Noticing that the feminine form gets applied to males I tag with blond_hair. Could we alias both blonde_hair and blond_hair (and variants) to fair_hair to get rid of the confusing gender-specificity?

Current variants: blond, blond_hair, blonde, blonde-hair, blondehair, long_blond_hair, short_blond_hair, and whatever else the search turns up.

Agreed.

Oh wait, holy fuckshit I just agreed with an alias post.

how about... all of those -> Blonde_hair

fair hair is just kind of dumb sounding to me.

also, WTF, why do we have 400 something long_blonde_hairposts and nearly 100 short_blonde_hair posts?

"Blond" and "blonde", with its continued gender-varied usage, is one of few adjectives in written English to retain separate masculine and feminine grammatical genders. Each of the two forms, however, is pronounced the same way.
­— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde[/quote]

That's why. E621 tends to discourage gender-specific terminology which is why there are aliases for "vixen", "lioness" and similar. So we can't do "blond" or "blonde" - and we don't: they both go to blonde_hair (wrongly IMO).

• "a blonde person" is always a woman (conversely, "a blond person" is typically a man)
• "blonds" is the plural for fair-haired persons of either sex

But OK:

• For *hair* it doesn't matter, there's no grammatical gender for hair in English and either "blonde hair" or "blond hair" makes sense when you read it.
• That said, the AP stylebook says “Use blond as a noun for males and as an adjective for all applications: She has blond hair. Use blonde as a noun for females.” [1]
• Fowler points out that usage isn't absolute, and the usage varies between countries and isn't consistent within those countries, even when describing persons
• Supposedly, and it depends who you ask, either one or the other is sexist (PROTIP: they both are, and language sucks)

Using "fair_hair" would avoid the mess completely. Admittedly, so do "golden_hair", or "yellow_hair". "Fair", for complexion or hair, is still perfectly standard English, and can be used for hair freely.

Failing consensus on that, I think we should standardise on blond_hair. But that's just me (and the AP) and YMMV.

We have an alias for "brunette" -> "brown_hair" which doesn't try to shove in "female" at the same time. Suggest we follow that pattern because not everyone uses the terms in the same way.

Also, I blame the French for getting us into this mess in the first place.

Anomynous said:
Also, I blame the French for getting us into this mess in the first place.

I think I agree with all of this... but I would 'prefer' blonde_hair, because the e looks 'right' at the end, and I think most often, it will be being used to refer to a female character, I suspect.

though, cool. I didn't know all that about blonde/blond, so, I learned something! :D This website is educational!

Anomynous said:
Also, I blame the French for getting us into this mess in the first place.

Tsss.

To be fair, i had never heard the word "fair" used that way, making me wonder if it's really common.
But hey, it's your language.

It's an obscure term that nobody would ever think to search for.

No.

asdfzxc said:
It's an obscure term that nobody would ever think to search for.

No.

You'll be able to search on "blond" or "blonde" or any of the left side tags.

Kald said:
Tsss.

To be fair, i had never heard the word "fair" used that way, making me wonder if it's really common.
But hey, it's your language.

It is used relatively commonly, but it's generally "You have fair skin and hair so you need to use sunscreen" or "she was a fair lass with a brilliant smile" rather then "Check out the fucking tits on that fair-haired chick over there!"

Fair is a very gentle term and is used in a slightly poetic manner, generally. It also has a slightly 'historical' feel to it, IMO. Blonde/Blond is the MUCH better term to use here.

Besides.. we have dark blondes, dirty blondes, dishwater blondes, etc... but I've never heard of a dirty fair or anything.

fair covers everything that you otherwise name a shade of blonde. Think of it as a catch-all.

123easy said:
fair covers everything that you otherwise name a shade of blonde. Think of it as a catch-all.

So is blonde.

blonde though, immediately brings to mind generic blonde- not dirty blonde, strawberry blonde, platinum blonde, etc. Fair-haired doesn't give an absolute distinguishing feature beyond "fair", as in light-coloured. Thus it is truly a more reasonable tag catch-all than blonde.

123easy said:
blonde though, immediately brings to mind generic blonde- not dirty blonde, strawberry blonde, platinum blonde, etc. Fair-haired doesn't give an absolute distinguishing feature beyond "fair", as in light-coloured. Thus it is truly a more reasonable tag catch-all than blonde.

But "Fair_hair" isn't what a newcomer would think to type into the search box. >_>

123easy, what you say is true IF fair_hair was more commonly used in our language. I think most people will understand it but they'll have to think about about it... they might think 'county fair,' 'renaissance fair,' 'oh fair juliet,' before they think 'light hair' ... admittedly, this is putting things a little more into context with the fair_hair...

but, damn, everyone understands blonde.

To use your quote, "oh fair Juliet" is that exactly BECAUSE of her hair. :P Honestly, if all forms of blonde got brought under fair_hair, then if someone searched for blonde or blond or whatever saw that all images that had blonde also had fair hair, then looked at brown_hair, red_hair, blue_hair and black_hair and the rest; they should get that it's the catchall. Wikify it, too. Just because you want to assume that the average new user won't know (This is true if only because people these days are devolving mentally, IMO) doesn't mean that the correct terminology shouldn't be used.

123easy said:
To use your quote, "oh fair Juliet" is that exactly BECAUSE of her hair. :P

Actually no. Most depictions of juliet I've seen show her as a brunette. 'Fair' can also mean 'pleasing to the eye/mind' ('fair juliet') Or otherwise 'superficially pleasing,' or 'clean and pure', or 'not stormy' (Fair weather)... ample ('a fair estate', or impatial and honest ("a fair person')

Merriam webster (which is where google randomly took me) has 11 different definitions for fair... and 'not dark' is number 9 on the list.

admittedly, most wouldn't be immediatly applies to hair, but the fact remains.

Honestly, if all forms of blonde got brought under fair_hair, then if someone searched for blonde or blond or whatever saw that all images that had blonde also had fair hair, then looked at brown_hair, red_hair, blue_hair and black_hair and the rest; they should get that it's the catchall. Wikify it, too. Just because you want to assume that the average new user won't know (This is true if only because people these days are devolving mentally, IMO) doesn't mean that the correct terminology shouldn't be used.

But, here's what I want to know. Why is 'fair' more correct then 'blond(e)'?

We don't--shouldn't--have multiple tags for blond(e). We don't need a catchall any more vague or specific then 'blond(e).

and yes, people these days ARE devolving mentally, but aside from that, not everyone is an english speaker. And fair isn't more right then blond(e) is. Blond(e) offers no confusion, while fair might. Blonde refers very specifically to one thing (the color. most often hair, but occasionally other things, like blond wood) and is totally unambiguous while fair could be any number of things.

If we used fair_hair as a tag, it would only be a matter of time before someone thinks it means 'pretty hair" and tags redheads and bruenettes and so forth with it.

blonde_hair (or even yellow_hair) is just fine, flat-tagging is inherently a flawed system, trying to achieve perfection just makes it more cumbersome, which nullifies the main (only?) benefit: simplicity.