relative introvert or extremely extrovert, in my experience

brown hair, green-ish eyes, and concerning intro-/extrovert: i think the swiss side of my heritage is dominant on this account, as i am introvert when with strangers, but extrovert when with friends. they say that the swiss are hard to make friends with but once you are friends, you have very good friends. so that would fit.

Well--one fact established---maybe---all shades of introverts and extroverts and everything in between are very willing to discuss hair and eye colour ( I used the British spelling!) Is this unique to PhD students? ( I am in deep work avoidance mode at the moment...)

im blonde, and yes its natural...and unfortunately im an extreme introvert...oh well, sometimes its nice to be a little different ;)

I don't expect it's unique...but people love answering questions about themselves. Hence that other great work-avoidande tactic, the MSN questionaire ("Thin Eater or Fat Eater", "What Kind of Dog Are You", and so forth).

In case you get bored enough:

http://www.gone2thedogs.com/

Click on "Game" on the left edge of the screen.

I'm a bulldog. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

I'm a 'Shiba Inu' apparently... whatever that is...

I am a Shetland Sheepdog! =)

which is actualy very close to the type of furry critters that I have! who are shepherds of another sort. Although one thinks she is actually an art designer ( she did wicked Croc designs on my shoes, my jeans, my handbag!) and the other one thinks he is in charge of a wolfpack, and we all reside in a flat together!

Interesting! I just realize that all PhD students in my area here either have black or dark brown hair

I hesitate to post this---it will be taken all wrong and out of context--so disclaimers, its not meant to be racist ( I am not), its not meant to disparage blonde people--it IS a comment on how society sees people and how that effects what they do.

Back a zillion years ago when I ran track and did sports in high school, there was a theory floating around called the "survival of the ugliest..."

Not a nice name, but the theory was that girls stopped being involved in sports and even in their studies as social pressures mounted on them as they hit puberty and beyond to be "attractive".

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the idea being that the more attractive girls succombed to the social pressures to be "dumb", to not be athletic or assertive, and dropped out of extracurricular sports, and become more focused on what would make them attractive to boys...according to the precepts of the day.

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so that the girls who continued or had high achievements in sports, academics, etc, were NOT the most highly attractive, by their societal standards...e.g., my VERY blonde sister was/is very intelligent but made so-so marks in high school, astounding everyone with her university entrance marks in the highest percentages...she said she felt that if she was seen as smart, no one would like her and so she felt pressure to dumb herself down...

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having brown hair, I did not have to cope with a stereotype regarding blonde females, and so continued with my sports and my academics without apology or the need to demonstrate less ability than I had. On the contrary!

But..given, social stereotypes on women and achievement, attractiveness, and so forth, could it be that blonde females receive different messages about what they should do/what is social acceptable/desirable, and detour from the road of academic pursuit?

Mind, I realize that these are all very broad generalizations, but wonder at the social pressures on people to achieve or not achieve academically, and whether that impacts their likely route to PhD study.

Hmm so where do brunette women who dye their hair blonde fit into that theory I wonder?

I don't know if there are the same pressures here (Ireland) so much because we don't have that 'cheerleaders & jocks vs. nerds' divide that seems to exist in American high schools... by the way sorry if I am wrong about that, maybe just I've watched High School Musical and Grease one too many times

I heard an interview recently with a woman who wrote a book about something similar - just had a look and I think this is it... 'Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!) by Carol Platt Liebau'

All most interesting...but I still think there are more brunettes in academia simply because there are more brunettes in existence.

Do you really think the idea of the blonde as automatically more attractive still holds? I've rarely met a man who had a preference.

But I agree that girls are encouraged to be physically attractive above all else. I was reading Jane Austen recently (for the first time) and it was very noticable how the girls were defined by their good character, or self-control, or accomplishments. It's all about tits these days, isn't it?