This book would have been impossible without the generous support and skills of Alexandra Pringle and Marian McCarthy at Bloomsbury and of my agent Bill Hamilton at A.M. Heath. And finally thanks and love to Giles for his endless supply of ideas, encouragement and fine judgment.
Picture Section
Phryne Before the Tribunal, Jean-Leon Gerome, 1861 The judges have abandoned all pretence of composure in their appreciative scrutiny of this classical blonde goddess. (Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk berlin/Elke Walford 2002)
The Crucifixion Masaccio, early 15th century. Mary Magdalene is identified by her long blonde hair flowing loosely over her red cloak. (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte)
The Wilton Diptych (right hand panel), unknown English or French artist, c. 1395–9. (The National Gallery, London)
Venus, Botticelli Workshop c. 1486. The powerful sexuality of this image lies in the luxuriant golden-blonde hair. (Berlin Staatliche Museum/Preubischer Kulturbesitz Gemaldegalerie/Jorg P. Anders)
A Blonde Woman, Palma Vecchio, early 16th century. This woman, perhaps a Venetian courtesan, has dyed her hair blonde with only partial success. (The National Gallery, London)
Elizabeth 1, coronation portrait, unknown artist, c. 1600. Tree-ring dating has recently established that this portrait was painted some forty years after the coronation, at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s life. Stage-managing her image right to the last, she had the artist alter her natural auburn hair to a dazzling shade of golden blonde for posterity. (The National Portrait Gallery, London)
The Fisherman and the Syren: from a Ballard by Goethe, Frederic Leighton, c. 1856–8. Victorian painters were intrigued by the theme of seductive but destructive blonde sea maidens. (Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Hitler greets a group of blond boys. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Stalin holds up a blond boy on a window ledge. (Keystone)
Roosevelt holds his two blond grandsons on his lap. {New York Times Co./Archive Photos)
Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s first blonde goddess. She dyed her hair with a diabolical mixture of peroxide, household bleach, soap flakes and ammonia until it fell out and she was forced to wear a wig. (John Kobal Foundation)
Marilyn Monroe, the big chief of all blondes. She refused to allow other blonde actresses on the film set with her. (M. Garrett/Archive Photos)
Doris Day, one of the irrepressibly perky movie blondes of the 1960s. She was said to be so pure even Moses couldn’t part her knees. (Archive Photos)
Tippi Hedren, the cool, sophisticated Hitchcock blonde. (Keystone)
Diana, Princess of Wales, who spent almost £4,000 a year having her hair bleached. (Keystone)
Baroness Thatcher, whose rigidly lacquered helmet of blonde hair was a demonstration of self-assurance, conviction and power. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
‘Being blonde is definitely a different state of mind,’ Madonna has said. ‘I can’t really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blonde has some incredible sort of sexual connotation.’ (Corbis Sygma)
Endnotes
1: APHRODITE RISING
1 Alcman: The Partheneion, p. 45
2 Natural History, Pliny, p. 346
3 ibid., p. 346
4 A History of Prostitution, Sanger, p. 60
5 Sex Status and Survival, Fantham, p. 51
2: THE EMPRESS AND THE WIG
6 The Erotic Poems, Ovid, p. 107
7 The Sixteen Satires, Juvenal, p. 128
8 ibid., p. 131
9 The Roman Empresses, de Serviez, p. 192
10 ibid., p. 353
11 ibid., p. 355
12 Epigrams, Martial, p. 97
13 Elegies, Propertius, p. 177
14 The Erotic Poems, Ovid, p. 218
15 The Sixteen Satires, Juvenal, p. 146
16 The Writings of Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, p. 318
17 De cultufeminarum, in Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works, Tertullian, p. 137
18 The Goddess of Love, Grigson, p. 228
3: THE DEVIL’S SOAP
19 Harleian Manuscript 4894, fol. 177
20 ibid., p. 395
21 San Bernardino of Siena, Howell, p. 245
22 Mary Magdalen, Haskins, p. 153
23 ibid., p. 153
24 The Artificial Changeling, Bulwer, p. 58
4: IS SHE NOT PURE GOLD?
25 Revelations, Saint Bridget, VII, 21
26 Physica, Hildegard, p. 238
27 Jutta and Hildegard: Tie Biographical Sources, Silvas, p. 187
28 Arab Historians of the Crusades, Gabrieli p. 204
29 Troubadour Poets, Smythe, p. 112
30 Old German Love Songs, Nicholson, P. 155
31 Arthurian Romances, Troyes, p. 288
32 ibid., p. 112
33 The Romance of the Rose, Lorris and Meun, p. 37
34 ibid., p. 42
35 ibid., p. 73
5: THE CARDINAL AND THE BLONDE BORGIA
36 Lyric Poems, Petrarch, p. 100
37 ibid., p. 136
38 Gli Asolani, Bembo, p. 102
39 Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, Cagnolo, p. 39
40 The Prettiest Love Letters, Bembo, p. 65
41 ibid., p. 53
6: FOUR BLOCKS OF CAVIARE AND A FEATH ER BED
43 Raccolta, Vol. 2, p. 22
44 Raccolta, Vol. 3, p. 259
45 ‘Sonnets on female portraits’, Rogers, p. 299
46 ‘Titian, Ovid and Sixteenth Century Codes’, Ginzburg, p. 27
47 Dialogues, Aretino, p. 165
48 ‘Sex, Space and Social History’, Goffen, p. 72
49 Cory at’s Crudities, Coryate, p. 403
50 Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance, Masson, p. 29
51 ibid., p. 156
52 ibid., p. 157
53 Habiti Antichi et Moderni, Vecellio, p. 119
54 Coryat’s Crudities, Coryate, p. 400
55 The Artificial Changeling, Bulwer, p. 57
56 Fashions in Hair, Corson, p. 73
7: LIKE A VIRGIN
57 Diary of John Manningham, p. 152
58 Sculptura, Evelyn, p. 25
59 Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, Arnold, p. 29
60 The Memoirs of Sir James Melville, p. 38
61 ibid., p. 38
62 The History of Vanity, Woodforde, p. 49
63 English Women in Life and Letters, Phillips and Tomkinson, p. 44
64 The Faerie Queen, Spenser, p. 193
65 Tlie Anatomie of Abuses, Stubbes, p. 67
66 Cynthia’s Revels, Jonson, iv, i, 140
67 Alexander and Campaspe, Lyly, iii, iv, 91
68 The Malcontent, Marston, ii, iv, 35
8: SAINT - SEDUCING GOLD
69 London Magazine, Anon, 1768
70 Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, ed. Fairholt, p. 253
71 The Lady’s Magazine, June 1775
72 Les Curiosites de la foire, Landrin, i, vi
73 Le Cabinet des fees, Lemirre, p. 261
74 The Complete Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Zipes, p. 259
9: WRETCHED PICKLED VICTIMS
75 Middlemarch, Eliot, p. 189
76 ibid., p. 628
77 Vanity Fair, Thackeray, p. 813
78 ibid., p. 812
79 The Letters, Kintner, p. 288
80 ibid., p. 300
81 Sonnets from the Portuguese, Barrett Browning, p. 73
82 The Works of John Ruskin, Ruskin, p. 55
83 Goblin Market, Rossetti, p. 5
84 The Bram Stoker Bedside Companion, ed. Osborne, p. 28
85 Lewis Carroll Photographer, Taylor, p. 94
86 The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, Collingwood, p. 362
87 Sonnets of a Little Girl, Dowson, p. 149
10: THE ARYAN AWAKES
88 Introductory Lectures, Arnold, p. 28
89 Ivanhoe, Scott, p. 544
90 Coningsby, Disraeli, p. 273
91 Tancred, Disraeli, p. 201
92 German Colonisation, Forster, p. 70
11: BODY POLITICS
93 undated, untitled poem in British Library, Owen
94 Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, Sassoon, p. 89
95 Nudism in Modern Life, Parmelee, p. 235
96 Cote d’Azur, Blume, p. 107
12: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE GOD
97 Alein Kampfi Hitler, p. 512
98 Losing the Dead, Appignanesi, p. 57
99 Master Race, Clay and Leapman, p. 36
100 Children of the SS, Henry and Hillel, p. 239
101 Produktsiia izo-iskusstv 6 (1933), p. 6
102 Produktsiia izo-iskusstv 9 (1933), p. 7
13: BLONDE VENUS
103 Oxford History of American Cinema, vol. 5, Nowell-Smith, p. 97
104 Hollywood’s Wartime Women, Renov, p. 22
105 ibid., p. 22
14: DIRTY PILLOW SLIP
106 ‘Platinum Pain’, Merkin, p. 76
107 Conversations with Billy Wilder, Crowe, p. 165
108 Nostalgia Isn’t Wlxat It Used To Be, Signoret, p. 287
109 Films and Filming, July 1959, p. 7
110 ibid., p. 400
111 The Making of The Birds, Counts, p. 33
112 The Birds, Paglia, p. 27
113 True Colours, Gladwell, p. 74
15: OF PRINCESSES , PUNKS AND PRIME MINISTERS
114 Making Waves, Le Gates, p. 335
115 ‘True colors’, Gladwell, p. 77
116 An Unfashionable Life, Mulvagh, p. 72
117 Madonna, Morton, p. 12
118 Lettin It All Hang Out, RuPaul, p. 190
Select Bibliography
Dates in brackets refer to original publication date.
INTRODUCTION
Etcoff, Nancy – Survival of the Prettiest, The Science of Beauty, London,1999
Freedman, Rita – Beauty Bound, London, 1986
Ridley, Matt – Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, London, 1993
1: APHRODITE RISING
Corson, Richard – Fashions in Hair, London, 1980
Fantham, Elaine – Sex, Status and Survival in Hellenistic Athens, Phoenix 29, 1975
Friedrich, Paul – The Meaning of Aphrodite, Chicago, 1978
Grigson, Geoffrey – The Goddess of Love, London, 1976
Havelock, Christine – The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors, Ann Arbor, 1995
Homer – The Odyssey, (trns) R. Lattimore, New York, 1967
Page, Denys – Alcman: The Partheneion, London, 1951
Pliny the Elder – Natural History, (trns) John Healy, London, 1991
Sanger, William – A History of Prostitution, New York, 1859
2: THE EMPRESS AND THE WIG
Balsdon J.P.V.D. – Roman Women, Their History and Habits, London, 1962
Clement of Alexandria – The Writings of Clement of Alexandria, (trns) William Wilson, Edinburgh, 1867
Grigson, Geoffrey – The Goddess of Love, London, 1976
Juvenal – The Sixteen Satires, (trns) Peter Green, London, 1967
Martial – Epigrams, (trns) G.P. Goold. Cambridge Mass., 1990
Ovid – The Erotic Poems, (trns) Peter Green, London, 1982
Pliny the Elder – Natural History, (trns) John Healy, London, 1991
Pomeroy, Sarah B. – Goddesses, Wliores, Wives and Slaves, London, 1976
Propertius – Elegies, (trns) G.P. Goold, Cambridge Mass., 1990
Serviez, Jacques Roergas de – The Roman Empresses, (trns) Bysse Molesworth, London, 1899 (1752)
Tertullian – Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works, (trns) Rudolph Arbesmann, Washington, 1977
3: THE DEVIL’S SOAP
Bulwer, John – The Artificial Changeling, London, 1650
Duby, Georges – Women of the 12th Century, (trns) Jean Birrell, Cambridge, 1997
Fiero, Gloria (ed) – Three Medieval Views of Women, London, 1989
Haskins, Susan – Mary Magdalen, Myth and Metaphor, London, 1993
Howell, A. – San Bernardino of Siena, London, 1913
Norris, Pamela – The Story of Eve, London, 1998
Owst, G.R. – Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, Oxford, 1961
4: IS SHE NOT PURE GOLD?
Cornell, Henrik – The Iconography of the Nativity of Christ, Uppsala, 1924
Eco, Umberto – Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, (trns) Hugh Bredin, New Haven, 1986
Gabrieli, Francesco (trns) – Arab Historians of the Crusades, London, 1984
Hildegard of Bingen – Physica, (trns) Priscilla Throop, Rochester Vermont, 1998 (c.1158)
Jorgensen, Johannes – Saint Bridget of Sweden, (trns) Ingeborg Lund, London, 1954
Lorris, Guillaume de and Meun, Jean de – The Romance of the Rose, (trns) Charles Dahlberg, Princeton, 1971 (c. 1280)
Nicholson, Frank (trns) – Old German Love Songs from the Minnesingers of the 12th to 14th Centuries, London, 1907
Ribeiro Aileen – Dress and Morality, London, 1986
Saint Bridget – The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, (ed) William Cumming, Oxford, 1929
Silvas, Anna (trns) –Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources, Pennsylvania, 1998
Smythe, Barbara (trns) – Troubadour Poets, London, 1911
Troyes, Chretien de – Arthurian Romances, (trns) William Comfort, London, 1928
Warner, Marina – Alone of All her Sex, The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, London, 1976
Warner, Marina – Monuments and Maidens, London, 1985
5: THE CARDINAL AND THE BLONDE BORGIA
Bembo, Pietro – Gli Asolani, (trns) Rudolf Gottfried, London, 1505
Bembo, Pietro and Borgia, Lucrezia – The Prettiest Love Letters in the World, (trns) Hugh Shankland, London, 1987
Cagnolo, Nicolo – Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, Ferrara, 1867
Clark, William – Savonarola, His Life and Times, Chicago, 1890
Fraser, Antonia – Boadicea’s Chariot, London, 1988
Lightbown, Ronald – Sandro Botticelli, London, 1989
Petrarch – Lyric Poems, (trns) Robert Durling, Cambridge Mass., 1976
Tinagli, Paola – Women in Italian Renaissance Art, Manchester, 1997
6: FOUR BLOCKS OF CAVIARE AND A FEATHER BED
Aretino, Pietro – Dialogues, (trns) Raymond Rosenthal, Cambridge, 1972
Bloch, Konrad – Blondes in Venetian Renaissance Paintings and other Essays, New Haven, 1994
Bulwer, John – The Artificial Changeling, London, 1650
Corson, Richard – Fashions in Hair, London, 1980
Coryate, Thomas – Cory at’s Crudities, Glasgow, 1611
Cropper, Elizabeth – ‘Rewriting the Renaissance’, in The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, (ed) Margaret Ferguson, Chicago, 1986
Firenzuola Agnolo – Dialogue of the Beauty of Women, (trns) Clara Bell, 1892 (1548)
Freedberg, David – The Power of Images, Chicago, 1989
Ginzburg, Carlo – ‘Titian, Ovid and Sixteenth Century Codes for Erotic Illustration’, in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, (ed) Rona Goffen, Cambridge, 1997
Goffen, Rona – ‘Sex, Space and Social History’, in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, Cambridge, 1997
Goffen, Rona – Titian’s Women, New Haven, 1997
Luigini, Federigo – The Book of Fair Women, (trns) Elsie M. Lang, London, 1907 (1554)
Masson, Georgina – Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance, London, 1975
Porta, Jean Baptista della Porta – The Ninth Book of Natural Magick, London, 1669
Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura, Vols 2 and 3, Rome, 1757 and 1759
Rogers, Mary – ‘The Decorum of Women’s Beauty’, in Renaissance Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1
Rogers, Mary – ‘Sonnets on female portraits from Renaissance North Italy’ in Word & Image, Vol 2, N o 4, 1986
Vecellio, Cesare – Habiti Antichi et Moderni, Paris, i860 (1598)
7: LIKE A VIRGIN
Arnold, Janet (ed) – Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, Leeds, 1988
Aske, James – Elizabetha Triumphans, London, 1588
Camden, Carroll – The Elizabethan Woman, London, 1952
Evelyn, J. – Sculptura, (ed) C.F. Bell, Oxford, 1906
Hackett, Helen – Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen, London, 1995
Manningham, John – Diary of John Manningham, (ed) J. Bruce, London, 1868 (1608)
Melville, James – The Memoirs of Sir James Melville, (ed) Gordon Donaldson, London, 1969 (1683)
Nichols, John – The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1821
Phillips, Margaret and Tomkinson, William – English Women in Life and Letters, London, 1926
Pomeroy, Elizabeth – Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, Hamden Conn., 1989
Spenser, Edmund – The Faerie Queen, (ed) Douglas Brooks Davies, 1976 (1596)
Strong, Roy – The Cult of Elizabeth, London, 1977
Strong, Roy – Gloriana, the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, London, 1987
Stubbes, Phillip – The Anatomie of Abuses, (ed) F. Furnivall, London, 1877 (1583)
Wilson, Elkin – England’s Eliza, Cambridge Mass., 1939
Woodforde, John – The History of Vanity, Stroud, 1992
8: SAINT – SEDUCING GOLD
Bassermann, Lujo – The Oldest Profession, (trns) James Cleugh, London, 1967
Bottigheimer, Ruth – Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys, New Haven, 1987
Fairholt, Frederick (ed) – Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, London, 1842
Friedlander, Walter – Nicolas Poussin. A New Approach, London, 1966
Landrin, – Les curiosites de lafoire, 1775
Lemirre, Elisabeth (ed) – Le Cabinet des fees, Vol 2, Aries, 1988 (1735)
Warner, Marina – From the Beast to the Blonde, London, 1994
Zipes, Jack (trns) – The Complete Tales of the Brothers Grimm, New York, 1992
9: WRETCHED PICKLED VICTIMS
Anon. – The Pretty Women of Paris, Paris, 1883
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth – Sonnets from the Portuguese, (ed) Philip Duschnes, New York, 1950 (1897)
Browning, Robert – The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, London, 1906