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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to be rather hurt by the anti-ginger sentiment in my office

173 replies

SarfEasticated · 11/02/2012 11:10

One of our departmental secretaries has just found out she is having a boy, and in the process of her coming round to tell everyone said that her partner had said 'if he's a ginger he's going back in'. Then quite a few of my colleagues who I have always liked, waded in with comments of agreement and general revulsion at the very idea of a red-headed child.
Made me feel awful as I do have red-hair, and any of my future children could have it too. So basically they all think I and other red-headed people are freaks that should never have been born. :(

OP posts:

motherinferior · 11/02/2012 18:54

Oh FFS, I have had two glasses of wine and am Feeling Frivolous. And rather like the idea of being fabulously gorgeous. I am 48 and don't get out much.

crustyonion · 11/02/2012 18:55

I posted this anecdote on another thread about funny things kids say.

My DS has red hair. I've taught him that it is ginger, not red, auburn or orange (he does call it orange occasionally actually). My intention is that when eventually a nasty child uses the word as a taunt, it won't hurt his feelings. What I didn't expect was for him to yell GINGER! at a 14 year old boy from his pushchair (when he was 2.5 years old). Fortunately when the boy realised that it was a small-also-ginger-boy doing the shouting, and that I hadn't taught my son to be outrageously rude, he did laugh. I was mortified.

motherinferior · 11/02/2012 18:56

Anyway the genetics of red hair are really quite complex; there is a bloke at Edinburgh who specialises in it. I personally have an Indian mother and an Anglo/Scandinavian father, no Celtic relatives whatsoever, and red hair. So ner.

motherinferior · 11/02/2012 18:56

There are Japanese redheads, you know.

WorraLiberty · 11/02/2012 18:57

I'm 42 and stay in a lot for the good of the community

Original poster

SarfEasticated · 11/02/2012 18:58

Worra I agree, no hair colour is better than any other, I don't care if people don't like my hair colour, or like it to be honest, but I do care if people describe it like it's the most loathesome thing in the world, or if having a baby with red hair is something to be revolted by. It is just a hair colour!

OP posts:

DressDownFriday · 11/02/2012 19:02

My sister dyes her hair blonde and denies ever being a ginger. She's never been bullied but we've always had a bit of banter about it. (I'm the odd one out of a full family of red heads)

My DD came home from school saying that someone had called her friend a 'ginger twat'. I asked what he thought to that. She replied that he was really mad because he 'hates being called ginger' . Poor lad had taken to putting blonde streaks in his hair - he's only 8.

Unfortunately, it's become acceptable to make ginger jokes as it is to make jokes about blonde Essex girls etc.

WorraLiberty · 11/02/2012 19:04

That's exactly it Sarf

That's why I think parents would be doing their kids a better service if they taught them that hair colour doesn't matter and looks are irrelivent...it's what's inside that counts.

That's a far better message than gushing about how 'special' they are and how jealous everyone who teases them is.

troisgarcons · 11/02/2012 19:04

Tell you what - when they are all bald they'd be grateful for any hair -and red heads rarely lose hair!

I personally have an Indian mother and an Anglo/Scandinavian father, no Celtic relatives whatsoever, and red hair. So ner.

Alexander the Greek was ared head, so was Julius Caesar - and in northern India, there are quite often tall blue-eyes blondes within the Sikh ci#ommunity. Also, Afghanistan, by virtue of being not-quite conquered by Alex-the -Greek left quite a few soldiers behind, who settled and there are many many fair red headed Afghanis.

is full of useless trivia

LadyBeagleEyes · 11/02/2012 19:05

But to many people it's not just a hair colour, it's a reason for being bullied.
I don't see mousey coloured, or blondes or brunettes even remarked upon,
I think it's because a real genuine redhead is in a minority, it is quite a rare colour.
It shouldn't be an issue at all, but it is, and I'm glad to see so many people coming out and saying how beautiful and unique it is, and hope mums with redheads can refer to this thread and realise the 'ginger' remarks are just as ridiculous as they sound, and reassure their children they are normal and lucky.

WorraLiberty · 11/02/2012 19:09

Yes LBE that's it "reassure them they are normal"

Not filling their heads with nonsense that their hair colour makes them more special than the person sat next to them, or teaching them to assume everyone's jealous of them. Or persuading them that everyone thinks their hair is simply gorgeous.

Reassure them that they are normal...and therefore some people will like their hair colour and others wont.

Just like any other normal person and their hair colour.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 11/02/2012 19:13

I have room for Damian Lewis down there too...

spiderlight · 11/02/2012 19:13

I would adore my son whatever colour his hair; it just so happens to be gloriously ginger and striking enough that from a very young age he has had frequent comments on it from all and sundry - all positive so far - so he's had it ingrained in him very early on that his hair colour is significant. Fortunately he loves it at the moment (at nearly 5) and anyone who describes it as strawberry blonde is loudly informed that 'actually it's ginger!' He had to make a self-portrait at school recently and deliberately chose neon orange tissue paper for the hair :o Children will always find something to tease about, sadly, but there's no excuse for it in adults.

troisgarcons · 11/02/2012 19:14

Rewinding to someones post (sorry, cant go back to hunt for it, but it was a good parallel) - "gingerism" is akin to "racism" (without intending to demean racism in anyway). It's singling out a physical feature, namely colour.

I suppose once could argue that you can change the colour of your hair, but that is masking identity. And some clever cloggs will come along with a comment about skin bleaching for blacks a'la'Jacko.

Although (thinking out loud so bare with me) blondes have had their fair of share of stick over the years - mind you the majority of blondes aren't natural and it's a look/type they actively promote.

crustyonion · 11/02/2012 19:14

When my son was born my own father said something disparaging about his red hair. I forget what now, but I remember being so shocked that he could possible say anything negative about this child who clearly was the best baby born, ever. Also, dad has a ginger beard

Both DP and I are blonde. Well we were when we were younger and didn't work in offices. Now we're just mousey. Everyone asks where DS gets his colouring from and it's generations back. His great great grandparents on both sides.

DS's hair colour really suits him, his personality, and his name. I adore the whole package. Naturally.

WorraLiberty · 11/02/2012 19:17

Never too proud to accept a mouldy rolo

UmmOfUmbridge · 11/02/2012 19:33

My young dds best friend has lovely ginger hair. Dd is blonde (slowly becoming generic mousy), she said a couple of times that she wished she had ginger hair like x. I thought this was quite cute so mentioned it to x's Mum who got all defensive and said 'well we prefer to call it strawberry blonde'....
Erm.. Okay!!

balia · 11/02/2012 19:35

Let them mess with the...

ScatterChasse · 12/02/2012 13:45

See umm I think that's stupid. Strawberry blonde is a completely different colour.

I couldn't just say I was blonde because I dislike being called brunette.

Kennyp · 12/02/2012 15:49

Love this thread. Big up the ginger massive!

My esttranged twat of a mother thought that ginger was the curse of the devil. Literally. If you poured tea after her then it meant you would be cursed with ginger twins. Her words.

My lovely son has ginger hair and he wears glasses and is living the ginger dream. He looks like a small rooster and smells warm and wonderfu, fwiw. He gets more ckmments about the glasses than about his barnet. By nobheads who think they are funny.

JuliaScurr · 12/02/2012 16:02

cbem I think it's because after Norman Conquest, all language & culture of native Celts etc was seen as inferior, including redhair. Agree it's the last acceptable bigotry

RVF400 · 12/02/2012 17:11

I'm a redhead and have only ever been complimented on my hair, thankfully. I don't know when this anti-ginger malarky started but growing up in the 80s and early 90s I only remember all my mum's friends saying "oh hasn't RVF got lovely hair", and when I was a teenager all my friends seemed to be dying their hair auburn. These days I see loads of press articles about redheads being bullied at school and I think it's really sad.
The Ginger festival in the Netherlands
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8245290.stm
suggests the sentiment is not limited to the UK.
I've always been proud of my hair, it's my pasty, freckly, sun-hating complexion that bothers me.

GnomeDePlume · 12/02/2012 17:23

I think that some people have an inner bigot which cannot now be expressed about race and religion so instead the exact same emotion (the need to feel superior yet at the same time frightened), is expressed about hair colour.

Whenever I hear comments about a natural hair colour I find myself repulsed by the perpetrator as I suspect that what they are really expressing is a kind of suppressed racism.

OP YANBU

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