Living with ginger hair

I think you can guess from my name and my description that I have ginger hair; unless you thought I was an umperlumpa or something. Whatever you want to call my hair colour (ginger, orange, red, strawberry blonde etc.) I will always see it as ginger. One thing I don't understand is why people say, 'I am ginger' like it defines who you are, to be honest I don't understand why people say, 'I am blonde' either because people don't say, 'I am brown' do they? If they do they are almost certainly not referring to their hair but instead their tanned skin. The fact is, my hair colour does not define who I am, so why do people in the media make fun of people with ginger hair and why do people get bullied purely because of it.

This leads me on to a little story which has affected me considerably over my lifetime. I went to quite a middleclass grammar school (for those who don't know what a grammar school is it is a selective school on academic achievement funded by the government) as did my brother, you would not expect much bullying to go on would you? This was true for the most part. However, my brother was severely bullied and the reason for this was because he had ginger hair. He was called a mutant and was shunned by most people in his year because he had "gingervitis". This is  relatively harmless but it then got physical, he was pushed into a corner of a building causing a large cut on the back of his head, chairs were thrown at him and at once a group broke into our garden and were going to put stink bombs in our rabbit's hutch until my mum stopped them. The sad thing about it all was the school ignored it all due to it not being severe in their eyes, this didn't even change even my mum went in to tell them. In the end my brother volunteered to do an assembly about his bullying when he was in sixth form. He confronted his whole year and asked, 'why bully me?' This stopped the severe bullying straight away and I am sure embarrassed them all a lot. Seeing your older brother suffer and sob uncontrollably is one of the most heartbreaking thing I think I will ever have to go through.  This isn't an isolated incident it happens in a lot of schools and I just don't understand why. In my opinion it is just as bad as racism as you are singled out because of the way you look but it isn't seen as an issue and instead it is seen as a bit of a laugh. I can personally say that I have only experienced name calling and a few jests but is that acceptable?

The complete opposite reaction to ginger hair usually comes from the older generation. They love to comment on what a lovely colour it is or how amazing it looks in the sunlight. It can be flattering at times but irritating at others. I suppose it makes me stand out from the crowd and some would say it is my usp; apparently some men love redheads.

The one downside I have found is the pale skin which is guaranteed to come with ginger hair. This isn't because I want tanned skin because that would look strange, you wouldn't be able to tell where my skin stopped and my hair started! Its the fact that I burn so easily and I have to continuously lather suncream all over me and still will have to sit in the shade. Luckily I don't burn that often as I have been well trained by my mum to put suncream on every few hours. The pale skin and bright hair makes it difficult to find clothes as you don't want to look white as a sheet and you don't want to make your hair clash with a colour this makes you have a more limited colour palette to choose from compared to most other people.

However much I have complained about my hair in this post, I do love it very much and would not change it for the world.  It makes me standout and the colour is so beautiful and far from boring.