There’s always some reason humanity
is a bummer.
This time, it’s because I’m a redhead.
I’ve talked before about the heckling I used to get from kids at school - as well as from perfect
strangers - because of my red hair.
That doesn't happen, now that I'm a middle aged woman. Thank goodness. But media still happens. A few years ago I started keeping
a tally of how often the bad guy or gal in books and movies have red hair.
Summary? Rates are way higher than the non-fiction ginger per capita numbers.
Then I started noticing all the ginger
bashing in comedy.
Of course, there's South Park’s Kick a Ginger Day. That's not news.
Amy Schumer and her line about reasons we need Plan B, like for cases
of “rape or incest or with a redhead.”
Yamaneika Saunders
on Jimmy Fallon's The Tonight Show talking about how this was the first time a black woman had ever wanted to marry a “firecrotch.” (That term was new to me, actually.)
Yes it’s comedy, and funny,
but I've had enough, thanks.
Last year, a woman asked me if I, as a
red head, thought having red hair might affect a person's sense of
self worth. I rolled my eyes, nodding emphatically. I can't count the
number of fights on the schoolyard, the amount of shouted insults
from strangers, the suggestions that I just “bleach my hair” that
I got as a child.
The woman, who was a therapist,
followed up: “Because a client of mine, a young man, is a handsome
college student with red hair. Says he can't get any dates because of
it.”
Oh, honey.
That’s what made Stephen Colbert's monologue about the speech from Joe
Kennedy III personally satisfying. Colbert treated Kennedy as gorgeous, with zero reference to his hair color. Well, except to describe him as the love child between Superman and Conan O'Brien.
Is there a problem of anti-ginger
sentiment in the United States, or am I just getting more sensitive
to it with age?
Exposure allergy?