AIBU to feel upset after hearing anti-redhead comments at library children’s event?

[future1]

I took my child to a baby and toddler event at the library this morning. There was a mum with her baby whose hair was starting to come through. She was telling her friends loudly how happy she was that her child wasn’t ginger because her husband had some redheads in his family and they were so worried about it.

All said in earshot of my red haired daughter. Luckily she was oblivious but she won’t always be.

This was in a very diverse part of SE London and the mum sounded educated and like she should know better.

I’m not from the UK and was aware of the bullying redheads faced here in the past but maybe naively thought those days were over. Is this what my daughter is going to have to live through here?

And if that woman is reading this, or her friends who laughed along - shame on you.

What a weirdo. I love red hair. I don’t hear that attitude these days, but I guess it hasn’t totally died out yet either.

Silly bitch

Yes probably I'm afraid.

Just as if she wore glasses, or a hearing aid or if she had crooked teeth or freckles etc.

Unfortunately, she'll grow up hearing opinions on her appearance that she won't like.

Unfortunately some things seem to still be considered ‘fair game’ for piss taking. Red hair, short men, Essex girls etc

It’s crap, rude and not fair.

Awful woman!

I love red hair too it's beautiful

Red hair is gorgeous!

Yeah, still quite a common attitude, usually said in a jokey way but hurtful all the same. I was once on a school trip where a grown man shouted something unkind at an 11 year old girl about the fact she had red hair. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m a redhead and it’s pathetic I agree. I know a couple of people who are embarrassed their kids have red hair. I’m happy that my parents always taught me to be proud of mine rather than something to be ashamed of.

Red and proud here. I am afraid the ‘ginger’ comments can be quite cutting when you are a child, but my lovely reh haired niece tells me that the comments are less frequent now she is older.

Ignorant woman, I bet your daughter is a cutie ❤️

I can’t even think of what comment you could have come up with that would have mirrored back to her how awful she was, let others know too and not draw attention to you!!

Sounds like my sister. I have reddish hair so it's personal. I felt things had died down a bit but feel that opinion has got worse in recent years from American TV etc. I think they used to refer to someone as 'a red' like it was a positive and the same as saying 'a brunette' but seem to have adopted our traditional (meant as a slight) of 'ginge' or similar.
Edited to add my sister and her friends used to say if they were dating a guy and found he had raid hair in the family they would dump him. Obviously we are NC for many reasons!

Sadly it happens.

We have the opposite problem. I have 1 with ginger hair and 1 with brown, both with the same haircut. Ever so many times (especially when they were younger) I've had comments from strangers about what lovely hair the ginger child has. None at all about the other child's hair. The brown-haired DC now has an inferiority complex about how their hair isn't interesting enough and no-one likes it!

I have a red haired daughter. Anti red hair comments are very common unfortunately. I love DDs hair and am teaching her to be proud of it.

I have a few standard comebacks for rude people. One which always makes me feel better is just "How rude" . . . Also "that man is just jealous because he hasn't got any hair at all" has been useful surprisingly often.

Awful woman. Could you not have called her out on it? Appreciate that’s difficult but comments like that really need shutting down and it would have done her good to be embarrassed in front of her friends.

My DS is ginger haired and I remember being worried that he might have people say unkind things to him. He is 12 now and has just had hundreds of lovely compliments and no bad comments. I think it might be luck of the drawer if you are unlucky enough to meet someone as ignorant as the woman you did.
I’ve made sure my DS is confident about how he looks and he absolutely loves his hair! Ginger like a gingerbread man he always said! 😊

Ignorant people will always find something unpleasant to say if that’s what they’re like. Hopefully this was a one- off for you and your DD gets lots of lovely compliments too.
X

That doesn’t mean we should tolerate it or accept it.

I wish you’d said something very loudly.

I was going to but then my daughter wandered off so I had to go after her. The woman was gone when I got back. I was going to say she should keep her horrible comments to herself in front of my child.

My 12 year old niece dyed her stunning red hair last Christmas. She is now jet black. She says as long as she is at school it will be black. The comments from the other girls were non stop. School unable to resolve it.

What an ignorant woman. I think that red hair is absolutely beautiful, so striking and unusual.

That's awful. Shame on the school.

Shame on the other parents too.

It’s heartbreaking that that attitude is still there.
One of my girls is red haired and when she was little an acquaintance said, when we bumped into her on the street and dd was in her buggy “Oh! She has red hair.”
It was her tone of voice 🥲

It is awful. My auntie has challenged people like her, asking them if they'd make nasty remarks about her skin colour, and just got the comment back (from a white person!) that it's not the same.
Have you made the group leader aware?

I'm married to a redhead and when I was pregnant with our first baby my so-called (now ex) best friend repeatedly went on about how she hoped my baby "wasn't a carrot head".
This is precisely why she is an ex best friend - I was 21 and had known her since we were in nursery and I had been planning to ask her to be Godmother, but not after that.

Personally I absolutely love red hair and always have and although I'm a natural pale blonde (almost white-blonde) this March I started dyeing my hair red and I love it so much (and feel so much more confident) that I'll only go back to my natural colour when I'm white haired.