Has anyone else noticed that, aside from the plethora of colors that can occur in normal human hair, the Simpsons universe added one more color: Blue. (?)
I never really thought about it until I had this sudden revelation that Lisa and Bart are actually blond-haired. Being that everyone is yellow-skinned and their hair is yellow, it's kind of hard to think about them having hair at all. It's just kind of... and extension of their heads. But Lisa and Bart have their hair cut occasionally, and Lisa has dyed hers on more than one occasion, including the episode I was watching, where people make fun of her for being blond.
So where does the blue gene come in?
First of all, it's important for us to remember that hair, like eye color, is one of those complicated genes that relies on a long and complex coding resulting in a certain amount of pigmentation for the offspring. Some colors are more dominant than others, but as a rule of thumb, the darker the color the more dominant it is.
So where, on this scale of dominance and pigmentation, does the "blue hair" gene lie? Going on darkness alone, I initially thought that blue hair should be more dominant than blond. After all, the spectrum of blue can run the gamut across deep blue (like Marge) to a more lavender color which I lumped in due to Selma and Patty (in their youth). So it should probably be dominant, no?
The problem here is that most other blue-haired characters with offspring in the series have both parents with blue hair or blue hair variants. Milhouse, for instance, has both father and mother with blue hair. The Wiggums are a bit of an anomaly, as Ralphie only has lines to represent his hair. This is established to mean a lack of significant hair, as Homer as has black lines but has been depicted in the past with brown, not black, hair. So it is possible that Ralphie has any color hair in the spectrum, and not a large leap to say that he probably has blue hair.
Blue hair itself is very rare in the Simpsons-verse. The last applicable characters in the main story arcs are Sherri and Terri (the twin girls in Bart's class) and the offspring of Marge, namely Bart and Lisa. And here the anomaly starts.
Sherri and Terri have purple hair, which, as I mentioned, has been lumped into the "blue hair" category. Their mother also has purple hair, but their father has blond hair. This would support the idea that blue is a dominant color over blond. However, in Marge's case, her blue hair did NOT override the blond gene in Bart and Lisa. What the heck is going on?! In addition to this, Marge's father had brown hair while her mother had blue, and as we can see Marge and her sisters inherited the blue gene!
The next theory I derived was that the male characteristics are more influential in Simpsons genetics. This would explain why Bart and Lisa end up with blond hair (although Homer has brown hair, it could also be a deep blond). This would also explain why Sideshow Bob's child has reddish hair although his wife has black hair (which should be more dominant), but not why Marge's hair is blue despite her father's being brown or why Sherri and Terri have purple her while their father's is blond.
So this leaves me with the idea that blue is likely to be a recessive gene similar to blond, and that it rates somewhere between blond and brown, but sometimes throws out a blond gene, similar to the way that two brown-haired persons may produce offspring with blond or red hair.
Because of this idea, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie may have gotten the blonder end of the genes from both parents. Since blue is slightly more aggressive than pure blond, Sherri and Terri were able to follow in their mother's footsteps. Marge and her sisters may have ended up with the blue genes dominant by getting more blond than brown from pop.
This is the theory I enjoy the most thus far, although it fails to answer why Sideshow Bob's son has reddish hair while his wife's is definitely black. I am till puzzling this one out.
While I know this is probably too much thought into a cartoon, let it be known that I don't think about this much, except the idle wondering while I watch my weekly dose of The Simpsons.
Besides, I can't possibly be the only one who thinks about this kind of stuff... Right? >_> ;;
And if you want to use or replicate this post, please please PLEASE credit Matt Groening for giving us such an awesome cartoon and myself for the blue-hair gene argument.
THANK YOU MATT GROENING FOR MY HOURS OF MINDLESS ENTERTAINMENT AND OCCASIONAL INTROSPECTION. <3<3<3
-C
