“There was a convention held to prove that blonde people were not as dumb as everyone believes them to be. So a man stands up in front of an audience filled with only blonde people. He asks one woman, who is also a blonde, to come and stand with him. And he asks the young woman: ‘What is 3+2?’  She thinks for a bit and then replies, ‘umm… 8?’ And the man says ‘Sorry that’s incorrect’ and the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!’  The man agrees and asks the woman ‘Okay then, what is 1+2?’ Again the young blonde woman thinks and replies, ‘umm…5?’ And the man says ‘Sorry that’s incorrect.’ And the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!’ The man agrees again, ‘Okay, I’ll give her one more chance, but that’s all. Alright Miss, what is 2+2?’ Immediately the blonde woman says, ‘ Oh, Oh I know that one. It’s 4!’ and the man says ‘That’s correct! Congratulations!’ and the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!'”

The informant first heard this joke from her daughter, who was in 7th grade at the time. It was during the era when Dumb Blonde jokes were really popular. She remembers finding the joke really funny when she first heard it. The joke is funny because the stereotype suggests that blonde people and especially blonde women are stupid. In this joke the young woman is unable to answer the first two math questions, supposedly because she is a dumb blonde. But when she finally manages to answer the third and final question correctly, the crowd who is also made up of blondes isn’t aware of the fact that she answered correctly and demands that she be given another chance because they are also “dumb blondes”.

I also believe this to be the reason that people find this joke funny. Blonde women have been historically considered very attractive and beautiful. Someone who was a natural blonde was not very common and their beauty was a rare beauty. However this led to the stereotype that blondes can get by on their good looks and don’t need to be intelligent to get through life. So basically they are all beauty and no brain. People probably like to tell these jokes and encourage the stereotype because it gives them an ego boost. They might feel that if some people are lucky enough to be born beautiful, it’s only fair that they have to trade their intelligence in exchange for their beauty. An average person may not be all that beautiful or all that smart and while they realize that they are not as beautiful as these blondes they can take comfort in knowing that they are at least much smarter than them.