Red hair child

[bibbidibobbididoo12]

I have 2 red head girls age 7 and 9.
Both have started to questions about their hair.
Today one of my children asked is having red hair a bad thing.
Obviously I asked her why?
She explained in a book she was reading when they described a character they used all negative words such as 'fat, ugly and had red hair'.

I am constantly telling them how beautiful their hair is and other people regularly tell them.
But both girls have started saying people are just it to make me feel better about our hair colour.
It's a catch 22 situation.
The oldest girl has been bullied and called ginger idiot and you can't play with us because you have ginger hair.

The whole thing just makes me really sad.

I don't know what to say to them?
Do I say in the past people used to think ginger hair/red hair was not as nice etc or not even tell them that? Then they ask Why did they say that?

@Battysace123 of course all hair colours are lovely. The point of this thread is what to do about red head kids being made to feel ugly and to need to change themselves because of nastiness from other people. And ginger hair is rarer, so your comment doesn't make sense.

I don't wander about thinking or saying daft stuff about other people's hair colour but if some eejit says ugh i would hate to have a ginger kid, i am going to make my point quite strongly because they are being thoughtlessly vile at best.

I’d love to know the true origin of anti ginge sentiment. I’ve heard everything from the fact we might be less genetically desirable mates, to anti Scots, Irish and Jewish sentiment. It’s quite interesting. Yet there’s also definitely a fetishising of red headed women in particular. Of course dark hair is beautiful but my dd has mousy brown hair, and yes it is a bit ‘boring’. It’s neither here nor there, neither brown or blonde. I admit to being glad my dc haven’t inherited ginger hair, it will save them a lot of potential teasing. But I kinda hope dd ends up going much darker like dh.

I think redheads are beautiful, which is why I pay money to be one. When I lived in Britain, I was surprised by the vitriol so many people had towards redheads. It got to the point that I ditched the red dye and went back to my natural blonde - which I don't like on me as it looks wishy-washy with my pale skin. I really missed my red hair, fake as it was!

I'm back in my native country and devoted to the red dye again. Still don't understand the hate for it and can only assume those who object to "gingers" are narrow-minded and thick as pigshit.

Sorry, OP, I haven't been much help, but I agree with what pps have said about being your daughter's cheerleader and focusing her attention on fabulous redheaded role models.

@hoorayforharoldlloyd people are made to feel unattractive for all sorts of reasons. Some women feel unattractive because they are black, some because that are size 16. If you look in magazines models are mainly white, tall with coloured eyes. I'm petite with brown eyes and mixed Asian and white, now should I feel like shit. No fucking way. Their is only one of me and that's what makes me special. All females should be installed with that belief, red hair or not.

@Peapod29 fetishisation of the ginger female backs up the anti irish/scots/jewish prejudice theory. The other is awful and bad and therefore sexually attractive while also still being awful and bad. All those Pre-Raphaelite paintings...

@Battysace123 you know perfectly well this thread isn't aimed at making you feel bad at all.

Tell them how genetically strong they are. People with red hair have a higher pain tolerance than those without. How cool is that?

@hoorayforharoldlloyd. I think you have missed the point. What I am trying to say is we are all rare and unique, red hair or not. I am 37 years old and thankfully have always embraced myself. Some tittle tattle on mumsnet will not make me feel bad at all.

Sorry, bit late to the party but ...

If you're a red haired girl or a kid with a big afro in a sea of ordinary children with brown and blonde pony tails

... is a TERRIBLE thing to say. So black kids and kids with red hair are somehow 'non-ordinary'? FFS. What an appallingly narrow world view. Literally shocking use of 'ordinary'.

@opticald exactly. Alot of two faced people on mumsnet

I am, in fact, extraordinary. Didn’t know it was all down to my super-red powers

Unfortunately, I think some people get kicks out of being unkind to others. I don't believe they are always insecure themselves but just because they find it amusing to put others down and that was certainly my experience at secondary school in the early 2000s.

I always thought I didn't get bullied over my hair but I think that's a bit of denial on my part. I guess I did. I wasn't teased mercilessly but people were horrible. In my experience, it didn't matter that Nicole Kidman or whoever had red hair, they'd just said well you aren't her.

A particularly horrid group of girls would never talk to me because I was a "ginger minger" and for two years I never spoke a word in my GCSE English group because I didn't want to draw attention to myself. My predicted grade dropped from an A* to a C because of lack of participation on my part. I got a B in the end but I find it quite sad that my insecure teenage self felt too ashamed to even speak in a lesson.

I also had glasses for long distance too and I remember wearing them for science to read the board and took them off and put them in front of my pencil case to complete my work. A right cow said to her friend, "look, she's trying to hide her glasses from us" I mean... how narcissistic can you get?!

I started dying my hair at 13 and this didn't help either. It made me feel better at the time but people would still say well she's ginger underneath so it doesn't matter what she's done to hide it. Lord knows, people can be cruel! To this day I still colour my hair. I'm pregnant and I'm letting my roots come through as an experiment to see whether I want to revert back to my natural colour.

I walked into a pub about 6 months ago and a man in his 40s shouted "ginger!" at me as I walked in. I am one of those people who can never think of something clever to say in the moment so I just ignored him but I wish I'd have said "I know - aren't I lucky. I'm afraid being thick as shit is a trait you have not to be proud of".

It's a shame that people believe that your hair of all things defines who you are as a person. There was quite a popular ginger boy in my school (who was also rude to me!) but it seemed like the rules could be bent for him.

I had a friend who was overweight and very insecure about it and I remember walking to school with her and us complaining about hair/weight and she told me that "at least you can do something about it. I can't. Anyway, nobody likes you because they think you're too weird and sarcastic. Why don't you stop that?". I don't think I've ever actually changed but I'm definitely happy with who I am. I actually take smug comfort in seeing what some of these bell ends from school are up to these days and believe myself to be more successful. That's my little last laugh!

Sorry for the rambling post. I've never really shared my experience but it just goes to show that sometimes, it doesn't matter what you do to change it, who famous has that hair, how old you are even, if people want to be cruel, they will. Teach your daughter to be proud of who she is and have some quick witted comments.

When ds19 was born, the first question my mum asked was ‘does he have red hair? If he does I’m buying hair dye’- there is no red hair in either side of the family. Bitch.

I thought times had changed until ds15, came home from his first week in high school, really upset because another boy has picked on his friend for having red hair and glasses.

Ds couldn’t understand why this boy was picking on his friend as up until then no one had ever said anything negative (in front of ds) to his friend.

He said ‘what’s wrong with him having red hair and glasses? Loads of people have wear glasses and have red hair’. I admit I was stuck for an answer, and frankly still am. I’m desperately trying to strip my dark hair so I can go auburn. It’s bloody beautiful!!!!

There are lots of red haired female role models but only Ron bloody Weasley for boys.

There's Tom Hiddlestone, Michael Fassbender, Paul Bettany, Ed Sheeran, Kristofer Hivju (GoT), Damian Lewis. Not all role models exactly but talented and well known.

As for criticising brown hair as boring - I don't think it is. But I will say that to people who rip the piss out of my hair. They're choosing to have a dig at me for being different, so I choose to have a dig at them for having similar hair colour to other people. And red hair is more unusual than other colours because it is recessive, so you have to have two copies of the gene that causes it, one from each parent.

Not that I think having a more frequently occurring hair colour is boring but I will retaliate if people have a go at me for being ginger. My parents were very much of the 'ignore them and they'll go away' school of thought. Well they don't - but hit back and more often than not they'll back off.

If it is any help, the people who picked on my hair in school had their beauty peak at 16-18 and now are mostly plain to unattractive.
I like ‘the redder the head, the better in bed’ as a comeback.
It’s not right though. I felt ugly from a very young child and it’s stayed with me. If it had been racist abuse it would have been stamped on, not tolerated whatsoever and educated out of them.

Another red head here. I read the whole thread, and I could relate to do much.

I remember adults looking at me in disgust from around age 3, children being nasty from infant school onwards. Ginger, carrot top, freckle face. To secondary school Ginge! Ginger pubes. When you get pubes, they'll be ginger. No one will ever want you. No one will ever love you. If I had a baby and it was ginger, I'd get an abortion.

Comments on tv like One born every minute "So long as the baby's not ginger, it'll be alright"

Delightful stuff.

I wanted to dye my hair black, and just blend in like every one else.

My parents advised me to just ignore them. Which I did. Walked around with my head so low, they decided to call me the hunchback of Notre Dame too.

Things got better as I got older, and I've never been single in my adult life. Not sure if that's a good thing.

I remember reading sad stories in the paper about teenagers taking their own life because of being bullied for being ginger.

I'm happy with it now, and it's just a part of me. It's hard being a kid though. Definitely take it up with the school, because it is bullying and should be stamped out.

As for criticising brown hair as boring - I don't think it is.

I will be honest and say I think brown hair is boring, to me it is probably the least desirable hair colour. . One of my children has it and it is such a flat colour. However I would never say it to my child or anyone else but I did feel a pang when I saw it changing from a fair to brown colour. My reasons for disliking it is it just does t stand out in any way, it looks dull. I know very few women with brown hair who haven’t coloured it a shade of red.

Even today in the Daily Mail there is article with Max Branning Eastenders Actor.
In the comments section people saying he is a baked bean etc. Just some really horrible comments about his colouring.
Imagine being allowed to say comments about other people's skin tone and it being just a joke.
It is just sad really.
I hope as my children get older maybe these 'jokes' will be deemed unacceptable.

Daily Mail does attract the lowest of the low.

Bibbidi - I'd like to hope so too but while there are still people out there failing to accept that it IS a problem, that it's "just a joke" and all the rest, then it's unlikely, sadly.

I agree that ignoring it isn't always the way forward. If you're told the same thing often enough you do believe it and it will affect your feelings about yourself. Learning resilience - yes, better option - decent comebacks etc., and understanding that their opinion is of no value to you or in fact anyone else.

But it's HARD. Fucking hard, especially when you're little. :(

Whilst I don’t think you can equate it totally with racism, people in real life who tell you you’re being ridiculous and erasing ethnic minorities’ experiences by likening red head abuse to racism annoy me a bit (hear me out lol) because it can definitely be embedded in things like anti-Irish and anti-Scots sentiment as someone with an Irish parent and red hair it can be a bit hurtful ! I’m not saying it’s racism because Irish or other red haired brits with Irish backgrounds are white Europeans but more like an in-race xenophobia? I guess?

There's also the historical link between redheads and witchcraft - daft but still.
howtobearedhead.com/8-historical-facts-about-redheads-and-witchcraft/

@theschoolonthehilll I know many women with brown hair and none have dyed it red. If you go on insta for example alot of these fashion/beauty influences have brown hair and tanned skin and are slim. obviously tanned hair and dark hair look gorgeous but each to their own.

But let's not make anyone extraordinary just because of their hair colour. A person's character is far more important. Research has shown that men find women with brunette/black hair more attractive then even blonde or red hair but our self esteem shouldn't be placed into the hands of men.

My DM is auburn. She says unless she looks in the mirror she can't see she has red hair which she loved. She's now white-ish.

There are many women who dye their hair red.