When will gingerism go away?

[MrsBDarcey]

I'm tired of it. Just heard how a good friend's son has been ridiculed at school and not by another child but an adult. FFS

Adults are the worst for it IME.

Dd1 is ginger she's not had much attention but a few jokes about Ron Weasley but she lives HP

Adults are worse for it.

Have to say I think it's only actually adults who do it these days. I don't know if any children bullying a kid for having ginger hair, and all the ginger/red haired kids I know have never had any issues from kids.

This has been my experience, both as a child and now mum. I find outside of teasing as well I just get loads of daft comments ie ‘oooohhh bet she’s got a temper!’ Uh, not really? Because temper and ability to control anger isn’t determined by hair colour you dummy. However that’s not too far from any other nonsense I get about my other kids’ looks.

As far as I’m aware nobody has teased her at school. I hope they never do! She’s a confident girl so I feel like even if they did it she would manage to tell someone etc. I think it’s better than when I was a kid to be fair, being ginger was like a curse on your head then. I can’t even remember seeing many red headed people on telly except willow from Buffy, and she was brought across like the ‘less pretty’ friend, seen as more nerdy and not attractive like Buffy/Cordelia. And I remember reading Anne of Green Gables and wondering if my hair would darken to a lovely auburn.

DS9 is ginger and it really is only adults that bring it up.

I agree it's adults who do this - I've never heard a young child comment on red hair one way or the other.

Funny you mention tv as there's still occasionally the red head brought on as the geek/ quirky / less desirable person
I'm a red head as you may guess
I got routinely asked what colour my pubic hair was "collar match your cuffs?" Mind you these days maybe there'll be less pubic hair about full stop.
It saddens me especially as I now pay a fortune to have mine put back and it never does look like it did and I have to accept facing

When we take over the world…

The reality it is it won’t.

Fellow Ginger here!
I can't really recall kids ever making fun of my hair colour when I was younger, but now as an adult there's loads.
I think I love the 'every freckle a Ginger has is the soul of someone they have stole it from' my response is 'as you can see I have loads, fancy your chances?!'

DD is reddish-auburn. The last child who called her ginger regretted it. That was back in primary school. We were called in. Something along the lines of "Well I may be ginger but at least I'm not an stupid idiot!"

Now only adults my age bring it up. She's 15. No-one else in the family has her hair colour. We think it must be a genetic throwback. It's very thick, straight and course. It's beautiful. Her friends all love her hair. Only the insensitive uncles or aunts take the piss, in which case she tells them not be be stupid, or I or her dad tell them not to be stupid. Gingerism is on the wane, I think.

Dd was only telling me the other day that one of the girls in her class calls the boy with ginger hair 'fishfinger' so it is still alive and well among some kids.

My 2nd son is ginger & if I had a £ for every time someone said they love his hair colour I'd be rich by now, people stop me in the street to talk about it, never heard a bad word yet.

My teen DD has had negative comments from other kids about being ginger. Usually when a child tries to use her hair colour as an insult she congratulates them for being observant. They don’t have a good come back for that.
There was one occasion when a group of girls, who think of themselves as tough, went round the school saying it was kick a ginger day. My DD has a reputation for standing up for herself (verbally) so they left her alone but they did try to get to one of DD’s friends who is also ginger. DD stood in their way and loudly asked them what they thought they were doing. Fortunately this bunch turned out be not so tough and left DD and her friend alone.
I do wonder where anyone gets the idea that ginger is something negative. It must have come adults around them.

I do wonder where anyone gets the idea that ginger is something negative. It must have come adults around them.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that it’s a negative but that it’s less common/unusual. Some kids (and adults unfortunately) like to pick on others and it’s easy to pinpoint something that is ‘different’ about a person and often that person will feel sensitive about it because children especially want to fit in.

It's founded in antisemitism and anticatholicism and generalised bigotry/racism/xenophobia - the populations that have the higher proportions of redheads are often also historically discriminated against or outright oppressed - Ashkenazim, Irish/Scots, the Sami people, for example.

The children have to learn it from somewhere. It's not a biological instinct to be abusive. And for that, it requires the adults to teach them the prejudice.

Not soon enough.

My children are not redheads but have inherited the gene. I am hoping that by the time they have kids the last insults will have died out.

I think things are improving- there are a lot of gorgeous red haired models used now, and it's generally shown as attractive on tv. It never was, in my day.

In real life, of course, not all redheads are stunning just as not all blondes and brunettes are stunning.

My teen has gorgeous dark ginger hair and is targeted daily by his peers.

We were out in the car the other day, his window was open. Two kids walking past us at a junction called him a "ginger pussy" as we pulled off.

He's feeling pretty shit about it. He didn't ever have a problem until secondary school though.

@Chimchar I'm so sorry to hear this. Teenagers are dicks. It's so idiotic and somehow still an easy target now other minorities aren't fair game. Although don't get me started on some other insults. It's like some teenage lads have Bernard Manning as a dad. I hope he's ok. I'd try to teach him to laugh or totally look confused - that confuses the bully. For that's what it is.

Thanks @Conniebanana
I said to him that it's hardly an insult, more pointing out the obvious!
"Oi, ginger!" Errr. Yes I am!

He's a quiet kid though and wants to avoid any aggro. Hoping that kids in college are a bit kinder and more mature.

Same as tallism. Never.

It's the same old insults now as when I was a kid
Apparently I should fake tan too
Being tall with glasses and curly red hair was NOT fun

We were just discussing yesterday how our 9yo nephew's hair has become a more definite ginger, as opposed to the reddish blonde it was when he toddler. Everyone was saying how much they love ginger hair and there was a bit of chat about how kids at school used to be teased because of it. My DS(13) told us that there is a lot of ribbing about ginger hair in his school. I honestly thought things had moved on. More fool me.

I have been on the verge of complaining to DH's school on this as he gets a lot of jibes about his hair colour. The school is multi-racial and there is a lot of education around anti-racism, but this is still deemed okay. I had to pull up a teacher on it who made a passing comment at parents' evening. It's not on, and I'm working up to tackling it at school if it continues. I've also noticed that casual racism towards Scots/ Irish/ Welsh is allowed to pass @NeverDropYourMooncup .