„Кой измисля вицовете за блондинки?“
“Who Creates the Jokes about the Blondes?”

Summary/Abstract: The figure of the blonde is very popular in the international joke repertoire and is also characterized by two basic features – stupidity and promiscuity. This is typical for the joke texts popular in the Bulgarian everyday narration in the 1990s, too. The scholars interpret the jokes about dumb blondes as a result of the increasing entrance of women in the field of certain traditionally “male” spaces – professional work and public realm. Thus the jokes are the reaction both to the problematized male identities and to the radical social and value transformations caused by this new phenomenon. In the course of time the image of the blonde undergoes certain changes: the sexual characteristics fade while stupidity still remains notable. Such developments put the blonde quite close to the classical character of the fool, who has always had a considerably important place in the identification processes at different levels – national, social, ethnic, local, regional, etc. The potential of the character of the blonde is enormous in this respect because it combines two identification markers – the one of the sexual affiliation and the one on the level of the most general cultural belonging. This makes the character universal, commonly understandable and widely accepted in various cultures.

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