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'It's almost like a weapon': How the blonde bombshell has symbolised desire and danger Western culture, she says, has built a whole mythology around female blondeness − from religious iconography and fairy tales, to art and advertising − that has told specific stories about what it means to be blonde. In cinema's early years, comedies such as Platinum Blonde (1931) and Bombshell (1933), starring Jean Harlow, embedded concepts of the dazzling, devastatingly beautiful blonde into the cultural vernacular. "The idea that you're a bombshell, it's almost like a weapon," says Nead. "On the one hand, it is this kind of ideal, but at the same time, it's also threatening."   Before Harlow, there was another − more natural-looking − blonde on the scene: Mary Pickford, whose amber curls helped earn her the moniker of "America's Sweetheart". But while Pickford played the guileless girl waiting to be rescued, Harlow's peroxide blonde ...
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Italy's Meloni heads to US with unlikely mission for Europe


Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is heading to the US to meet Donald Trump – a visit that will see her walk a tightrope between representing the interests of the EU and remaining in the US president's good books.

As the first European leader to travel to Washington since Trump introduced - then paused – 20% tariffs on the EU earlier in April, Meloni will be hoping to convince him of the merits of a "zero-for-zero" tariffs deal for the entire EU.

Italy is particularly vulnerable to any changes to US trade policy.

Around 10% of its exports - worth about €67bn (£57bn; $76bn) - go to the US, Italy's third biggest non-EU trading partner, and the tariffs announced by Trump earlier this month caused Rome to halve its growth forecast.

"We know this is a difficult time," Meloni said ahead of her trip. "We will do our best – I am aware of what I represent and of what I am defending."

At this fraught moment, she is perhaps one of the best-placed current European leaders to speak to Trump. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen recognises that and they have been speaking regularly ahead of the trip.

Trump and Meloni famously enjoy a good relationship and have lavished praise on one another in the past. He has called her a "fantastic woman" who has "really taken Europe by storm".

For her part, Meloni – who has headed a right-wing coalition government since 2022 - is ideologically closer to Trump than to some of her European neighbours.

In a video message to a US conservative conference in February, she echoed some of Trump's common talking points, railing against mass migration, "globalist elites" and "woke ideology".

She was also the only European leader to attend the US president's inauguration in January, and has steered clear of overtly criticising the work of his administration since.

The harshest criticism she has dispensed was earlier this month, when she said Trump's decision to impose 20% tariffs on the EU was "absolutely wrong" and that it would end up damaging the EU "as much as the US".

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