Mood:
rushedI ran across another new word today: gingerism. (Never let it be said that we neglect your vocabulary, here in the Grove). A BBC article, Is Gingerism As Bad As Racism?, claims that a red-haired family in Newcastle was recently driven out of their homes because of the color of their hair. Local thugs were spraying graffiti on their house and beating up the children as soon as they set foot on the street.
I didn't know this, but apparently gingerism is a big problem in Britain, where it originated in the 19th century as a form of discrimination against the Irish. Over there, red-haired people are ripe targets for abuse and bullying. Prejudice is embedded in phrases like "red-headed stepchild", and ancient superstitions and myths based on the association of the color red with blood, fire, danger, passion and warning.
In America, gingerism is fairly unknown. In fact, we seem to value red hair pretty highly. Hair bigotry in the US is generally confined to blond jokes, salons that charge women triple the price for a haircut, and baldness. Men with a full head of executive hair have a natural head start in the career arena (no pun intended), especially if they can get it to turn a distinguished silver by age 31. I'm convinced that was the main reason the CEO of our company was hired. He doesn't appear to serve any practical function, other than having hair as lushly manicured as the golf courses on which he spends 70 hours a week "making deals", as they say in the industry.
On the other hand, rumor has it that you can't make partner at Goldman Sachs unless you're bald.
Personally, I've always thought men with red hair are incredibly sexy. My fetish got started early, in the sixth grade, when I met my first Twue Wuvv (sic). Tom was the boy almost-next-door, who lived a few houses down. With a thick mop of dark red hair and a spray of freckles across his face, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the young Kris Kringle in "The Year Without A Santa Claus". He carried my books, sat next to me in math class, and always made sure there was a seat on the bus. It was all very apple-cheeked and Norman Rockwell. Such was my reciprocal adoration for Tom that one Christmas when his family went on vacation, I did his entire paper route with a broken ankle, in the snow, on crutches.
Soon afterwards, without warning, they moved out of the state, and we were sundered forever. (I hope it wasn't because Mrs. Baird complained that I kept leaving her paper on the porch instead of in the mailbox over Christmas. Did they have to go on the lam? Does the Federal Witness Protection program accept paperboys?) I missed being able to pick him out instantly in a crowded lunchroom, and the way his hair clashed violently with the autumn leaves.
You may remember the book Lolita, where Humbert Humbert's lifelong fetish for young girls begins as a result of his thwarted love for Annabel, at age 13. As a result of Tom, I became the Humbert Humbert of red hair. Never mind jungle fever...I've got ginger fever.
Anyway, I do feel deep empathy with people who grew up hearing taunts like "bloodnut" and "carrot top" (as one woman pointed out, aren't carrot tops green, not red?) I too was a target of hair abuse, in grade school, by people who later spent a fortune in salons to get theirs to look the same way. (The hair is always so much greener on the other side of the fence.) My hair is curly - not frizzy-curly, more of a loopy, loose every-which-way kind of curly - but curly enough to trigger the occasional playground witticism about Brillo pads and fingers stuck in electric light sockets. Enough to make me spend many pre-adolescent hours in the bathroom with Dippity-Doo, a hot iron, and a ski hat, trying to get it to look like everyone else's, until I eventually gave in and accepted that I am one of the Curly People. A Ringlet-American. The Differently Coiffed.
I suppose kids always zoom in on whatever everyone's most salient physical feature is, whether it's glasses or freckles or a large nose or whatever. But that doesn't excuse hair discrimination. Until we eradicate it, humanity will never be truly free.
