Well, if I understand the diaspora, and the differences between the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc.) Alicia Silverstone’s family most likely was of desecendants of later European settlement jewa (via intermarriage with non-jews or their conversions), hence her lighter complexion as compared to most jews truly from the middle east, semitic in origin, and were more likely to look like, well, middle eastern or mediteranean, not as central or northern European looking, so to speak. I suspect Mary (Miriam, her Hebrew name) probably was olive-skinned, with dark hair and dark eyes, given up until that point in time, the jews were very heavily concentrated in the middle east, before their dispersion by the Romans after 70 AD. I don’t think anyone knows for sure, but the odds are more likely that way. Just sayin’.
There have always been blond and redheaded Jews, even before the dispersion. Just north of Israel is Lebanon, where there are still many people with blond hair and or blue eyes, who don’t have that history to point to. I wasn’t arguing one way or the other what Mary looked like. For me and many other Christians it’s irrelevant. I wanted though to point out that European depictions of her aren’t necessarily the fabrications that this article alludes to by its ‘counterbalancing’ depictions of her from far afield.