The girl with the curls is the real vampire. I found that out when I was in the chorus. It was the blond cutie that did all the damage to the front row.
—Nita Naldi (dark-haired actress typecast as a villainess)
These are blondes from societies where the hair color occurs naturally. The characterization differs when the blond hair is a clue that the character is an evil foreigner.
This hair color can bedyed and often is. In theCity Mouse, this is part of the luxuries of the city. For theFemme Fatale orThe Vamp, it is a calculated part of her scheming. And it can, for any evil blonde, be a symbol of her deception or her lack of simplicity. Indeed, this may drive this trope's interchange withHair of Gold, a deeplyCyclic Trope.
When blondes are natural, blondness does correlate with youth (and, presumably,innocence) and so is attractive. Women therefore dye their hair blond. But after a critical mass of blondes have dyed hair, it no longer correlates with youth. And it certainly doesn't correlate with innocence; the honest brunette who does not dye her hair, perhaps because she is not scheming to get a man, appears more innocent. Therefore, blond hair dye falls out of fashion and then blondes are once again mostly natural blondes and so the correlation reoccurs—restarting the cycle.
All inversions belong inHair of Gold. CompareBlondes Are Witches (showcasing the prevalence of giving magical women blonde hair)
Hagall, the first deputy of Hild inAh! My Goddess, has platinum blond hair (making her the second blond character in the series and, arguably, the first evil one).
And the seriesplays with this and evil foreigner tropes with nearly every (non-dumb) blonde character, probably starting with blonde Ayaka's first appearance in class as the other girls (jokingly) comment that she's clearly aAlpha Bitch trying to curry favor in "thehalf-breed way".
Although the exact level of "evil"varies, the Contractors inDarker than Black are disproportionately blond. While most of those seen aremale, there's also Brita and Amber, assuming the latter's hair isn't actuallylight green.
Balalaika ofBlack Lagoon is a ruthlessMafiya leader who, while quiteaffable and protective of her associates, has no real moral standards or mercy toward anyone else.
Medusa fromSoul Eater. Or at least originally (she started out blonde, she's consistently evil).
Two blond(e)s on Shibusen's side, too, notable because one (Marie) is nice, while the other (Justin) falls further under theother trope with every new appearance.
Mai Valentine ofYu-Gi-Oh! falls into this trope during the Doma arc; she starts out aDefrosting Ice Queen, butMarik manages to affect her mind so that she turns on the protagonists.
Vermouth fromDetective Conan is one of the few characters with blond hair.
Played straight with Manami fromLife but averted with Miki, who is also blonde.
Comic Books
AFlare story arc featured Marian Press, a plain-looking legal secretary who was transformed into a fair-hairedPerson of Mass Destruction.
Before herHeel Face Turn, Emma Frost was one of theX-Men's most dangerous and sophisticated enemies. Her supervillain past continues to be referenced to this day.
She's still considered theToken Evil Teammate by a number of her actual teammates, as well as much of the Super Community at large.
Her backstory reveals both that Emma is a natural brunette and that her whole family is largely responsible for turning her evil.
Which is still playing the trope very much straight: once she turns good, she'ssuddenly been a brunette all along, just really,really meticulous in touching up her roots.
A disproportionate number of the female villains ofHack Slash are blondes (Laura, Miss America, Acid Angel), although they also have an odd tendency to get itpermanently burned off.
Amora the Enchantress is a powerful and recurring enemy ofThe Avengers.
InEmpowered,Sistah Spooky's belief in this trope is the reason she keeps tormenting the heroine.
The original Terra on theTeen Titans at first seems to be a spunky new member but then turns out to be a psychotic double agent working for Deathstroke the Terminator. She betrays the Titans and tries to kill them.
Moonstone of the Masters of Evil, Thunderbolts, and the Dark Avengers in Marvel Comics.
InUndercover Brother, a blonde [White She Devil] tries to seduce the hero. The movie goes into some detail on the evil temptations of white straight-haired blonde girls (Black Man's Kryptonite).
Rebecca De Mornay pulled a textbook example in the 1990s classicThe Hand That Rocks the Cradle, as an ice-cold, vengeful but seemingly sweet and inoffensiveau pair out for the blood of the woman who got her obstetrician husband charged with sexually molesting his patients (by way of her family). Also doubles as aBitch in Sheep's Clothing.
Michelle Pfeiffer played a blond Catwoman inBatman Returns.
Subverted inBatman Returns. She wasn't evil, she just became...more honest about herself.
Michelle Pfeiffer also played Velma Von Tussle in the 2007 version ofHairspray. Velma also happened to be blond.
InMean Girls, we have a good redhead (Cady) and a good brunette (Janis), a not-so-good brunette (Gretchen) andtwo not-so-good blondes (Regina and Karen). Though in fairness, to call the rather sympathetic Regina actuallyevil is much too strong.
Karen was more theother type of blonde. Regina, on the other hand,embodies this trope,prior to her sort-of redemption, anyway.
Marisa Coulter fromThe Golden Compass movie. In the book, she has black hair.
Heathers also has two bad blondes and a bad brunette...and a heroine, who, while not actuallygood, is brunette.
In the 1983 filmThe Man Who Wasn't There, Morgan Hart played Amanda Worth, alias "Mr. Tendyck", a blondWoman in Black who became briefly invisible by drinking a green potion which she planned to monopolize. The film's other invisible blonde, Cindy Worth, was played by Lisa Langlois.
In the 1991 filmVice Academy 3, Julia Parton (Dolly's cousin) played Malathion, a prison fugitive whose blond hair was turned green when she ran through a cloud of insecticide.
Dr. Elsa Schneider inIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade. While not completely "evil", she does side with the Nazis to find the Holy Grail, and even suffers aDisney Villain Death when she tries to keep said Grail for herself.
Averted mostly inSydney White. Rachel Witchburn is the only blond who isrude and mean to everyone around her. The rest of the blond Kappa girls, especiallyDinky, are friendly and quite nice.
Literature
The Lady of the Green Kirtle, though not described at all in terms of hair color, is drawn as a blonde by Pauline Baynes inThe Silver Chair.
Stephenie Meyer apparently has some issues with blond women. In the wholeTwilight series, there is not a single blonde woman who is neither evil nor nasty. The most sympathetic one is Rosalie, who is depicted as being pathetically jealous, shallow, and vindictive, and who was gang-raped because she was so hot.
Laurell K. Hamilton'sAnita Blake series also takes countless potshots at blond women, apparently for no reason except that Anita is a brunette. Any blond woman is immediately dismissed as weak, shallow, and both slutty and sexually frigid.
It didn't help that the author's ex-husband admitted that tall, thin blondes were his "type", and has since married a blonde.
Given how much effort she's spent portraying the character based on her ex-husband as being an utter bastard following their breakup, that's hardly coincidence.
Averted with Cersei's blonde daughter Myrcella, who is anything but evil. You could also make a case for an aversion in the case of Daenerys Targaryen, though it would probably be more accurate to describe her as aWhite-Haired Pretty Girl.
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold; Her skin was white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.
More self-centered than outright malicious, there's Amy fromLittle Women, the one who throws tantrums, particularly when she burns the years worth of Jo's unfinished novel out of revenge for not being allowed to accompany Jo and Laurie to the theater and was so vain she tried to fix the shape of her nose with a clothespin.
InTortall'sSong of the Lioness, the blonde Princess Josiane of the Copper Isles, Jon's mother's hopeful betrothal for her son, is a traitor conspiring with Duke Roger to take over the kingdom.
Alva, the bratty fourteen-year old fromSisters? No Way. Her older sister Aishling is an aversion.
InDork Diaries, the character MacKenzie Hollister is often described as a blonde with icy-blue eyes by Nikki Maxwell's diary.
In theFairytale Novels by Regina Doman, evil blondes pop up alot - during the first three installments, there's about one per book. One of them gets aHeel Face Turn, though.
Live-Action TV
There's an episode ofCharmed called "The Power of Three Blondes". It's about three criminal witches, named the Stillman Sisters, who are all blondes, and their characterization is largely built around their blondness. They are anEvil Counterpart to the Halliwell Sisters, who are all brunettes, though Paige was actually strawberry blonde at that point. Only one of the witches actually fit the trope as the other two were moreDumb Blondes who happened to be evil.
Darla aside,Buffy played this completely inverted at first when it came to the main characters. Buffy was the heroic blonde and Cordelia was the catty, shallow brunette. Both evolved over time, of course.
Patricia Fernández inYo Soy Betty, la Fea, although her hair is actually dyed (in fact, her nickname among the employees of Ecomoda is "La Peliteñida", the Hairbleached), and her evilness is mostly ineffectual, which seems to be aLampshade Hanging of this trope.
Parodied along with every other trope of the genre in an episode ofMy Name Is Earl where Catalina writes a soap based on her life. The evil blonde is, of course, Joy.
Burn Notice has Carla, Michael's rather bloodthirsty handler. She's even described at one point as "tall, blonde, and evil." For comparison, Michael's exes are both brunettes.
Elle Bishop fromHeroes is one evil blonde...but this is only because of the Company experimentation with her abilities at the hands of her own father, though she doesn't recall any of it.
Sarah Corvus fromThe Bionic Woman, an obvious antipode to the short, immature brunet heroine.
The Sentinel has Alex Barnes. Toward the end, she's more nuts than evil, but she didkill Blair, so she quailfies as evil in most fans' eyes.
Every main blond character onGlee is evil: Sue, the glee club's arch-enemy, Will's wife, Terri, who doubles as aDumb Blonde, andAlpha Bitch, Quinn. Even Brittany, who is such aditz that it's a miracle she can compose sentences, is anIneffectual Sympathetic Villain as a spy for Sue.
However, Quinn does aHeel Face Turn after becoming pregnant and getting kicked out of the Cheerios. She realizes that they were much nicer and kinder to her than her previous friends and stays with them, even standing up for them against Sue.
Similarly, Brittany is justtoo sweet-natured (and far too slow) to really count as evil.
While maybe not evil in the typical sense, Lily inPrivileged is blonde, and is shown to steal, take drugs, and generally provide a messed-up counterpart to good girl Megan. On a smaller scale, there's Jordanna, one of the twins' school friends who, among other things,spikes Sage's drink as revenge for the twins sabotaging her party by throwing their own on the same day.
Legend of the Seeker, particularly in the second season, contrasts blond, morally ambiguous villain/antihero Cara with pure, moralistic, dark-haired Kahlan. This is also at least a partial subversion, because it turns out that Cara is a tragic figure ofcorrupted innocence while Kahlan becomes something of anuptight bitch.
There's also Sister Nicci, who is blondafter comingBack from the Dead, and also contrasted with Kahlan in the episode "Bound".This is also something of a subversion, as Nicci has asimilarDark and Troubled Past as Cara and eventually turns on the Keeper.
Vera, the only blonde in the regular cast ofQueen of Swords, is a treacherous, manipulative, adulterous bitch who gets hot and bothered watching executions.
Amber onHouse was such a cut-throat bitch that the characters nicknamed her "Cut-throat Bitch".Then she became Wilson's girlfriend and died.
Sam oniCarly, occasionally (especially if you're Freddie)!
If a woman onNCIS has short blond hair, especially if it's dyed, you can be pretty sure she's the killer. Several episodes have had women fitting that description as the killer (in one early episode, there were two of them).
Nicole and Mary Cherry fromPopular fit this trope incredibly well, particularly Nicole. Brooke was a bit of a subversion, though.
Morgause, played by Joan Allen inThe Mists of Avalon. Along with dark-haired Anjelica Huston playing the good sister Viviane. It's a case ofPlaying Against Type for both.
Subverted inFire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, where Selena Fluorspar is a blonde, an enemy unit...and an incredibly sympatheticDark Magical Girl.
TheResident Evil series has Annette Birkin and Alexia Ashford, though the former isn't so much evil as she is obsessed with getting revenge on the people who wronged her husband.
InResident Evil 5,Jill Valentine, usually a brunette, has her hair turn blond during herBrainwashed and Crazy period, it lost all the pigment because the virus was constantly being pumped into her bloodstream.
InKingdom Hearts, the Organization has Larxene. Kicks Sora twice, bitch-slaps Namine, and is perhaps the most outwardly evil of the Organization, with only fellow sadist Xaldin (who has black hair) rivaling her in that area, thoughnormally stoic blue-haired Saix can outdo them both whenever he feels like it.
Subverted withLeblanc inFinal Fantasy X-2. She starts off as an antagonist to YRP by trying to steal their spheres at every turn,but eventually pulls aHeel Face Turn when she realizes her "lover",Nooj, is working to fight a greater threat, and befriends Yuna in her fight to aid him and save Spira once more.
Blonde. Sweet Lolita dress motif. A drunkard. A serial killer with a baseball bat (and alcohol for lighting it up). Batshit fuckin' insane. So numb to killing people that at least one of her opponents voices his disgust. That'sBad Girl for you.
Dead Space seems to have a thing for evil blondes (not to mention ineffectual blondes, weak-willed blondes, mentally unstable blondes, and ineffectual, weak-willed,and mentally unstable blondes who then turn into Necromorphs).
Lucrezia Borgia plays this straightuntil Cesare breaks her heart and she reveals his location to Ezio.
Meredith fromDragon Age II turns homicidally insane and paranoid in Act IIIthanks to the influence of her new red lyrium sword. Asimilarly corrupted Bartrand says that "she glittered like the sun, but her heart was like ice."
Zig-zagged inTales of Destiny 2. Elraine and Barbatos are the main antagonists,but the person behind them, Fortuna, is blonde.
You can argueMuse inTales of Xillia fits this...but if anything, her hair is moreGreen than blonde...but itlooks blonde.
WhenShirley turns evil, she becomes this trope.
Olga fromAsura's Wrath is Platinum Blonde.Bombing a village full of innocent normal humans definitely makes her evil.
Webcomics
Mistress Butterfly inCollar 6.Later subverted, since her true identity of Evita Kappel has black hair, so the blond hair was evidently a wig.
Franken becomes this when he unleashes hisSuper-Powered Evil Side. In fact, he was definitely one in his past because of hisMad Scientist tendency. Yuri plays this far straighter, but in moreAffably Evil sense.
Shmeerm and Mac inVoodoo Walrus are prime examples of this.
Batman the Animated Series had three:Catwoman, who mentioned at one point in a comic that she dyed her hair, Harley Quinn, who also denied being a real blonde, and Mary Louise "Baby Doll" Dahl.
There's odd inconsistency with Catwoman — her hair colour changed between seasons, and this was explained with her stopping dyeing her hair with animal-tested products, but back in the episodeTyger, Tyger, she was transformed into aHalf-Human Hybrid, yet had fur the identical shade to her then-blonde hair.
May Kanker inEd, Edd 'n' Eddy. Though it is worth noting she is usually portrayed as the most sympathetic of the three sisters.
There is a deliberate subversion of this trope inAs Told by Ginger, as while one would assume that Courtney is aAlpha Bitch, the episode "Wicked Game" showed that Courtney is probably the best friend Ginger ever had. There's also Hope Rodgers, who is a nice person too.
Suzy Johnson onPhineas and Ferb, though this stands in contrast to her also-blond-but-much-nicer brotherJeremy.
Inverted by Smurfette inThe Smurfs. Originally an evil female smurf created by Gargamel, she started as a brunette, but was turned into a blonde when she became good.
The third season did introduce an evil blonde (though, like Lindsay, she dyes) -Blaineley, who is basically Bridgette'sEvil Counterpart.
But it's not certain whether Blaineley dyes or not. The lyrics say "She's a nasty fake blonde schemer", and it can be interpreted that she's a fake blonde as well as a fakeand a blonde.
Interesting case onAmerican Dad with the character Lindsey Coolidge, who fits this trope quite nicely and is often theAlpha Bitch of the story, yet her best friend is the incredibly unattractive and unpopular girl Jewel.
American Dragon: Jake Long: Rose (a.k.a. Huntsgirl), like everyone in the Huntsclan, is considered evil by the magical creatures. That is, before herHeel Face Turn when she learned the boy she loved and the dragon she wanted toslay were one and the same. Later, the "evil blonde" role fell intoThe CheerleaderStacey.
Regular Show has a group of blondes with whom Mordecai hangs out after dyeing his hair in a bet with Rigby that turns out to be aBlonde Superiority Cult that believes themselves to be the best hair color, to the point where their initiation ceremonies consist of forcibly dyeing an outsider to death with boiling hair dye.
In one episode ofChallenge of theSuperfriends, Cheetah, a foe ofWonder Woman, revealed herself to be a blonde.