i’m a green-eyed redhead of scottish ancestry. i have never been able to tan, and finally just gave up on it. i just burn and peel and burn and peel, and it was just too damned painful. i once ended up in the emergency room after spending 3 hours outside wearing a SPF 35 sunscreen. never again! i am so jealous of you ladies who are able to tan. my freckles just get darker. my hair also gets really red-blonde if i spend time in the sun. and it’s naturally straight as a board. no body whatsoever, but really thick. i read somewhere that redheads have the most hairs per square inch on their heads. and that blondes have the least. you ladies with naturally curly hair, i salute you!! nothing more beautiful than a head full of shiny, curly red hair!!
zoot, who loves being a natural red-head, buts hates paying money to get it permed.
Mine’s not curly, wavy at best. My hair is also so long that the bottom half weighs just enought that the top half doesn’t get wavy. [I look killer when it’s all dried straight.]
My hair isn’t like wire, but it’s quite thick. All the women in my family have fine hair, including the redhaired ones on my mom’s side. Through personal observation, I’ve concluded that most Redheads have significantly finer hair than I do. My mom has even commented on the unusual thickness of my hair given it’s color. She says she’s run into maybe one other Redhead with thick hair.
Here’s my question: Anyone else ever notice this? Or have I just being experiencing a very skewed sample of the Redhead population?
All this talk about redheads: tan ones, curly haired ones, etc…
I can’t take it. I am at work, dammit. It’s enough that I have to work with a buxom natural redhead who doesn’t know how to do anything except smile and be sociable in a teasing flirtatious way.
I always thought I was kinda weird because I have a very dark red head of hair. I also have extremely pale skin with few freckles. However, I have -very- little Irish or Scottish blood in my ancestry that I know of. The greater part of my genetic descent is actually Mexican-Indian. (the rest is a grab-bag of European countries, which is probably where I picked up the appropriate genes)
The strange part is, only the hair on top of my head is red. The rest of my facial and body hair is near -black-!
My daughter has red hair. My other two boys do not. My husband doesn’t have red hair and neither do I. My inlaws do not have red hair, and my parents do not have red hair. HOWEVER< my mother’s father had red hair and my father inlaw’s sister has red hair. So that’s where it comes from. Because it’s a recessive gene, it has to be on both sides of the family and so far, we’re the only ones with a red-haired child.
Now, if I just had a dollar for every time someone asked me “where does she get that red hair” and “does she have the temperament of a redhead.”
Oh - she has blue eyes as well.
Thing is: it all comes from Lithuania…no Irish or Scottish blood anywhere.
According to the nuns who taught my mom, it means we’re the spawn of satan. It’s sort of fun to say, join me “we’re the spawn of satan, we’re the spawn of satan…!” <accompaining interpretive dance> And mom’s family wonders why she refused to raise us Catholic…
As for the tan/not-tan issue. I didn’t tan when I was younger, but over the past couple of years I have. Not a lot, but enough so I notice anyway. I wonder why it took my skin over 20 years to develop the ablity. Maybe by the time I’m 40 I’ll have a nice tan. <looks at mom, who is also a red-head, the only one in her family before us, btw> Maybe not.
I’m your classic Scottish, pale skinned redhead. But I have a theory about why I am pale skinned.
See, I have this brother with black hair and brown eyes. At the beginning of the summer, after he spends like a few hours in the sun, he looks like a Native American.
I think that he got ALL the melatonin in our family, leaving none for me. That is my theory, and I am sticking to it. It is ALL his fault. And I have always bitterly resented him for it, too. And mom always liked him best, that’s why she gave him all the melatonin.
There is an alternative theory, which involves the mailman. But my mother adored my father, so I don’t think that one would fly.
*Scotticher, I like that theory. The one about your brother getting all the melatonin because your mom liked him best, I mean.
My brother is the same way. Tans if you take his picture with a flashbulb, he does. Honks me right off.
But I can rest assured in the knowledge that my grandmother, who always wanted a redheaded child but didn’t get one (even though she had six kids), always liked me best. Because I’m the only one of her 17 grandchildren with red hair.
