How Legal­ly Blonde became an unlike­ly fem­i­nist classic

In 1966 Dol­ly Par­ton released ​‘Dumb Blonde’, an infec­tious pop song that has since become an anthem for a hair colour wrong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with low intel­lect. Like Dol­ly, Robert Luketic’s 2001 film Legal­ly Blonde, star­ring Reese With­er­spoon as soror­i­ty-girl-turned-law-stu­dent Elle Woods, has res­onat­ed with view­ers for its strong fem­i­nist mes­sage: you don’t have to change who you are to be suc­cess­ful in this world.

Despite hav­ing to con­tend with Har­vard Law School, her heart­less ex boyfriend, and his snot­ty new fiancée, Elle’s great­est fight is against her hair colour. The ori­gins of the ​‘dumb blonde’ stereo­type are unknown but many his­to­ri­ans believe that the first offi­cial­ly record­ed dumb blonde dates all the way back to 1775. A Parisian cour­te­san named Ros­alie Duthé inspired a satir­i­cal play called ​‘Les Curiosités de la Foire’, as she had a rep­u­ta­tion for paus­ing for extend­ed peri­ods before speak­ing, thus wrong­ly attribut­ing stu­pid­i­ty to the star­let and sub­se­quent gold­en-haired beauties.

Cin­e­ma long has been plagued by the dumb blonde stereo­type, ever since Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe leapt off the screen in 1953’s Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes with Jane Rus­sell, the smart and capa­ble brunette, at her side. Women are con­tin­u­al­ly maligned and under­es­ti­mat­ed sim­ply for the colour of their hair, and this is where Elle Woods finds her­self. A few shades dark­er and Legal­ly Blonde would be an entire­ly dif­fer­ent movie.

One glance at the film’s poster – with Elle’s gleam­ing strands and hot pink dress tak­ing cen­tre stage as her fel­low stu­dents look on aghast behind her – and it’s easy to see why there were ini­tial mis­con­cep­tions around its intend­ed mes­sage. Elle is intro­duced through a haze of make­up, design­er fash­ion and Cos­mo mag­a­zines in a world where the ​‘strong woman’ stereo­type has gripped the media and innate fem­i­nin­i­ty is deemed a weakness.

The very first shot of the film sees Elle gen­tly brush­ing her hair. How­ev­er, a din­ner date with her soon-to-be-ex Warn­er (Matthew Davis) leaves Elle cry­ing on her way home – her hair paint­ed as the vil­lain of the piece, some­thing she can’t shake off. In his pur­suit of becom­ing a sen­a­tor, Warn­er ditch­es Elle to find him­self a ​“Jack­ie, not a Mar­i­lyn”. Elle’s hair is pre­sent­ed as an obsta­cle, not an asset. This is nev­er more appar­ent than upon her arrival at Har­vard. With her chi­huahua Bruis­er in tow, Elle sticks out like a sore thumb and, through­out her time there, her pro­fes­sors and fel­low stu­dents pun­ish her for it.

Elle’s not-so-fem­i­nist moti­va­tion for attend­ing law school is so that she can become the ​“seri­ous” woman Warn­er has always want­ed. It’s here the film’s mes­sage is revealed. Elle is per­se­cut­ed because of the way she looks, but rather than let­ting it define or defeat her, she instead grad­u­al­ly begins to thrive at Har­vard after being told she is ​“not good enough” one too many times.

Elle revers­es the dumb blonde stereo­type by throw­ing her­self into her stud­ies, dis­cov­er­ing her true worth amounts to more than her super­fi­cial beau­ty. Her deter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed in this hos­tile, male-dom­i­nat­ed set­ting even­tu­al­ly over­shad­ows her desire to win back her man. Notably for a film released in the ear­ly 2000s – a time when phys­i­cal and behav­iour­al makeovers were par­tic­u­lar­ly preva­lent in pop­u­lar cul­ture – Elle nev­er sac­ri­fices her iden­ti­ty or her sig­na­ture blonde locks.

This era’s obses­sion with strong female char­ac­ters has nar­rowed the path for the girly girls who do not pos­sess nec­es­sar­i­ly mas­cu­line traits. Elle’s strength is derived from the things she loves and the heart­felt way she cares about peo­ple as a whole. Witherspoon’s per­for­mance, with all its infec­tious charm and beam­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty, defies the shal­low, vapid blonde trope, giv­ing us a new kind of female pro­tag­o­nist to root for.

It’s telling that when Elle defends mur­der sus­pect Brooke Wind­ham (Ali Larter) towards the end of the film, she reen­ters the court­room head-to-toe in hot pink. Inspir­ing a gen­er­a­tion of young girls, she dis­pels the idea that a woman can only be per­ceived as smart and strong if they reject out­right fem­i­nin­i­ty and embrace more mas­cu­line qual­i­ties. Her fierce deter­mi­na­tion is the dri­ving force of Legal­ly Blonde, and the film’s endur­ing lega­cy is a direct result of that. Twen­ty years on, one thing remains clear – Elle Woods is an icon for the ages.