Brunettes bag the billionaires, blondes get the barmen

It's official, if you're a brunette like Carla Bruni, you're more likely to marry a successful man than your blonde counterparts. Experts at LOVE@LYCOS the dating channel of Lycos.co.uk analysed the WAG's hair colour of the world's top 100 billionaires to determine if there is a predominant hair colour wealthy men seen to go for. The majority by a long way were brunettes, with 62% of billionaires marrying women with brown hair.

The results went on to show that fair haired ladies come in a poor second with only 22% of the world's top billionaires marrying blondes. Women with black hair lag behind in third place, enticing on 16% of the world's wealthiest, whilst carrot-tops come in last.

BRUNETTES MARRIED TO THE WORLD'S MOST SUCCESSFUL MEN

CARLA BRUNI                   WIFE OF FRENCH PRESIDENT

DARIA ZHUKOVA              GIRLFRIEND OF ABRAMOVICH

SARAH LARSON               GIRLFRIEND OF GEORGE CLOONEY

CATHERINE ZETA              MARRIED TO MICHAEL DOUGLAS

ANGELINA JOLIE               GIRLFRIEND OF BRAD PITT

So with wealthy men showing such a considerable preference for brunettes, it will be interesting to chart the number of women requesting a change of colour at their local hairdresser! (by Sara Hassan)

Comments

[Sally]

Do a ratio statisic of women and you'll find very few sport their own hair colour anyway. It's all out of a bottle.

[Cha]

oh man, people really don't need to be taking this seriously, haha. it's just a light-hearted article, it's not as though it's a scientifically proven fact.

if you want to get mad at something, get mad at the state of world we live in, not hair colour.

cheers

[Karl Chads]

It doesn’t mention the two brunettes who are currently most famous for their style: Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria. The article is not a fantastic analysis, but I guess it’s tongue-in-cheek.

[Alan]

If I aspire to becoming a billionaire should I marry a brunette? If I marry a blonde does this condemn me to becoming (and remaining?) a barman?

And which is the more honourable trade or profession?

In my experience time takes care of all of this. Both my ex-wives now have white hair. I have none.

[Emerald]

Get over yourselves!

Is this the only thing you can think of to write about? Women with a certain hair colour getting richer men?

[Stefania Sardo]

i just think the plain thruth is that brunettes look more exotic and sexier, whereas natural blondes usually look insipid and colourless and fake blondes look tacky.
the fact that blondes are a minority depeds on the country your in, in england or holland for instance there are far more blondes than brunettes...

[Jo]

I'm a brunette, but I have blonde streaks- so I'll end up with a billionaire barman then ? AAAH!!!Does that mean I'm gonna marry Peter Stringfellow ???

[vee]

though there are natural blondes are a minority, blonde hair is NOT rare because you have to take into account many women dye their hair blonde. if the study didn't take this into account than the study is flawed and there' no point in commenting on it. also, i don't see the point in arguing about how men love blonde hair because it is rare seeing that so many women dye their hair blonde nowadays. Blonde hair (unnatural) is not rare. Men prefer blondes (this was in a sociology paper) b/c blonde hair evokes a sense of youth which is more attractive to men. i personally love brunette hair (it's very sophisticated- most of the guys i know love brunettes too) and red hair (especially when it's a darker red). black hair is very pretty too. anyway i think it'd be interesting to study why this might be true

[KC]

I find it rather amusing that many women find this article insulting. I belive this just to be a bit of light hearted humour and not to be taken seriously. Does it matter who has the more dominant hair colour?....No! and this comes from a responsible teenager

[alex]

In Italy the saying goes: Men prefer blondes but marry brunettes, this is because in Italy, where the majority of women are brunettes, blondes represent the 'unusual' or the 'forbidden fruit', the 'sexual vixen' whereas brunettes are the ones that will bear children, cook and wash dirty pants....... Ridiculous in whatever Country.

[Sarah]

Black of hair, black of soul...

[Eric]

george clooney is a billionaire? thats news to me

[Anna]

its a gift of nature to have long blond hair...stop being jealous at us!

[X]

How disappointing that The Times printed such a non-article, and even worse that it seems to have been written by a woman.

The superficial nature of this article only serves to feed into the notion that a woman can attract a man by looks alone and a man can attract a woman by simply flashing his wallet. This idea insults both men and women.

I should also point out that Angelina Jolie was considerably wealthy by most peoples' standards before Brad Pitt entered the picture. Obviously this is because she is a brunette.

I won't even begin to comment on the highly unscientific nature of the research conducted, as I think others have been doing quite good job of that.

Slow day for news was it?

[Sophie Warner]

It has always been my greatest ambition to marry a rich man. So good job I have dark hair - otherwise I'd have to fork out for some hair dye! Phew.

I find it insulting that it this was a subject deemed worthy of print.

[Valerie]

This article reveals no truth, and this type of propaganda should never be published in the Times. The people who conducted this study have very weak validity since they couldn't even indicate that the population has more brunettes than blondes to begin with. The population sample is distorted among the "world's richest." Since most of the general population is brunette then there is a HIGH probability that a billonaire is going to end up with a brunette simply because there are more of them.

I've always been more fond of blondes because brown is such a common color.......

Its so irrelevant to base your likeness for someone on their hair color

[marc de berner]

YUM YUM to all the beautifull women blonde, brunette, red or grey

[marc de berner]

YUM YUM to all the beautifull women blonde, brunette, red or grey

[Hellen]

So, "only" 22% of the milionaires marry blondes. But among the general population blondes are ~5%. Therefore, the blondes are OVERrepresented among the milionaires' wifes!

[Steph]

Susan in Paris - So everyone that colours their hair blonde is a bimbo??? Sounds like jealousy creeping in here....

And Emmanuel - "in my experience women from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to keep their natural colour" - what utter, utter tosh!

I am both very educated, wealthy and colour my hair... reading these comments has seriously made me worry about the general intelligence of readers of the Times....

[Andre]

Blondies are beautiful, and normally they come from a socially higher class and do not need to marry a rich one to climb...

[Andre]

Blondies are sooo much beautiful.
Black and brunette is boring...you see it everywhere

[eric]

Blondes are best.
Much more beautiful than the rest.
But this makes people jealous.
Thats why they spend so much time over this issue.

[PJ]

It would be astonishing if most of the world's richest men married redheads simply because there are relatively few redheads to marry.

This article tells us nothing unless we are also told the relevant proportions of various hair colours in the population.

[dongiovanni]

Really STUPID conclusions and insulting for some groups (red-haired).
1. if there are 9 rabbits and 1 duck in a hunting field, and i hunt all of them, the illuminated conclusion of a similar article would be 'he prefers rabbits rather than ducks'.Marriage patterns will follow population distribution, and not taking this into account is not serious, maybe dumb?
2.Also, Carrot-tops is not a very pleasant adjective (my girl-friend is red-haired and very pretty but was bullied when little girl).

My 2 cents, cheers

[Steve Smith]

Are they counting brunettes who dyed their hair blonde, like Madonna and Princess Di, as blondes or brunettes in that study>

[James Wilson]

Blondes are too busy flipping their hair to notice a good man while they are looking for MR. HOTTIE. Mr. Hottie can't afford their shoe bill but they look good as a couple even if she is paying the bills. LOL

[Simon]

Im Ginger and proud of it so nice to be able to stand out in the crowd. As a child I found Carrot top, Duracell and all the others really amusing but my favourite is why ginger kids always seem to smell of piss and twiglets.

[Charlie]

For a significant part of my early life my hair had been very light blonde and darkened to an unattractive mousy colour therefore I chose to go back to blonde instead of dying it brown, a colour I had never been - simple. Why is is so wrong to be blonde? The fact is there are more brunettes in the world and had there been a large percentage of blonde wives they would have been accused of being money grabbing and the men would have been accused of being trophy-hunters. I personally couldn't care less what colour a man's hair is so one has to ask how shallow some men are that hair colour takes priority over personality and worth?

[bushra]

sarah larson hasn't married george clooney. yet.

[Eduardo Lima]

That's why blondes are colouring their hair with dark tones. They call it artificial intelligence.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

CJ, Lisa, Johanna and Paul make a good point. There are far more brunettes than blondes in the world which makes one wonder about the conclusions being drawn.

One must also take into account a few facts:

1, This survey is based on the *world's* richest people, not Britain's: there is a higher number of natural blondes and a much higher number of bleached blondes in Britain than in most countries (with a few obvious exceptions). Even taking into account bleached blondes 22% is not very low for the countries in which billionaires are likely to reside.

2, Rich men usually marry women who are quite wealthy themselves; in my experience women from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to keep their natural colour.

3, Not everyone agrees on what counts as blonde. What one person calls dark blonde another might call light brown. Marilyn Monroe seemed only to regard platinum blonde as blonde, and this narrow definition is quite common in the UK, especially when people are using blonde as a noun rather than an adjective.

With these things in mind, the number of blonde women married to rich men actually seems quite high, unless they are using a very broad definition. But perhaps I am taking this too seriously ;)

Oh, and CJ, you need not worry about redheads dying out; that is a myth based on a misunderstanding of genetics. The red hair gene is recessive but people will still be born with red hair if both of their parents pass on the gene, even if both parents are blond(e) or dark themselves. We may see it becoming less frequent as greater movement reduces the density of red-hair gene carriers in the areas were they are most common and so the chances of two carries having children together, but it will not disappear as long as redheads are not prevented from passing on their genes.

[Shinykatie]

The Love@Lycos PRs are rubbing their hands in glee at getting the Times to run a piece on this "research".

Not that I want to join in with the haterz (god knows, I know how it feels to get a heap of mean comments on Dollymix), but this is a pretty lame post.

[Greg]

Woman are beautiful and the colour of their hair is a spectular gift of nature that provides a splendid variety of female beauty.

By the way, I have seen many red haired woman that were so beautiful that they took my breath away.

The article is IMCOMPREHENSIBLY STUPID.

Come on, catch a wake up please.

[DCP]

You would be correct - natural blondes are not as commonly found as brunettes but let's face it, most blondes aren't natural so that blows this point right out of the water. Most women dye their hair yellow and I will never understand why.

[Tim]

Richard: Being rich doesn't give you the qualification of a$$hole, but being an a$$hole sometimes gets you the qualification of being rich. Anyway, Alan's comment was a good one: since when is the degree of fun you have measured by how rich your husband is? Has the Times gone shallow? I would cancel my subscription, except that this site is, perhaps unsruprisingly, free...

[Richard]

alan: "Why is marrying a rich a$$hole having more fun?"

Why does being rich immediately qualify you as an asshole?

[Richard]

alan: "Why is marrying a rich a$$hole having more fun?"

Why does being rich immediately qualify you as an asshole?

[CJ]

Given the fact that the ratio of brunettes to blondes is not taken into account, the article seems a little unfair on the less dominate hair colours within society. Additionally, the reference to red-heads as "carrot-tops" is more than a little offensive and something often associated with playground teasing/bullying - true redheads, or those with ginger hair are a dying race and do not deserve to be classified by such demining terms.
Whatever happened to being Politically Correct? It seems a little racist to me, discriminating a person’s suitability to marry “wealthier “men based on their hair colour (surely hair colour is NOT the MAIN factor), not to mention the label “carrot-tops” to distinguish redheads.

[Rebecca]

I'm a blonde naturally and I am not even a little bit proverbially "blonde". I think blonde is a less common hair colour (naturally) - correct me if I'm wrong? Also, I don't straighten my hair within an inch of it's life, I'm not a skinny minnie, and I think if we're being ridiculously politically correct - isn't this racism? hmm...

[Lisa]

Stupid article - blondes are a minority genetic colouring and brunettes the overwhelming majority so OBVIOUSLY the majority of wealthy men will marry brunettes.

The real story is that 22% marry blondes as that may well be a higher percentage than the population group.

[Angela]

Am astonished that redheads are referred to as "Carrot-Tops" (would have expected more from The Times...perhaps the writer should write for The Sun?), and agree with the comment that it is not proportionate! What a load of...

[Colin]

This article astonishingly suggests that some successful men have beautiful brunette women partners, not just beautiful blondes as previously suspected.

So it's not the colour that's the important adjective then, is it?

[Adrian]

Never understood that blonde straightened hair thing, tacky unimaginative and now even conservative. Blondes are blonde all-over - not a nice look. Give me a healthy tanned curly haired brunette or black haired woman over a blonde anytime. I do appreciate and have been with all types of women, just the mixed race look is the head turner for me.

[susan in paris]

Gentlemen prefer blondes, and real gentlemen prefer real blondes (very few and far between in today's peroxide bimbo world).

[alan]

Why is marrying a rich a$$hole having more fun?

[Eugene]

Sex should be something shadowy. Blondes have all this gaudy light about them.

[domingo]

Brunettes rock !
I love them ,so much sexier than blondes,married a mousy blonde first,married a stunning brunette second & now the current love interest is ,guess what a Brunette!
The Carla Sarkozy look get me every time ,tall slim ,cheekbones to die for & brunette,yummy

[Johanna]

Stupid article because it makes no mention of relative population sizes of brunettes, blondes etc. Duh.

[greenbreder]

I LOVE SEX
I LOVE SEX
I LOVE SEX

[Paul]

It seems to me that the dating trends simply follow the proportions of hair colour population, which isn't really suprising!

[Colleen Bryant]

Gentlemen prefer blondes; but gentlemen marry brunettes.