3/16/13
Red-head discrimination is a phenomenon that has been largely ignored by mainstream equal rights groups since the dawn of time. People think that just because gingers are white and half the time male, that they don’t encounter any discrimination. Scoff all you want but have you ever called a ginger “a ginger?” Rule number one when it comes to the pigmentally challenged, only a ginger can call another ginger, ginger.
I myself am a certified half-ginger, which some would say puts me in an awkward position when navigating the G-word, but I’ve done my time.
Travel back sixteen years ago. The time: right before PE. The place: Mr. Elliot’s first grade classroom, Mt Tamalpais School, Mill Valley, CA. I was an idealistic four-square dynamo with my whole life ahead of me. Our teacher always made things fun, even lining up for PE, that particular day was orchestrated by hair color. “Those of you with blonde hair, please get up from your seats and line up outside for Marsha (the hard-faced and wiry PE teacher)” at this the blonde kids got up and went outside, high-fiving their Aryan hands together in triumph. Next black hair was summoned, then red. At this Christopher Slaymaker, the token ginger, got up cheerfully and skipped outside.
Then something strange happened, silence ensued. I looked around for the cause only to find my stare being matched by the whole first grade. Then it happened. They think I have red hair! The badgering began, “Go outside redhead!” yelled a particularly rude girl (the G-word was not popularized until the turn of the century). Others agreed vocally that I should exit the room because of my hair color. Although my hair was auburn at the time, my face portrayed the rouge quite handily.
Luckily before a race riot could break out, the teacher stepped in and cleared up any doubt of my brown-haired appearance. After that incident, time went on and deep emotional wounds healed. The brown pigment gained control over the red on my head’s highly contested follicles and life went on.
My sister, Lili is a full-fledged daywalker. Adolescent summer times found more freckles on her face than my mother’s sunscreen-insistent palms could keep up with. Trips to the beach were more dangerous than free soloing El Capitan. Fear of sunburns carried more weight than monsters under the bed.
If you think you haven’t met my sister I simply follow with a clarification “she has red hair.” That usually works, but is it fair to Lili that she is defined by her hair color? She struggled with it as an insufferable teenage girl, constantly dying and bleaching to keep up with her gaggle of Marin Catholic besties. Nowadays she rocks the natural ginger glow with unparalleled grace but I still can’t think of an easier way to describe her. I could use a multitude of different attributes that compliment her personality perfectly, but that wouldn’t get the results that the redhead does.
These are the labels that society has given me to define my own flesh and blood.
My whole life I’ve found research on the differences and trends that come with the double recessive trait but most of the results are speculative. Columnists in scientific magazines have claimed that gingers have a slightly lower threshold for pain. Others have threatened that whoever is reading needs to go and procreate with a ginger in order to save the ginger race from disappearing into history books.
Let me put both of these rumors to rest. I have personally witnessed a full-on ginger break two ceilings with the top of his head, not a whimper afterward. As for the red gene’s doomsday, that is theoretically possible but only if every single ginger were to abstain from sex for the entirety of their lives. Fat freckled chance, humanity.
If you see a ginger in public, please reframe from using the G-word. It’s been a long tough road but I think we’re finally in a place when we can set aside the stereotypes that label us by the color of our hair. If you’re really serious about our struggle for equality then do our ancestors the honor of getting a little too drunk on for St Paddy this weekend.
Lili.