growth can look like return.
Bellied up to the bar of my neighborhood hole-in-the-wall, the man next to me is still waiting for an answer. “My type…,” I take a sip of my beer and run through everything I’ve just divulged at light speed. What comes out of my mouth next sounds more like a prayer than an answer. Brunettes.
A Non-Comprehensive List of Iconic Blondes
Jake McDorman in Aquamarine (2006) and Greek (ABC Family, 2007)
Glen Powell every time he’s on screen in all past, present, and future projects
Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)
Ashely Tisdale in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, High School Musical (1-3), and the Disney Channel Olympic Games
Cameron Diaz’s Oscar-worthy performance in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred in Scooby-Doo (2002)
Max Thieriot in The Pacifier (2007)
I will continue to add to this as more blondes come to me. Feel free to nominate your favorite blonde.
More writing coming soon. That is both a threat and a promise.
XOXO,
Gab
this hit me right in the heart — you took the words right out of my brain and put them on the page, PLUS some flair. #mixedgirlyprobs
I WANNA MAKE OUT WITH THE AMERICAN DREAM!!!
gabby never misses. love u 💛💛