No, blond jokes are not funny.

Anyone remember this joke?

There were two sisters who wanted to buy a bull. They had $500 to spend on it, so money was tight. They spent a long time looking, and finally found a bull who seemed to fit their specifications for $499. They wanted to be sure before purchasing, so one of the sisters went to check out the bull. She looked him over, talked to the previous owner, and decided it was worth the price. Now she just had to tell her sister to bring the trailer to pick it up. Unfortunately, after paying for the bull she only had $1 left, and telegram rates were high: $1 per word. (This was back in the time before cell phones, natch.) What was she to do? She agonized over it for a while, and finally came to a solution: she told the telegraph operator to wire her sister the word "comfortable."

"Comfortable?" he repeated, quizzically.

"My sister's blonde," she explained. "She'll read it very slowly."

Or how about this one:

A blonde woman is looking for a job. She finds employment in road repair, and her first assignment is to paint lines on the road (by hand... I don't know why). Her employer sends her out to the road with a bucket of paint and a brush and tells her that she needs to paint two miles of lines a day to keep up quota. The first day she paints four miles of lines, and he's impressed. The second day she only does two; it's good enough, but he's concerned. The third day she only does one. Her employer notices her steady decrease and asks her what the problem is.

Her answer: "The bucket keeps getting farther and farther away!"

Yes, ladies and gentlemen and various non-gendered persons, not only are blondes slow readers, but they are so lacking in common sense that it never occurs to them to pick up the bucket and bring it along.

There are hundreds of these jokes floating them around. Some of them have "a blonde, a redhead, and a green-haired girl," and the blonde is the punchline. Others dispense of the supporting cast and just go straight to insulting the fair-haired. Meanwhile, as a blond-haired person, I am told by the people who tell these jokes that I do not have the right to be insulted because "nobody believes this stuff" and "I didn't mean any insult."

NEWSFLASH, GUYS: Nobody else got the memo.

Film studio executives and writers are patently unaware that being blonde does not make you less intelligent. This is why we have productions like "Legally Blonde" and "Lizzie McGuire" - shows that play on the idea of blondes being stupid (Legally Blonde, at least, was a subversive effort) or just plays them as shallow, clothing/boys/drama-obsessed, and/or generally worthless. (See also: The Vampire Diaries, especially the book series.) The stereotype isn't limited to the female sex: blond men are often portrayed as very physical men, lacking in the brains department.

Of course, "dumb blonde" isn't the only stereotype out there - for variety's sake, you can witness the "popular blonde," who may or may not be low of intelligence but is almost certainly gorgeous, earning the jealousy of the brown-haired protagonist and the attention of many, many mens. (And make no mistake: the Popular Blonde is almost always a supporting character, typically used as a foil for the less adored, brunette "everygirl.") This character features in such productions as Lizzie McGuire (again - the ditzy blonde protagonist gets a bitchy blonde foil), The Princess Diaries (Lana and Josh), Huge (Amber), Animorphs (Rachel - a rare leading role), Danny Phantom (Dash), and High School Musical (Sharpay). (Another classic example: Rocky.) If a potential love interest comes into the picture - say, Nate Cooper (The Hottie & the Nottie), Scott Howard (Teen Wolf), Troy Bolton, or Stefan Salvatore - then the Popular Blonde is the protagonist's competition, and the love interest must learn to look past her superficiality (make no mistake, blonde is nothing but) and choose the "plain" brunette. (Except for Troy Bolton, who must blow her off repeatedly because Gabriella kicks ass.) On the other hand, if the protagonist is male, he may just be required to date her - her blonde self is a prize for the triumphant man to obtain (She's Out Of My League).

(This does no favors to brunettes, either. The beauty of a brown-haired woman is almost always presumed to be "inner", or based in her facial features - brown on its own cannot be beautiful.)

A subset of the Popular Blonde is the Bitchy Blonde, who is not only fawned over by everyone, but is so self-centered that she cannot stand not to be fawned over by everyone - or, at the least, cannot stand to see someone else get positive attention. Twilight features Lauren and Rosalie, both of whom exist largely to be jealous of Bella; Dash, Lana, Josh, and Sharpay also make a comeback. Stacy Hansen of the Girl Talk series is a classic example, and she's joined by Casey Cartwright (Greek), Johann (The Hottie & the Nottie - it has a male version too!), Sally Peep (The 10th Kingdom), and Caroline (Everybody's Doing It). It's A Boy/Girl Thing has Woody and his girlfriend Breanna (though it does feature one subversion). Kyle (Beastly) is a unique example - a Bitchy Blonde in the protagonist role, who is cursed by another Bitchy Blonde for being shallow.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the Wholesome Blonde. You already know her; you probably grew up on her movies. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel. The fair maiden with flaxen hair who has been horribly imprisoned by an evil wizard, whom the hero must rescue so he can put her shining tresses on display for all to see. And here is the insanity - while blonde hair is degraded for its supposed association with low intelligence and poor attitude, it is simultaneously prized for its allegedly singular beauty. It seems that a blonde woman is a wonderful thing for a man to have, but a very poor thing to be.

Not every blonde character falls prey to these stereotypes. Non-comedy settings with adult characters usually dodge them altogether. It is also true that these character types are occasionally used for brunette characters. However, brown hair is not used to emphasize their character traits the way blonde hair is. No one talks about a "dumb brunette." Brown hair does not shimmer dramatically in loving close-ups. Story writers do not make special note of an annoying character's brown hair.

These stereotypes didn't pop out of nowhere. And that's what leads me back to the blonde jokes. People crack them all the time, thinking they're harmless. Someone else hears them and has it reinforced in xir head that blonde people are a certain way. They get on board a movie, and produce these stereotypical characters of fair hair. People watch the movie, and when they walk away they remember more than the movie - they remember a well-written brunette character (if there is one) playing off against a badly-written caricature of a blonde character, and so they come to believe that brunettes are deeper, smarter, nicer, more complex, or more interesting. And that it's all right to make blonde jokes because "nobody believes them anyway."