Only in England. Only in England, I tell you, would red hair be something to be embarased about.
People in this country daily make jokes about “gingers.” People with red hair are constantly being teased and put down. “GING-AH!” brunettes will cry at them – as though that somehow amounts to an insult. (How can the country that ostensibly spawned the greatest writers of all time embrace such a shitty excuse for an insult? Pathetic.)
Click here for a BBC News story about how people with red hair, called “gingers” in this country, are discriminated against – even to the point that some incidents could be classified as “hate crimes.” A family in Newcastle was actually forced to move recently because their red-headed children were being so badly bullied.
This is sheer lunacy. For two reasons.
Reason Number One: RED is not the same as GINGER. THIS is what ginger looks like:
Does that look like red hair? NO. So henceforth for the rest of this piece I’m going to address the hair colour by it’s proper name: RED. As in REDHEAD.
(OK so red hair isn’t red per se, but it’s certainly more red than yellow – which is the actual colour of ginger root.)
Reason Number Two: Red hair is beautiful.
Redheads are gorgeous, you Pommie gits. HELLO. Think of all the sex symbols with red hair.
The FBI agent with a medical degree and a “don’t fuck with me” attitude.
One of the few actresses in Hollywood reputed to have a brain.
The most famous image ever made of the goddess of love.
And of course, Jessica Rabbit. (The animated character. Not the toy.)
Red hair is special – only about two per cent of the population has it (the Scots are lucky enough to be 15 per cent red headed). The gene that causes red hair, called MC1R, like the blue-eyed gene, is recessive to all other pigment genes – so in order to have red hair you have to inherit a red gene from both your mother’s side and your father’s side. You gots to be lucky.
There is red hair in my family, inherited from my maternal grandmother (of Scottish origin). For two generations we had no true redheads in the family. We thought it was lost. Then seven years ago when my cousin Ella came out with a tuft of red hair we all rejoiced.
How beautiful is she?
My hair, for genetic reasons I can’t quite figure out, is borderline red – and I desperately wish it was genuinely red. So therefore in order to make it appear red I constantly take photographs of myself contrasted with blue and green hues,
in order to enhance the red hues.
Pretty…
Sorry, where was? Right. Red hair is beautiful. And yet the Brits will mock you for it.
And they are alone in this respect – as this quote from the American director of the UK children’s charity Kidscape confirms in this BBC piece:
“There is nothing like this in the US where having red hair is not a precursor to having someone abuse you. Red hair is considered glamorous.”
Because it bloody well is.
So then, the question begs to be asked: why do English people make fun of redheads? There are a few theories – but almost certainly it stems from racial prejudice against the Celts, specifically the Irish immigrants who moved to England in the nineteenth century to labour in their warehouses and mine their coal. To escape the grinding poverty and oppression (…by the English) in their homeland.
So there you have it. More than a century later, English people are still shitting on the Irish. Still stubbornly xenophobic.
Gosh. I’m surprised. I really am.
6 comments
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August 9, 2007 at 7:42 pm
flyingrowan
didn’t read it all because i don’t have time/im lazy, but agreed agreed agreed
May 19, 2008 at 3:29 pm
not ginger
Gingers get mercilessly ridiculed in Australia as well. Apparently ginger kids don’t have souls….
July 9, 2008 at 12:13 am
Lauren
I’m as ginger as ginger goes!
Red hair, pale and freckly.
proud to be ginger :]
But thankful I live in America. Even though I have an obsession with all things Brit.
September 9, 2008 at 1:20 am
Applez
I’m brunette, well a dark reddish brown hair, I’m from the US and i think redheads are hot! be it a guy or chic. i watch the BBCA channel and i hear alot of joke cracking about redheads and i agree about the ginger name, i cook with ginger and find no resemblance with the color. ginger is also revered as one of the most important spices in the world….go figure. redheads are very attractive heck even i color my hair red, along with tons of other women in California.
my question Catherine Tate….redhead? she’s hot!
December 29, 2008 at 12:58 am
bruce bilney
Dear Zoe,
I’m an Aussie ranga -(i.e. redhead, short for Orangutan, your favourite animals I see). I’m delighted with your blogsite, glad you like our colouring, and may I say even if your hair isn’t full-on red, it looks good with the sun shining through it and your pretty face does the rest. (As long as we’re saying nice things about e/o !) Yes rangas get a hard time in some ways in Australia and elsewhere, but basically we love our special colouring, the rest can please themselves how they cope with being mouseheads or strawheads or sootheads. (as long as some of them are going to say unpleasant things about Us !) I don’t really despise everybody else for having something different, hell I’m lefthanded too, vive la difference say I.
It’s just a pity about bigotry . . . I think its roots are simple NV !
Yours is a very good site, good to see articulate sites and comments, I’m not being sycophantic here or too-easily-pleased, your site is actually proper literature. Check out my website http://www.ozzigami.com.au and my blog http://ozzigami.blogspot.com/ if you like. By the wayI’ve raised joeys ie baby Kangaroos, and if you like brown-eyed furry critters, you’ll just melt when a little roo puts up her lovely paws to hold your hand or steady her bottle . . .
Anyway best regards, I like Canuks a lot. Better than I like Aussies mostly! Almost as good as Kiwis who I think have carried themselves with much more dignity in foreign and domestic affairs than my own ccountrymen – Though we do have a decent national Government at last, under Kevin Rudd, and especially since our Deputy PM is the lovely and formidable Julia Gillard, who is besides her other attributes a very notable ranga!
Note, I sent this also to your Home page, but this is where it stemmed from . . . Bruce
PS I love that painting of Venus as a ranga . . . She’s lovely . . . You might be second only to her!
May 25, 2009 at 10:46 am
Elizabeth
Im ginger.
The hair,freckles and pale skin i do get bullied and it annoys me ive even thought of dying my hair and asked people and they all say i should keep my hair this colour people just need to get a life because ginger is nothing to be ashamed of. In My opinion people should just get to there own life and stay outta other peoples 😡