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Bimbo
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Bimbo is a term that emerged in popular English language usage in the early 20th century to describe an often attractive, non-intelligent woman. The usage of this term began in the United States as early as 1919. The 1929 silent film Desert Nights describes a wealthy female crook as a bimbo. In The Broadway Melody, the winner of Best Picture for the same year, an angry Bessie Love calls a chorus girl a bimbo.
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Encyclopedia
Bimbo is a term that emerged in popular English language usage in the early 20th century to describe an often attractive, non-intelligent woman. The usage of this term began in the United States as early as 1919. The 1929 silent film Desert Nights describes a wealthy female crook as a bimbo. In The Broadway Melody, the winner of Best Picture for the same year, an angry Bessie Love calls a chorus girl a bimbo. This word derives from the Italian bimbo, a word deriving from "bambino" (meaning child in Italian) a masculine term gender that means (male) baby or very young (male) child (its feminine equivalent is bimba).
The 1950s song "Bimbo", about a toddler, was one of the early hits for the popular American singer Jim Reeves. Its first usage in English was for stupid men; it now is understood to mean a woman unless modified as male bimbo, himbo or mimbo. Some still prefer the explicitly female variant bimbette, which has also entered The American Heritage Dictionary. Others use bimbette for a younger bimbo, because the suffix "-ette" signifies a smaller version as in French or Spanish "-ito/-ita" suffix.
The archetype of a bimbo with sex appeal is much used as a stock character in comedies with sexual humor, an example being Christina Applegate's character, Kelly Bundy, in Married... with Children.
A beauty contest game called Miss Bimbo is an online game which players, of a large range of ages including grandparents, can purchase operations such as facelifts or breast implants in order to impress virtual boys, with proper warning of the dangers it may cause in reality. The game has received condemnation of parents especially in the British region.
An older comedy archetype of perhaps more direct resemblance to the bimbo is the dumb blonde—for example, the giggling, naïve characters portrayed by such sultry actresses as Marilyn Monroe or, as she appeared on Laugh-In, Goldie Hawn.
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