The myth

Natural blondes/blonds will be extinct within 200 years, according to research by the World Health Organisation. The last fair-haired human will be born in Finland.

The “truth”

In 2002, major newspapers and broad­cast­ing organ­is­at­ions through­out the Anglo­phone world re­ported that blond people are dying out be­cause blond­ness is carr­ied by “a recess­ive gene,” and be­cause men prefer fake blondes, thus doom­ing the nat­ural sort through nat­ural sel­ect­ion. Some­times this rev­el­at­ion is att­rib­uted to un­named “ex­perts”, and is there­fore palp­ably false; but often, it’s claimed that the study was carr­ied out by the WHO. In 2002, the WHO form­ally denied any know­ledge of the supp­osed study – which hasn’t stopped it being re­ported as news every year or so since. Acc­ord­ing to some fort­ean blogg­ers, news­pap­ers in the USA ran the “ext­inct blonde” story a cent­ury ago. A Penn­syl­vania paper app­ar­ently noted in 1907 that: “In about six hun­dred years the blonde will be a cur­ios­ity. She is to join the horse with five toes and the dodo.”