To love my ginger hair?

[SleepForTheWeek]

All through school I was mocked for my hair colour, I hated it and prayed that if I had children they wouldn't be ginger. I dyed it blonde/brown/bright red when I was old enough (not at same time!)

It wasn't until I was an adult and working in an industry that involved people from other countries that I started getting compliments about my natural colour, I've not dyed it for a few years now and love it! It's not JUST 'ginger', it's reds/blonds/browns/golds all intertwined.

Even now I hear people say 'I hope my baby is not ginger' and I've even had a 'friend' tell me they'd drown their baby if it was ginger (in apparent jest). It's not OK to say that about skin colour/disabilities/sexual orientation, so why is it socially acceptable to say it about children with red hair???

Anyway, no point to this except to say

EMBRACE YOUR GINGER HAIR!

There were quite a few ginger kids at my school 50-ish years ago (Scottish city) and I don't ever recall anyone being teased for their hair colour. Is it quite a recent thing?

Anyway I also think ginger hair is gorgeous.

I have hair similar to you OP and I too hated it as a child but love it now I'm an adult because it is so unusual. I was also bullied and taunted throughout school. I remember as a teenager the taunts became more personal and there was a group of boys in year 8/9 who used to follow me around asking if my pubic hair was ginger! It makes me fume thinking about it now, but at the time I used to just ignore them because I was too humiliated to think of a reply.

I have a DD who has very blonde hair and I must admit I was relieved she wasn't a redhead because I couldn't bear the thought of her being bullied. I now have an 8 week old DS who looks like he might be a redhead and I'm determined I'm not going to accept any bullying about hair colour as harmless childhood teasing, which is how it was seen in my case.

I live in Australia now and attitudes to red hair seem even worse than in the UK, at least in my experience. It's just seen as fair game and I don't know why. I met with my mums group the other week and one of them was telling a hilarious tale about how she thought she saw some red in her daughter's hair the other week and freaked out. Everyone reassured her that her daughter had brown hair and they couldn't see the red. I just sat there quietly until a couple of them caught on and looked embarrassed but also pitying, which really annoyed me.

I honestly think if DS turns out to be a full strength redhead we might need to move before he starts school!

My baby has beautiful auburn hair that gets complimented on a regular basis. It runs in the family but had skipped a couple of generations so the whole family was waiting to see when it would appear again. We were thrilled when baby came out with a mop of red hair

I have a ginger hint to my natural colour and my brother glows in the dark. We were both teased growing up. When i was expecting my first dd i was convinced she was going to have ginger hair everyone said i was mad. I was actually genuinely disappointed when she came out with a mop of dirty blonde! My first words were 'oh she's not ginger' even the Mw looked at me like i had lost the plot. It is a strange colour i suppose but i love it! Embrace the ginge!

Ollivander84....beautiful hair!!

This picture is all over the web, sometimes with the caption "Fingers aren't always good-looking but when they are, they are beautiful". How true.

Oh FFS. How did 'gingers' become 'fingers' ? Grrr.

One thing you can guarantee with red hair is that it stands out. I can remember back before Princess Fergie made is trendy, and the shit you got for it was ridiculous even as a very young child. I'm dreading my dd turning teens and getting the crap I got then because it does ensure male attention, and male attention is not valuable. A beautiful colour that Britain turns to shit.

@Ollivander84 I LOVE your curls!!! I have very wavy/frizzy hair and need to straighten it to make it look acceptable!

My 20 y/o DD is ginger and she hates it with a passion and dyes it the most ridiculous darkest brown imaginable.

Hers naturally is also an amazing mixture of differenr shades . I pray that very soon she will come to love it and stop dying it.

Everyone always said how lovely it was except the stupid twats at school that teased her, I reckon the probably didn't want to admit they actually liked it!!

13% of the Scottish population are natural redheads. 5% of the Irish are. They are the highest percentages of any country apparently. Originates from Vikings.

I love mine! I always got teased about it by the boys in high school and now the same lads tell me how much they love redheads

My 13 year old dd has dark red hair. My husband and I are both dark so we were surprised. It is an absolutely beautiful colour. Strangers would often comment on how lovely it was but she did get negative comments at school. Sadly she now dyes it brown however I know when she becomes an adult she will finally appreciate it.

I could have pretty much written your post, even down to the "I would drown my baby at birth if it was ginger" comment.

Another ginger here who used to hate it. I remember being a very young teenager and having a much older man ask his friends loudly if they thought my carpet matched . I love my hair now though it's thick and long and always gets compliments.

I'd sell my granny for ginger hair.

YANBU I love my red hair (more auburn than ginger)
MIL has actually said in front of me that the first thing she said when DP was born (emergency cs at that) was 'please tell me it isn't ginger?!' - FIL had v ginger hair.

I am naturally ginger and dye mine either blonde or red. To me there is a huge difference between ginger and red. It is like comparing blonde and mousey hair colour.

I love my red hair, even as a child I liked it. Both my parents are red heads, and 3 out of 4 siblings are too. I think being raised in a tiny community in Wales helped as we were never bullied etc.

As a family we are also very strong (wide shoulders but small waist), does anyone else have this conection?

I thought ginger was the In thing now?!

I come from a family where there are lots of redheads on both sides in the generation above me. Sadly it missed me out, I'm dark blonde but I've gone through lots of phases of dyeing it various shades of red.

One of my DSes had the most gorgeous ginger hair when it first started to come through as a baby & I thought it might have skipped a generation. It didn't last though, it just got gradually darker, but you can still see beautiful coppery streaks in his dark brown hair in the right light.

I don't think the popularity of red hair dyes and being naturally red headed are always comparable.

A lot of people don't like the pale skin, freckles, orange eyelashes and eyebrows that often comes with having naturally red/ginger hair.

We’ve got a DD who has ginger hair, when she was younger it was a beautiful bright orange and as she has got older it has mellowed out but is still absolutely gorgeous she gets so many compliments from strangers whenever we are out.

One thing we did and still do is call her ginger or ginge, we decided to do it because we knew whether we liked it or not she was going to be called it as she got older and when she went to school so we claimed it as a term of endearment instead. So when someone has called her it at school she hasn’t batted an eyelid at the phrase and they’ve got bored of calling her it because it doesn’t effect her.
We were called mean when she was very little and we called her it but we’re glad we did now really

DS(1) is a red head- he has loads of hair. He’s so gorgeous, and I love his hair, but we’ve already had some shockingly rude comments about it. He’s 1 FFS.

worraliberty I may have misunderstood the point you're making but I found your post quite offensive. Would it be okay to list the other features that may come with eg black skin to justify why you don't like the skin colour?

It was particularly shit for me as a redheaded kid when the bullying extended to the things you mentioned below like pale skin. I ended up hating everything about myself.