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Original poster

Tesco Christmas card making fun of children with red hair

377 replies

Northernlebkuchen · 15/12/2009 11:48

here

I can't believe they think they should sell something like this. So glad this woman got them taken out of our local tesco - now what about the rest of the chain?

I know two children horribly bullied because of their (beautiful) red hair. It's just the same as any other discrimination - breeds hate and misery

OP posts:
ilovesprouts · 16/12/2009 07:20
Grin
sarah293 · 16/12/2009 07:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Original poster
Northernlebkuchen · 16/12/2009 08:19

Oh Shabba - I love your Dad!
In fact I'll swap him for my dh who when I told him about this dared to laugh! I informed him we have no sense of humour in this house and then harangued him for twenty minutes explained the issues and he agrees with me now that it is Very Wrong.

OP posts:
mumbot · 16/12/2009 08:41

I found it really heart warming to read this thread and find so many MNetters dislike the card. When is it ever OK to make someone feel inferior because of their appearance?

shabbapinkfrog · 16/12/2009 08:42

Northern he is very interesting
We ended up talking about the Gurkahs and how Joanna Lumley is marvellous He wants to know if anyone knows the manufacturers name and address of this card - so he can punch them write to them.

I know one thing though - he will never vote Labour again and its all Gordon Browns fault!!

TheShowMustGoOn · 16/12/2009 08:57

Not much more I can add to the debate.

But one of my closest school friends has gorgeous wavy red hair. Because of bullying at school she used to use permanent black hair dye which always had a slight green tinge to it and she looked awful. Age 16 she finally saw sense - chopped it all off and grew it out and became a model for select.

ilovesprouts · 16/12/2009 09:07

i like the card ,like i said i have 2dcs whith ginger hair ,the worlds gone pc mad

madhairgirl · 16/12/2009 09:10

I don't think the card is funny as it is laughing at children with red hair, not adults. Only last week I was in my local library with my 3 and 4 year old and 4 teenagers started picking on my children for no reason than the fact that they had red hair. They swore at them saying that they were "f..... ginger b..." if you get the idea. I think when bullying can start so young, cards like these are irresponsible, and yes I like a joke but some things are not funny, and I can't understand why complete strangers pick on others beacuse of the colour of their hair. If our skin was a different colour etc, everyone would be in uproar over this sort of thing.

ilovesprouts · 16/12/2009 09:14

well i must be one of the lucky ones as ive never heard my kids been called names just because they are ginger !!

madhairgirl · 16/12/2009 09:17

Very lucky!!

cory · 16/12/2009 09:22

I was bullied for being swotty and geeky at school- but frankly, that is totally different from being bullied in a context where adults are also viewed with suspicion because of those very same characteristics.
As an adult being swotty and geeky is an advantage; that is a huge difference.
It really isn't long ago since Irish people were routinely stopped by the police- and red hair is traditionally associated with Irishness.

I was bullied by people who knew me and disliked me and were looking for something to pick on. That is very different from the situation where somebody pitches into a complete stranger because they are black and have red hair or an Irish accent.

The point with the cards is they wouldn't be funny unless there was a general assumption that red haired children are somehow less desirable. Their whole point lies in the offensiveness - take that away and you've taken away their raison-d'etre. Can any of you really imagine a card that said 'Santa loves all children, even blonde ones'?

ThumbleBells · 16/12/2009 09:32

yes you must be, mustn't you, ilovesprouts.

To answer whoever asked - I have been bullied both as a child and an adult for having red hair, and mine isn't even that red. Being told I "have foxy hair and stink of piss" as an adult (by another so-called adult) qualifies as bullying imo, although perhaps not in others' opinion on this thread.

edam · 16/12/2009 09:57

Humour often involves someone being the butt of the joke but it's Not Nice when the butt is a group of people who are distinguished by something they can't control - like being disabled. It's OK if they are a privileged group, like rich people IMO, but not if they are victims of bullying.

Jimmy Carr did the awards for my work once and was very nasty about gypsies - which I suppose is classed as racism - and I found it objectionable. He had a go at women as well, probably because the audience was mainly female, which I didn't appreciate. It was nasty rather than funny, IYKWIM. He's very talented but I wish he'd choose better targets. Especially as he's a middle class white male.

I used to write comedy for fringe theatre and my targets were usually politicians or someone who had been in the news for being daft, not the powerless (I was writing for a newsy satirical show). Have I Got News For You once did a joke about my Dad which was funny, as he was in the news for doing something which wasn't very clever at all - although not that serious, he didn't lose his job or anything.

Although I appreciate a joke which is well structured or clever it's not really on to have a go at those who are victims in any sense. I wouldn't like a joke that targetted people who were bullied at school but I would laugh at one about school bullies, possibly, IYSWIM.

OrdinarySAHM · 16/12/2009 10:13

My kids are ginger.

I think the reason I find the card so upsetting is that it is about children, not adults, and children are more vulnerable.

This card is adults making it out to be ok to make children feel inferior due to a physical characteristic they are born with and can do nothing about.

I agree that during childhood, bullies will pick on any small difference they can find, to get a target for their bullying. But don't we try to teach children that bullying is unacceptable? And yet here are adults, designing a card which makes bullying seem acceptable - and this is bullying of children by adults who should know better, not by children who are still learning how to behave acceptably towards each other.

I've never really understood what is funny about running other people down. Some 'comedians' on tv seem to be famous for being horrible about other people and I think "What have you actually done that is clever or talented or worthwhile yourself? All you have done is talk about how crap other people are".

My children haven't been picked on because of their hair enough for them to have noticed yet. Once when I was walking through town with them though, a group of teenagers walked past and one of them said "Ugh, it's ginger" about one of my kids. I just don't get how someone could be heartless enough to say that so that a child (aged 3 at the time) could hear it and feel that being ginger was disgusting and made him less than human (as she referred to him as 'it'). Why and how can it be ok to make a child feel like this? And can any of you who think the 'ginger joke' is funny, explain to me what makes this funny?

Flightattendant · 16/12/2009 10:14

It really saddens me that mothers are buying this card for their very young children...teens, fine,t hey can tell you to sod off if they don't think it's funny.

But babies, toddlers...bloody hell What does that teach them?

It's also such a big cover-all to say 'grow up and toughen up', isn't it - that's what they used to say about buggering young boys in the toilets at school.

Thought things had moved on a bit from that archaic viewpoint but apparently not.

SpottyMuldoon · 16/12/2009 11:23

I was bullied at school (and at home to a certain extent by my siblings) for no particular reason. There is nothing outstanding about me except maybe I was very quiet and a bit of a loner/outsider.

I find it hard to believe that those who say they were bullied and it had no effect on them are being entirely truthful. Or maybe they are fortunate to have some inner strength or outside support that those of us who struggled didn't have. My Mum would just tell me to ignore them (hard to do when the whole class isn't speaking to you anyway) and my elder brother told me to fight my own battles. I've never lost that sense of loneliness and lack of loyalty/solidarity.

It's so much bollocks to say that just because it happened to you and you're ok that it's fine for anyone else to have to go through it. Piss-taking between friends is one thing but sustained verbal/physical bullying can never be a good thing. Telling someone to 'toughen up' is monumentally unhelpful.

daftpunk · 16/12/2009 11:29

Edam;

i'm just wrapping one of dh's christmas presants...it's Frankie Boyles "my shit life so far"...

on the back it says

" if you like Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code, why are you even looking at this you retard"...

i lol.....

am i wrong...?

OrdinarySAHM · 16/12/2009 11:44

I think people who say they were bullied but it didn't affect them say this because it is painful to think about how it did affect them and easier to be in denial.

There are also some people who feel that if it happened to them then why should other people not have to go through it too (to make it 'fair' in a warped kind of way). I think this shows that they are still bitter about what happened to them.

julie4travel · 16/12/2009 12:02

my ds loves being a red head and laughed when we saw the card on tv last night. I actually would buy one for a joke if i saw it in the shop. He is proud of his hair and has it long for a boy as its a great feature. There is actually a large proportion of red heads in his school and bullying doesnt take place.

shonaspurtle · 16/12/2009 12:05

The difference (and I promise not to post about this again because I'm fed up now) between "just" being picked on about your sticky out ears, being tall, not having the latest trainers etc, etc, etc is that I very much doubt complete strangers comment on the wisdom of you being parents because your child might have sticky out ears, be tall, not have nice trainers.

But quite a lot (of loons) think it's ok to say this about red hair. Weirdos.

Anyway, that's what I think this card's joke is. "Never mind you ginge's who bred ugly ginge children, santa loves them anyway". That's the subtext you have to understand to find it at all funny. Otherwise it would be a random statement like "santa even loves children with brown hair" and everyone would scratch their heads and try to find the joke.

Obviously I have no sense of humour though, so I'll leave it at that.

shonaspurtle · 16/12/2009 12:06

misplaced apostrophe damn you!!!!

Squishabelle · 16/12/2009 12:09

Oh God - not again - just read on another forum that another company have had their knuckles rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority about an advert that was offensive to redheads.

gagamama · 16/12/2009 12:16

I would 100% agree that the card was offensive had the slogan been "Santa loves all kids. Except ginger ones." But as it stands, it's actually verifying Samta's love of all children, including ones that are sadly maligned by the rest of society, eg. red-haired children. The fact that people are prejudiced against ginger-haired children isn't the fault of the card manufacturer. The card simply references this fact of popular culture, albeit in a fairly deadpan, insensitive way.

mammafran · 16/12/2009 12:21

I really don't understand why red hair is made fun of in this country. Where did this prejudice come from? I don't think its like this in any other country or am I wrong?
It's appaulling that children should be made to feel inferior and bullied because of their hair colour.

OrdinarySAHM · 16/12/2009 12:35

If it is ok to belittle children because of the colour of their hair, is it ok to belittle them because of the colour of their skin - NO. I can't see the difference!

Children don't think about the history of racism and whether or not insulting their hair colour is more or less racist than insulting their skin colour. It hurts them just the same.