story: Last Natural Born Blonde

Last Natural Born Blonde
by Tamara Wilhite - tamarawilhite@hotmail.com

“I don’t like your latest modeling contract promotion,” Lexus mewled.
“We’re looking for someone who is unique.” Yvonne countered. “That is, by definition, a unique promotion--"
“Can’t you find another undiscovered beauty somewhere?”
“What? A fifth trip to Papua New Guinea to look for a girl who is so backward that she has an outhouse?” Yvonne grimaced. “Or do you want us to sneak into the Muslim territories and find a neglected beauty under a burqa AND smuggle her to the civilized world? Anyone who meets the requirements of this promotion will be unique in the world. And there is far less risk. And no one else has done it before.”
“There are plenty of blondes walking around.”
“And they’re all products of that `enhancement’ available after 2033. You can find blonde Arab girls because their oil prince papas wanted them to be. You can find Asian girls because some doctor paid the parents to make a beauty to sell in Calcutta’s bride market. There are even girls who have European descent who are saying, `I got this blonde hair from my grandma!’ We both know how rare that really ever is. Rumor has it, there aren’t any more.”
Both women glanced at the photo of the blonde black woman posing in the genetic tailoring ads on the nearby wall. “Gentlemen prefer blondes. Make sure your daughter gets the gentleman!” With the rich paying for their kids to be geniuses, tweaking coloring genes to meet an old fashioned standard of beauty was the middle class “upgrade”. “This could be taken as racist. After all, natural blondes were of European descent.”
“With all the hype about how genetically engineering your kids being bad, this `natural blonde’ search dovetails into the `all natural’ movement. And with several generations of mixing, any natural one is as likely to be Asian-Anglo-Hispanic as mostly Anglo.”
“How do you prove someone is a natural, compared to manufactured ones?”
“DNA testing.”
“Isn’t the gene the same?”
“Require DNA samples from the biological parents. If both parents are carriers of the blonde gene, then we can assume the kid is.”
“What if the parents had the procedure? It’s been around for 80 years.”
“Then require that any blonde parent prove they inherited the gene themselves. Find parents who carry the gene for a birth date before the enhancement is available, and you’ve got your last natural blonde.”
“You said it’s rare. What if the last one is past 40?”
“Do the standard touch-up graphics and say we’re not guilty of age discrimination like so many of our competitors. Play off the all-natural angle again.”
“Doesn’t it seem funny that the standards of beauty haven’t changed, even as the population demographics have?” Lexus reluctantly agreed. “OK. Do the model search. Say it’s for the Chi-guna’s latest fashion line. They are begging for something different.”


It took 14 months. There were many entries, though 90% were rejected immediately by DNA profile comparisons of person to parent. It turned out there were plenty of people who actually thought they were blonde whose parents had lied about a pre-conception doctor’s visit. The remaining 10% were weeded out more slowly. Double-checking DNA databases of the deceased added an extra year to the search.
At the 18 month follow-up meeting, Yvonne arrived with a report in hand. Lexus asked. “Did you find the last one?”
“Yeah,” Yvonne replied quietly.
“Why did you have to go through the deceased database?”
“No. Our winner and all of our runners-up’s parents were dead.”
Lexus went stiff. “How old is our winner, then?”
“Our last natural blonde is 69.”
“Didn’t you put in an upper age cutoff on the modeling contract?”
“No. We released the model search with all participants having to meet the natural DNA requirements. We didn’t think to limit it to a maximum age. We though that looking for the last one would inherently mean the youngest one would win.”
“So why isn’t the youngest natural blonde younger?”
“None of the natural ones we found were younger.”
“Look at their kids.”
“Interracial marriage. Or even same race marriage with people with darker hair colors. Engineered blonde grandchildren in many cases, but no younger candidates who met the `natural’ criteria.”
“Are you saying our last natural blonde on the planet is 69?”
“Yeah.”
“If she’s 69, her hair’s white, isn’t it?”
“She dyes it blonde.” Yvonne brushed her own un-dyed blonde hair behind an ear, her light brown skin a harsh contrast to the ultra-pale face in the photo.
“So there are no natural blondes, then. Kill the contest. Say no one won.”
“It’s not really true. We found natural blondes--"
“They carry the genes for it, but they aren’t blonde anymore without hair dye. So there are no more natural blondes. Say no one won and kill the contest.”
“Our winner won per the contract. She gets the Chi-guna modeling contract, per the contract she signed to enter the contest. We never stated you couldn’t have gone naturally gray.”
“You mean we’re going to put an old lady in designer clothes and promote her as the last natural beauty? I can’t do that to Chi-guna. Their clothes are hip and fresh -”
“Can we redesign the clothes to suit an older demographic?” Yvonne grasped.
“The designer won’t redesign their clothes to suit the model. We are supposed to supply the model to suit the clothes.”
“They wanted something new--"
Lexus whipped out her electronic pad. “That model goes up once on the walkway, per contract. Then we say criteria’s met, the woman is paid, and beg the Chi-guna to say that one outfit is their `line’. We put the rest of the outfits under a new label release and put them on a new girl. And you are as much history as your vaunted `last of a kind’ ideas.”