A post especially for gingers!
Hair color is a weird thing. I was born with blonde hair. As I got older, my hair got darker. My mom, being a vain type, started taking me to get my hair “Luminized” when I was still a young kid, which artificially lightened my hair. I hated those treatments. The color smelled bad and made my scalp itch. I’m sure the hairdresser dreaded my appointments, too. I wasn’t the most patient client.
As I got older, I wasn’t used to seeing myself with darker hair, so I kept coloring it. Then in 1995, I went off to Armenia for two years. While hair color existed in the former Soviet country, I didn’t trust it. I saw a lot of “interesting” hair coloring attempts on Armenian women and I didn’t want to have weird hair. My weird personality already sets me apart enough! So I let my original color grow in and by the time I went home, my hair was sort of a dishwater blonde with lots of natural red/coppery highlights in it. It seems that I actually have a “tinge of the ging'”, as singer-songwriter Tim Minchin puts it.
I resisted coloring my hair for a long time after I came home in 1997, but I hated seeing the inevitable silver streaks in my locks. But now, every time I use hair color, even if I use light brown, it turns red. So I guess I am now sort of a “ginger”, even though my hair never caused me the childhood trauma it apparently did others. Gingers were, after all, famously spoofed on South Park, where Eric Cartman famously claimed “Gingers have no souls!”
I will admit it was odd for me when people started referring to me as a redhead. I have, in my mind, always been a blonde. I remember when I updated my military ID and in the block for hair color, I had to ask my husband whether I should put blonde or red. Both he and the lady making the ID said I appeared to be a ginger to them. It was weird being a redhead; even though I think they have as much fun as blondes do.
Last week, an interesting article about redheads was circulating around the Internet, with lots of factoids about why some people have red hair as well as some of the myths perpetuated about redheads. I’m not sure if they apply to a pseudo redhead like me, though. I’m not quite sure in my case the carpet matches the drapes.
Anyway, Tim Minchin is a guy who understands the plight of natural redheads, which he addresses in his hilarious song, “Prejudice”…
I discovered Tim Minchin through a posting on one of my favorite Internet message boards and ended up downloading his great album, Ready For This (Live). “Prejudice” is just one of the great songs on that album. Whether you’re a ginger or not, it’s worth checking out!
