Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos.

In “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, Anita Loos used the vapidity of her main female character Lorelei Lee as a satirical reflection of the shallowness of the men which surround her. Specifically, Lorelei is portrayed as being superficially fixated on material wealth, but the men who covet her are represented as being equally superficial in their interest in her physical beauty. In a broader sense, Loos used the background of upper-class America in the Jazz Age as an object of ridicule itself.

Lorelei is a masterful social climber in this world, and while she is not a “bad” or immoral character, the abilities she utilises to successfully manipulate those around her are amoral and shallow. She makes frequent spelling mistakes and uses punctuation badly. She is easily swayed by flattery into overestimating herself – note the March 16^th entry, when the “gentleman” she is with tells Lorelei that she could write a book of her thoughts, which she secretly believes would in fact create an entire series of “encyclopediacs”. Her vanity and vapidity are no handicap to her in the world which she inhabits – they are almost beneficial. While Lorelei is shown, from time to time, to exhibit a sort of stagnant natural intelligence, she rarely needs to. Common sense and humility were commodities assigned little merit in her social circles. Her friend Dorothy plays the sort of devil’s advocate to Lorelei’s shallowness – her intelligence and cynicism directly posing the sort of questions about the bourgeoisie unlikely to be asked by the bourgeoisie themselves. It is worth noting that while Dorothy does not attract as many potential suitors as Lorelei, those she DOES attract tend to be of better calibre.

Lorelei is an intentionally humorous character. She is portrayed as likable, but ridiculous. As she is the narrator of the novel, the reader is privy to her private thoughts. It is never a mystery to the reader that she is completely silly. She’s not someone to be dissected, revealed and analysed – she’s a caricature. Her function is to mirror the follies of those around her. The men in the book fall all over themselves to win her affections despite it being obvious to the reader that she’s a vapid moron. As she looks at her potential suitors and really sees only their material wealth and social standing, they look at her and see only her physical assets (the novel was reportedly inspired by Loos wondering why her friend H.L. Mencken was so interested in a particular blonde woman). The values which the members of both sexes search for in the other are equally superficial, and as such both are portrayed as ridiculous. They are also oblivious to the crass and hamfisted courting techniques of the members of the opposite sex, which are all painfully transparent to the reader. While Lorelei is certainly somewhat clueless, even she displays a certain kind of world-weary cynicism toward romance at times. For example, the famed sentiment of “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” seems to portray a mistrust of the fickleness of men and the vagaries of their affections.

Modernism was concerned with the abandonment of traditional values, which the movement claimed had been rendered meaningless in light of historical developments (particularly the Great War). Gentlemen Prefer Blondes continues this trend by satirising the traditional aims of marriage and financial security. Lorelei is from “the sticks”, but she moves to the big city in search of social prestige. Flying in the face of traditional gender roles, she proceeds to have a series of (presumably) torrid interactions with a string of hapless men. Lorelei is empowered only by her sex appeal, which turns otherwise relatively sensible men into jabbering fools, and her unshakable self-confidence. While the strong literary heroine was of course not unheard of when Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was written, Lorelei differs greatly from, for example, one of Jane Austen’s heroines. While there is a common theme of flouting societal expectations for “correct” womanly behaviour, Austen’s heroines are intelligent and strong-willed, subversive even. Lorelei is a brainless leading lady for a brainless age. Rather than resisting marriage and conformity for the sake of independence and intellectual cultivation, she is principally interested in diamonds, champagne and her elaborately constructed self-image. Her more or less unqualified success story is a critique of the vapidity of the modern era.

- Connor Moloney