The curse of being a ginger
Who are you calling soulless?
I’m the only one in my family with red hair. When I was born, my hair was day-glow orange. Imagine my parents’ shock. Looking today at faded childhood photos, my hair is still unmistakably very bright and very orange. (*)
It turned out that I owed my distinctive hair color to my great-grand mother. My dad knew her as an old lady with white hair, but his mother made the connection. I think I was her favorite because of that – my hair reminded her of her mother.
As we know red hair is a recessive gene. Both parents need to carry it to end up with a Carrot Top baby. We represent only 1 to 2% of the world population, which is tiny. Our rarity explains why I always feel joy when I cross paths with a fellow redhead – we’re part of the same club!
Although I was not bullied as a kid because of my ginger nature, some teasing took place, not always pleasant. What is it with kids that, as soon as you’re a little bit different, they mock you? Where does their conformism come from? I had red hair, an uncommon name and was taller than other kids – what a winning combination when you’re 10!
Working on this post, I learned that, in Europe, red hair was/ is associated with being Jewish as the Ashkenazi carry the gene. Eastern Europe and Russia are not the only places where the stereotype exists: Judas was often depicted as a redhead in Italian and Spanish classical paintings. More troublesome is when, during the Spanish Inquisition, redheads were seen as Jewish and sent to the stake because of their supposed heresy.
Antisemitism being alive and well, I wonder if the idea that gingers are soulless and the teasing/ bullying/ mocking we face don’t come (unconsciously) from the old stereotype linking red hair to Jewish people. Maybe I’m going too far on that one… but maybe not?
On a lighter note, I learned the hard way that redheads require higher levels of anesthetics, something that has been scientifically proven and that I wish my dentist had known before I sat on his chair!
The biggest problem though is how sensitive to the sun my skin is. “Sensitive” doesn’t begin to capture the horror that it is to be me on a sunny day. My skin is not sensitive to the sun – it’s downright allergic!
I can burn in less than five minutes, no exaggeration. My childhood summer memories are full of horrible sunburns. The year when I got a sunburn behind my knees, or when it was on the sole of my feet. Don’t ask me how I managed such feats – all I know is my dad had to carry me for days because I couldn’t walk.
I spent countless nights feeling heat pulsating from my lobster-red skin, wondering if I could crack an egg on it and see it sizzle.
You have no idea the strategies I must deploy on beautiful days. The basic is putting on SFP 50 (nothing else would do), carrying an umbrella in case I end up stuck in a place with no shade, always walking on the shaded side of the street, waiting for the light to change in the safety of a nearby building’s shadow… Things get worse and more stressful on vacation: waking up at ungodly hours so I can swim before the sun gets too strong (at 9am!), carefully choosing excursions and activities that won’t leave me stranded in full sun for hours, wearing pants/ long sleeves tshirt/ hat/ scarf AND still getting a sunburn! It’s not fun.
My non-tanning skin may be useful in countries with low sunlight as I don’t need as much of it to process vitamin D, but it’s a major pain everywhere else. I marvel at people who can walk around on a sunny day without a care in the world. As far as people who lay on the beach for hours, we might as well be from different species!
Although my skin remained the same pasty color throughout my life, my hair went from day-glow orange to strawberry blonde to auburn. I was told redheads don’t get white hair, which is absolutely a fallacy. Our hair gets blonder or turns brown; more than anything, it loses its vibrancy. There is a certain shade of bright orange hair that only exists in young kids – no one keeps that color forever.
As for redheads disappearing over time, it seems that’s another fallacy. We’re here to stay (as long as there’s shade!).
(*) I never understood why English-speaking people say “red hair.” It’s not red, it’s orange. You would think that a language spoken by the Scots and Irish would get its colors straight on that one!
PS: Funnily enough, I just learned that the concept (and therefore, word) for orange came late in our history, well after "red." As you may know, the word for "blue" didn't exist in Ancient Greece, which is why The Odyssey has such strange descriptions of the sea.
It seems the same phenomenon is at play here: people with my hair color were called "redheads" simply because the idea of orange didn't exist at first. The word stuck, even once "orange" became a thing.