People tell me I look like Kate Hudson. Of course, there are worst things to be told in life — Kate Hudson is very pretty. I wonder, though, if people get the wrong idea about me, and about blonde women in general, because of the roles blonde women play.

I mean, there’s a whole blog devoted to the roles Kate Hudson plays in movies: ‘a caricature of the ‘sassy blonde who always gets what she wants.’” A rich, spoiled party girl with an insane wardrobe who is usually busy stealing things — men, jobs, attention — from her slightly dopey, sweet brunette friends.

I recently watched Something Borrowed on a long flight from JFK to LAX. I had read the book , which deftly handles the pressure society places on thirtysomething, successful women to get married (this is not overtly addressed in the movie). It was either that or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and I had slightly higher hopes for Something Borrowed.

The movie was exactly what I’d expected— Kate Hudson’s character, Darcy, was drunk pretty much throughout the entire film, and when she wasn’t drunk she was preening or acting out sexually (although usually all three at once). She also wore white throughout, I suppose as some sign of her power bride status. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), Darcy was pregnant and alone, wearing some sort of muumuu and love beads, and Ginnifer Goodwin’s character, Rachel, was the one wearing the white suit.

We’re left to believe that Darcy deserves what she got, for being proud and dumb and pretty, and that Rachel deserves to get the guy, for being submissive and smart and brunette. The meek shall inherit the earth and all that. Of course, it’s just a piece of Hollywood fluff, and Hollywood would be nothing without stereotypes, but what does this really say?

You can’t be confident and fun and smart at the same time. Smartness requires mousiness. Okay, check.  And you can be super successful, but you also have to hate your job a little bit because it keeps you from finding a nice man to marry. Not to mention that all your female friendships must be built on some base level of mutual hatred and competition, so it’s okay for Rachel to steal her best friend’s fiancée (because Darcy is self-obsessed, not smart, and very sexual.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve known a few mousy, slutty dumb girls. And a couple prudish blonde alcoholics, while we’re at it. Where’s the complexity? Why is it that we’re still punishing women for the same thing we praise in men — sexual confidence, self-confidence, good looks, the ability to drink like a fish? What makes a man an alpha male makes a woman an object, a stereotype, a caricature of herself.

Re: looking like Kate Hudson: this is even more difficult for me because I do not deliver on this blonde girl brand promise. Nor do I ever hope to.  It’s one thing for Hollywood to box itself in and churn out formulaic comedies, but it’s another thing for us to let ourselves shape our brains according to what we see onscreen.

Upshot is, I might look like Kate Hudson but I don’t act like her. In fact, I’m pretty sure Kate Hudson doesn’t act like Kate Hudson either.

(This is what I look like, by the way, at my most Kate Hudsoniest)