You’re not the first person I’ve heard say this but I’m still trying to figure out where this utopia in the US is that little redheads don’t get picked on. They do, mercilessly, in New England, and a redheaded coworker from Utah said it was the same there when she grew up too. Where are you* from*?
Ain’t that the truth.
It has so far been to my detriment* but I seem to have a certain degree of hard-wired response to wimmins with red hairs, freckles, blue or (better) green eyes, and a tendency towards casual wear and absence of makeup.
(* I had one who fit the descriptive bill against whom I ended up having to get an order of protection)
I didn’t know redheads got picked on in this day and age until I was in college. I thought it was quaint when I read Anne of Green Gables, and figured it was a Old Timey thing that was over, like dipping pigtails in inkwells.
Suburb south of Chicago, IL, born in 1974. My best friend was a redhead, and I never witnessed her being teased about it.
I grew up in Arizona. (Which is really the last place on Earth a natural redhead should move, but never mind.) My hair is bright titian – right around Nancy Drew and Agent Scully. It doesn’t always come out great in photos, but unless my monitor is completely b0rked this one looks to be about right: Picture It bleaches out a bit in the front if I get a lot of sun, but other than that it’s been that color all my life. Even my eyelashes match, pre-mascara. I freckle madly, and the un-sunned parts of me were any paler I’d be see-through.
I was picked on for plenty of things in school, believe me, but I honestly cannot recall a single time where anyone has brought up my hair color and followed it with anything other than a compliment. I’ve had guys try to follow me home because of it. On one memorable occasion, a passing acquaintance of a friend tried to convince said friend to get him a lunch date with me having never seen me in person and knowing literally nothing about me, except that I was a redheaded woman.
My redheaded mother and her auburn sisters grew up in and around St. Louis, MO, and got pretty much the same when they were my age. My father’s redheaded sister, who has lived all her life in New England, has never said anything to me about being teased for it, although I suppose it might just never have come up.