Singularly enough®, I quite recently saw 'brunet' used in the sense of a man with dark hair (I forget where I saw it, unfortunately). I think it's a perfectly sensible usage, like 'blond'. I have no problem with gender-specific words; indeed, I would welcome more, since they add precision to language. Of course, borrowing from French makes perfect sense, since French nouns and adjectives have discernible gender, which English generally does not.