Lithuanian Company Wants To Set Up Island For Blondes Only
Yes you heard right. If you thought an Amazonian island was bad enough, Lithuanian company Olialia which is run by blonde women is planning to open a resort in Maldives staffed solely with blondes.
The company's managing director claims the move is part of the company's goal of breaking the blonde stereotypes.
The blonde-staffed resort won't open until 2015, but residents of the Maldives aren't pleased with the concept: as BBC News points out, discrimination is a concern. "Local laws could make things difficult as resorts in the Maldives are required to hire at least 50% local staff," writes BBC's Damien McGuinness, noting that commenters on the Minivan News piece had voiced their concerns that the project was racist and discriminatory. In a slightly confusing statement, Giedre Pukiene, the company's managing director, tells McGuinness that Olialia hires applicants of all genders, ethnicities, and hair colors, though "we find that when women with dark hair work here, they are surrounded by all these beautiful blondes, so eventually they end up going blonde too." One would imagine that if employees refuse to dye their hair blonde, they'll be ineligible to work at the all-blonde island resort.
Pukiene claims that Olialia is meant to prove that blondes aren't as dumb as society paints them to be, but one look at her company's advertising makes it fairly clear that the faux-blonde
empowerment angle is just a gimmick, and a creepy, exclusionary, objectifying one at that. Some people will argue that the women of Olialia are smart blondes after all, in that an all-blonde staffed island will probably be a draw for bachelor parties, blonde-obsessed tourists, and such
More than just trying to prove that blonde women can run businesses, it seems to be just a money-making holiday attraction for people obsessed with blondes.