Week two’s little tufts on my baby scalp confirmed my parents’ premonition – I was a coconut, no, I mean a redhead! As my father had been a redheaded child, my parents didn’t think anything of it. As far as I recall as a child, I was treated on an equal footing to children with black, brown, mousy, blonde and the many other variations of hair colour in between. The only irritations were the things that tended to accompany being a redhead, sensitive skin and supposedly low pain threshold. The skin intolerance was, and still is a drag. As a child in the summer months, the sun just needed to momentarily appear before I found myself being lathered from head to foot in Boots Cool Tan, forced to sport a large brimmed sunhat and sometimes even long sleeved shirts, while everyone else was merrily stripping off. Like an old woman, I was constantly encouraged to seek the shade and come indoors for another sticky ‘undercoat’!
The complexion issues never did much for my self-esteem either. “You do look tired poppet, really washed out”, or “Oh dear, are you not feeling very well?” just because I looked a bit pasty compared to my darker (or was it grubbier?) friends. I’m a redhead for goodness sake, we are naturally like this, have you never noticed? Instead of an olive tan, I had a scattering of freckles over my body, which multiplied in what little direct sunlight I experienced, but this never seemed to be much of an equaliser in the shade stakes, and the pitying glances at my freckled features continued.
What’s wrong with red hair? In reality my locks were long, thick and much admired by my mother’s friends and hairdressers, but when I arrived at secondary school negative implications began to creep in. For starters, I was the only redhead in my class. This put me in a minority, I can’t even say minority group, a fact which at the age of eleven was never likely to be a good thing. My hair colour was thankfully more auburn than the orange variety, but nonetheless I was still different and noticed that I was usually identified by my hair colouring before anything else. People would say, “Oh, you know Cathy, the redhead”. The emphasis on the word “redhead”, almost make it sound derogatory, in the way someone might describe you as fat or slow, as if I was some sort of unenviable freak.
I soon discovered that as a redhead I was easily identified, even in a crowd, and the temptation for others to take advantage of this situation was often too much. I recall the weekly games runs round the wooded perimeter of the school, thick frost on the ground, blue legs under ridiculous itchy gym shorts, dead fingers, and being bellowed at by the tyrant of a gym mistress clad in her sheepskin coat. Sometimes in the mellay, a couple of classmates would run the risky business of escaping via a shortcut, but once Wilkie’s beady eyes had ‘clocked’ me, or more accurately my hair, that was it, I had absolutely no chance of vanishing without being instantly missed.
Cycling to the local shops in my teens wasn’t a particularly ingratiating site. I wasn’t one of those girls with striking features, curves in the right places and legs up to my armpits. However, my hair did manage to attract leering lads hanging out of builders Ford Transit vans, shouting in Geordie twang, “Howay gin-ja” or “Keep gannin freckles”, as I lumbered up a hill with an overloaded bike basket of groceries.
What was that about redheads having a quick temper? Let’s just get this straight. If you’d been persecuted throughout the centuries for being considered a witch, often barbecued or drowned for a bit of light amusement, had skin that naturally fried in the sun and then shed itself, were encouraged to avoid wearing certain shades of clothing to a void a fashion faux pas, you’d be pretty fed up from time to time and might have a good rant, redhead or not!
There is a God. By the time I reached my twenties the tide of ‘Gingerism’ was beginning to turn and I suddenly noticed that my ‘standing out from the crowd’ was starting to reap benefits. I didn’t live up to the myth of being sexy, mysterious or dangerous, but who was I to spoil the fun of that illusion! I discovered the transformative effect of eye-lash tinting for my invisible but lengthy lashes, and the painless joy of a light fake tan from a tube, so was ready to take on the world with auburn tresses flowing.
I am now at the age where my hair is unfortunately fading, and I’ve reluctantly resorted to a bit of ‘enhancing’ in recent years. I’m comforted during this process by employing a redheaded hairdresser, so at least I’m cheating amongst ‘my own kind’!
Finally, my most extraordinary observation is that though redheads are much maligned most of their lives, for one reason or another, women of all ages, on choosing to colour their hair, more often or not select, yes… the colour RED! Henna hair dying at home is messy and may only succeed in making your bathroom look like a scene from ‘Psycho’. Most salon colourists are only too happy to concoct another pricey ‘red request’, ignoring your dark eyebrows, olive skin tone and multi-tone cerise top! Oh yes, you’ll probably get noticed at five hundred yards, but for what reason?
Remember, we redheads are unique. We cannot really be bought in a bottle and though the going might be a bit tough initially, we are at least memorable and do contribute some intrigue and colour to the world’s population hotchpotch, which is more than can be said for the rest of you!
Gingers Unite!
