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?

Agree with that, drawbelow.
I know a redhead who rejoiced in the NN 'Firecrotch' in high school.

Agree with 1forsorrow - don't patronise children when they complain they are being picked on. Pull on your big girl panties and tackle the abuse.

I've read some of the biggest bullshit on this thread. Having red hair does not give you superpower

It's true that being ginger gets you noticed and people remember you..

Red hair is gorgeous and unique, I bet your daughters are beuatiful , my boys have very light curly blonde hair like me but.my.little girl has dark blonde hair (it's gorgeous long and straight )and she hates it she wants to be a red head like her best freind , who literally has merida hair ! Kids will pick on anything , my daughter has glasses like my husband and she's had freinds begging to go get glasses one even had just frames for a while and others being really mean to her about it , my little girl is very pretty ,very skinny and petite yet she still has confidence issues, she's only 9! I think the fashion industry And media has a lot to answer for ! x

Personally, I love red hair, and I know in the States it's considered a real bonus! Some people are nobs. It's such a very stupid thing to be negative about. It makes me cross and sad.

I'm married to a redhead, affectionately I call him copperbollocks, it is what it is. We have two children and I'm fairly sure our daughter will be a redhead of some shade. I hope she owns it and I want to bring my children up strong and confident, but I very much hope I can build their confidence in qualities much deeper than their looks.

Let's hope they don't hear you calling their dad copperbollocks then

@frillyfucks, and will you be thrilled when leery men on the street roar ‘Oi, ginger pubes, what’s in your knickers?’ at your red haired daughter? Will you say ‘it is what it is’?

@Imactually13 - but WHY do you hate it? Is that some innate hatred, or is it due to hearing the negativity about it? Why do YOU think it's ugly? Sure, some people hate having curly hair, straight hair, or a particular colour hair - but I'm interested in whether your hatred is coming from within or from absorbed negative comments.

Hayfevered, that would not be a reflection on the red haired child.

It would speak volumes about the neanderthals leering and roaring.

If you're not thrilled to have a red haired child, how is the red haired child going to develop the chutzpah to use the nn 'firecrotch'?

You start out woebegone and defensive about red hair and you end up telling your child weak and patronising codswallop about how beautiful they are when they come home crying because people are picking on them.

Embrace the term ginger

I have red hair. I hate the term ginger.

I hate the term ginger too especially when people say "he's a ginger". When did this even become a thing? They are redheads.

I love red hair, it is beautiful. I spent all of my teens dying my hair every shade of red to finally accept that it does not suit me. So I now I just admire from afar.

I'm afraid I don't have an easy solution op. Discrimination of this sort seems to be acceptable so you need to raise your children not to tolerate it.

My partner is brown and has zero tolerance for any racism whatsoever (or so he thinks). Yet his daughters constantly slag off people with red hair. In fact his eldest openly declares she hates her cousins because they're ginger. I told them in no uncertain terms that if they continued with that sort of talk things would get ugly really fast. I had to spell it out to him in black and white why it was unacceptable.

This perception that it's just a bit of fun baffles me.

@mathanxiety, where have I suggested it is? Of course it’s a reflection on the Neanderthals.

I can assure you I am not ‘woebegone and defensive’ about red hair, mine or my child’s. You appear to be reading a post I did not write.

But as a red-haired woman with a red-haired child, I’m damned if I’m going to throw about genital nicknames like ‘fire crotch’ and ‘copperbollocks’ at home to normalise other people’s prurient interest in redheads’ pubic hair. That’s pretty Neanderthal, if you ask me.

@hayfevered I agree with you. Why should we have to call our partner or children names at home to normalise or prepare them for what others might call them.
It's ridiculous.
The more I'm reading about people's experiences and how they have been treated the more it upsets me. There really should be some sort of hate law to protect people with red hair.

“I told them in no uncertain terms that if they continued with that sort of talk things would get ugly really fast.”

I really like you! It’s very easy - pick on a single characteristic of theirs and use their own comments back at them

Mousy minger
Kick a mousy
I hate mousies
Eugh - mousy - should have been drowned at birth
Don’t touch my plate/toy/book - it will get mousy germs
Was the postman a mouse?
Why don’t you just dye it
(Hiss in ear) mousyyyyyyyyyyyyy
(Scream in face) MOU-SEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Just a bit of fun isn’t it? No harm? What could offend?

Firstly, I have to admit I have only read the first 5 pages of this thread but I still wanted to reply.
I'm 55 and went to school in the 1970's in a small school and I don't remember any other redheads in the school and gosh, the bullying was horrible. I can honestly say that the first time I felt OK about my hair colour was in 2013 when I attended the RedHead Day in Breda, The Netherlands.

Wow! Everbody there was celebrating red hair, even the family or friends of the redheads that had gone too! It felt like being at a family gathering and meeting relatives you'd never met before. While I was there we broke the world record (at the time) of the most number of redheads in one place.

It was the same year that we had our first Redhead Day in UK in Manchester which then moved down to London for following years. I would highly recommend every redhead to try to go to a redhead day, it really changed the way I felt about my hair (which nowadays has a few white temple highlights!) I'd love to take my 1 year-old little redheaded grandson one day when he's older!
I love my first school photo!

Having red hair does not give you superpower

Not an actual superpower no. Those don't really exist. However, I would have a very different personality had I been born with brown, black or blond hair. I learned to deal with a lot of bullying. I also learned just how prejudiced people are. People who seem perfectly decent and nice when not confronted with anything threatening and different morph into total wankers who think it's funny to mock ginger hair and it's all 'only a joke' that you should deal with. Well it's a very good way to filter out people you don't want to be friends with, however nice they initially appear to everyone else.

It's made me resilient but it's also made me stand up to bullies and to refuse to tolerate that behaviour in others in any form, whether it's me they're picking on or someone else. I just don't see why anyone should get away with it.

As for toughening people up by mocking them at home - it made it worse for me. The continual teasing which in reality was more like bullying that I got from my siblings didn't make me tougher. It lowered my self esteem and made it more difficult to hit out at other bullies because they were reinforcing what I knew from my home environment.

"As for toughening people up by mocking them at home - it made it worse for me. The continual teasing which in reality was more like bullying that I got from my siblings didn't make me tougher. It lowered my self esteem and made it more difficult to hit out at other bullies because they were reinforcing what I knew from my home environment."

This is always my worry when I see people saying that they're trying to "toughen up" their own redhead family member by using all the negative names at home too. I've seen it mentioned a few times on these threads before and it horrifies me - if there's one place you should be able to feel safe from being called stupid names, it should be home. But if everyone you know, including your own family, call you by the stupid bullying names then OF COURSE it has the potential to make the child just feel awful about themselves, rather than "toughening them up" - and the worst bit is, you can't know which way it will go, so it's better to be safe than sorry and NOT call them all the foul names that are out there for redheads.

There's building resilience, and there's having your child's back.

And fuck off with you 'toughening up' bollocks.

Why can't you say 'I know, that really hurts. I don't know why they think that's ok because saying nasty stuff based on the way you look is totally NOT ok'

I got called all sort of names by my family in the name of 'toughening me up' that have stick with me to this day and have had a detrimental effect. There's a difference between empathetic parenting and creating snowflakes.

@Hayfevered
But as a red-haired woman with a red-haired child, I’m damned if I’m going to throw about genital nicknames like ‘fire crotch’ and ‘copperbollocks’ at home to normalise other people’s prurient interest in redheads’ pubic hair. That’s pretty Neanderthal, if you ask me

Yeah, where did I say you should do that?

And where did I say the particular NN I mentioned was used at home?

I used the NN as an example of how to sail through life without taking the words of people with personality problems/chips on their shoulders/horrible homes seriously.

That goes for @Rosebud79 too. Read what I wrote.

I was always very proud to have red hair as a child - it wasn't common, it made me feel special. Certainly nicer than the mouse brown it's evolved into as a middle aged woman.

I used the NN as an example of how to sail through life without taking the words of people with personality problems/chips on their shoulders/horrible homes seriously.

I went to school with 1100 children. Of the 200+ in my year group I had close contact with at least half, probably more, at some stage said something negative about my hair. Of those in other year groups, the taunts as I walked around the school were continual. There was a also a huge amount of physical bullying.

I would have had to border on some kind of sociopathy to have let that lot wash over me in some way. Try subjecting any 12 year old to that and saying they should sail through life ignoring it. Girls in my class refused to be friends with me because if they associated with me they too got bullied. I actually started to distance myself from people in order to keep them safe and away from what I was going through. As an adult, when I had to have therapy to deal with the after effects, I was told that some of what happened to me amounted to psychological torture.

If you think that using a nickname to teach someone to sail through life is going to combat that lot then you have absolutely no idea what school children are capable of putting someone through. None.

@FixItUpChappie actually many women dye their hair a 'mousy brown colour' and look gorgeous. Also a lot of models such as Cindy Crawford, Christy turlington, Yasmeen Guari had brown hair and looked sexy. They certainly wouldn't have looked as gorgeous with blonde or red hair. And as you know they were noticed big time.

OP tjis makes me so sad. My niece has beautiful red hair, she also has a birthmark on her face and has been the target of some very unkind comments from both children and adults over the years.