Book Review: Legally Blonde (Part 2 of 2)--Only Straight, White Stereotypes Need Apply

 (Here is Part 1)

In Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown, Elle Woods' classmates are a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes, and that is all there is to them.
There is the feminist stereotype, trying to change people's word usage. There are two hippies, with their sprout and tofu sandwiches. There is the bookworm girl.
There are the Trekkies, who of course are smart in their classes and socially clueless. At first, she is picked on by them, in a reversal of how it was in high school for her. That could have been interesting, but it went absolutely nowhere. She also learns nothing from it, and the head Trekkie even sends her cookies for Valentine's Day. Because of course he wants her, even though she wouldn't give him the time of day!
(About Valentine's Day--one thing I thought was strange, was that everyone seemed to dress up in festive clothes on all the holidays. Do people do that in California, where it's set? Most don't do that in Oregon, where I live.)
I don't even know why the author chose to give all of these people names, for how little they impact the story. I remember forgetting  all about them, then wondering who was Larry, who was Sidney, etc, when they were mentioned later.
For a book about how the snooty students at Stanford underestimate Elle because they stereotype her, Elle seems to be doing a whole lot of stereotyping, herself.
They don't impact her story at all, because she doesn't get to know them at all. She becomes friends with only one of them, Eugenia, who literally does nothing but tell her how great she is and how she's smarter than Eugenia. (And that job could have easily been handed off to a gay best friend, who would have made the story marginally more interesting.)
I get the impression that the author based her stereocharacters on people she really encountered at school. But we don't get to know them at all. So how well did she really know them? They are nothing but stereotypes to us, because they were nothing but stereotypes to her.

There is one small "surprise" in the story, in that "Larry," just another forgettable character, turns out to be her secret admirer, who writes poetry to her and helps her by giving her class outlines that I assume literally any college student could have gotten for themselves. Don't they give these out at the beginning of the class, anyway? They sure did at my community college! So I assume they would do the same at an Ivy League school. I'm sure there is also a place online where she can look it all up. It really doesn't do anything at all to show that she's smart, or that he's helpful and clever.
I'm also not sure why Elle is so surprised that Larry writes poetry, because she had to have known that one of her classmates...was writing poetry!  There is nothing where she thinks that it couldn't possibly be him, no scene where she even wonders who it might be (as if love poetry just shows up in her mailbox because that's how the universe works). Her admirer is not even revealed to be a woman, because that would both be an interesting twist, and would give representation to an LGBT person. It couldn't even be Eugenia.
And of course the pretty, popular girl has a secret admirer and gets an apartment filled with flowers on Valentine's day. Does this happen at your school, much less at college?
And of course, the secret poetry writer is secretly in love with her, even though they've spent absolutely no time together, and he confesses his love to her. But that, too, goes nowhere! She doesn't return his love, and she doesn't have to let him down easily or fend him off because he's become a stalker. He confesses his love, and she doesn't even really reply to him, just gets in her car and drives off. I've actually quite forgotten what happens--because nothing happened! And we never see Larry again! I remember thinking that this should be an interesting scene, but it's not.

There are so many paper-thin stereotypes that weren't even filler, because they didn't do their job of filling up pages. The book even describes what conversations she overheard while waiting in line to purchase her books. And the conversations have no bearing on her or the plot at all. They're just the typical conversations one overhears while out and about--nothing interesting or special at all!
But there is one stereotype whose absence is really felt, in a book about stereotypes and fabulous blondes. You can probably guess who I'm talking about. Elle Woods has no Gay Best Friend (TM). Never has the absence of a Z-snap been so loud.
There are male hairdressers, however that in itself is not representation, and they don't play much of a role in the story at all.
I thought that perhaps it was a Young Adult book, and that YA books were squeamish about LGBT people. But I found nothing on the cover to indicate that it was a YA book, no mention of the author even writing YA books.
There are also scenes in which Elle "leaned forward seductively," and said that she wanted to keep her and Warner's celebration "going all night long." She thinks about nights spent in his arms. So even though it's rather tastefully done, it's very plain that she has premarital sex, plans and all but asks for sex, and is never sorry about any of it! And they sexualize LGBT people! Double standard, much?
I thought perhaps that the author was homophobic, but she has male hairdressers and never mentions their wives or girlfriends. (And don't bother wondering--they don't even say anything, or touch Elle's hair, so they're not worth your time, either.) She had to have known what she was implying. And again, she's perfectly okay with premarital sex among her characters, so she apparently isn't religious.
She could have easily made the feminist stereotype a lesbian, too--that's another stereotype, which she apparently likes. But the character's sexuality is not mentioned, and Elle doesn't even think about it.
The movie does a better job of including gay characters, even though the three (two?) characters explicitly stated to be gay are walking stereotypes. I wondered if there were two, because a stereotypical male hairdresser makes an appearance to remark on the "bend-and-snap" technique. (Another thing missing from the book, along with the subplot about the manicurist having a crush on the UPS guy.) He may not be gay in the movie's canon, but he's definitely coded gay. Come to think of it, both the poolboy and his boyfriend might be bisexual, even though Elle assumes the poolboy is gay. Regardless, the film does portray at least two LGBT characters, which is two more than the book.

And speaking of lack of diversity, all of the students, in both her schools, are all white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, and come from wealthy, upper-class backgrounds. No one is described to be otherwise. And even they don't take Elle's dream of starting the Blonde Legal Defense Fund seriously. (That's book-only, thank goodness.)
As a blonde, let me say--Elle, please stop! Even if there is anti-blonde discrimination, it is not systemic, not pervasive, and in some places, being a blonde might actually help get you a job (Fox News, for example, though apparently there is also a problem of sexual harassment at that company--something brunettes go through too). There is also the little detail that, unless one dyes their hair, most blondes are white. I am afraid that fighting for the rights of blondes makes a mockery of other fights for equality.
It is also quite clear that Elle is a very wealthy young woman. She does not think once about the cost of tuition to an Ivy League school, her own private, pet-friendly apartment off-campus, or about paying off her years at state college. She "had to trade in her BMW for a Beemer." (Boo-hoo, poor little rich girl.) I'll bet it wasn't a used Beemer, either. She also has designer luggage and clothes, and the descriptions of her clothing made me think that she had quite a lot of clothes. She apparently brought evening clothes to college with her, and apparently has Halloween costumes and a special outfit, covered in hearts, that she only wears on Valentine's Day. That's an awful lot of waste, right there--of time, money, space, etc. Kind of like the book itself.