It was cute on Prince Edward Island, too. Remember, the boy who teases Anne about her hair ends up marrying her. Evidently he didn’t find it unattractive.
Kids make fun of other kids. It doesn’t matter if red hair is attractive or not. It’s just something else you can make fun of.
As a kid there was a myth going around that became a self fulfilling prophecy, that ginger haired people were literally “hotheads” and quick to anger or even to become violent.
As such they were given more leeway when they had temper tantrums, and accordingly had them more often because of the lack of stigma for their behaviour.
This myth seems to have died out.
As to the routine teasing of redheads this puzzles me, I haven’t noticed it personally.
I have had two redheaded g/fs and one place that I worked at it became incredibly trendy for the women to die their hair a very noticeable shade of red.
I think that the teasing on t.v. is teasing for teasings sake, the same teasing would happen if the person was very tall/short/blonde or whatever.
I always assumed that, as a couple of other people have mentioned, it was a dilution of the old belief that redheads were witches. (And therefore, basically, just another manifestation of the human tendency to assume that different=evil). I also remember reading that redheads were once considered to be particularly bad luck on board ship.
I pay good money to be a redhead.
Don’t know if this helps, but living in the UK most of my life, I’ve very rarely heard girls/women with ginger hair being made fun of (definitely not if they’re very pretty to boot). It’s usually lads, perhaps a little on the portly side, very pale, mountain of freckles on the face. In my experience, it was primarily a schoolyard thing too. Amongst adults, it’s more of a blonde joke thing. Do Americans have a problem with blonde jokes? Got a lot of issues with ‘having a blonde moment’? I’m blonde myself, and it has never bothered me.
There’s also a difference between ginger and red in my mind. Charles Kennedy is ginger, Julianne Moore is red. But that may just be a regional/personal circle perception/definition.
From the venerable wikipedia:
It doesn’t give its prevalence in the UK as a whole though.
What a lovely little girl. Is she part Asian?
According to author Eleanor Herman red hair was commonly thought to be the product of sex while a woman was menstruating. Women with red hair were therefore thought to be more sexually open and promiscuous.
Oh thank you! Nope, that would be her cousins–she is pure British Isles mutt, with the Irish on top. In the summer I often wish I could dip her in sunscreen like a sheep dip.
I remember in middle school they used to say " red pubes" whatever lol
And the British Labour Deputy Leader is in trouble for referring to a rival politician as a “ginger rodent” this week!
GINGER. It’s just a word. Made up of an ‘N’, an ‘I’, a couple of 'G’s an ‘E’ and an ‘R’.
Aren’t the French stereotypically supposed to have reddish-brown hair as well?