Inspirational Ginger

Some of you may be familiar with the TV show Reba. This show began in 2001 when I was only 5 years old. Even though it 6 years ago, you can still watch it on CMT weekdays, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't still sneak in a couple of episodes during the week. This show has been one of the only that I've ever seen where there are constant references to a redhead's hair color. If you don't know the show to which I am referring, it is about a lady, Reba, whose husband leaves her for his pregnant mistress at the same time her teenage daughter gets pregnant. The show follows them for the next 6 years as The ex-husband, his new wife, their son, Reba, and her four children, including her now son-in-law, and her granddaughter learn to live together. As I said before, they often make reference to her read hair, most of the time in comparison to her fiery temper. This show is more than just a comedic sitcom, it shows the strength of a women who managed to hold her family together even as she stood before it watching it fall apart. Her sassy attitude and quick, witty remarks that the other characters of the show attributed to her red hair just made it that much better. Reba also handed down her red hair to her middle daughter Kira. Kira had the same dry wit as her mother, without the fiery temper. In fact, it was quite the opposite as she sat calm and relaxed while the rest of the family was normally exploding with emotions and being over dramatic. That's not to say that Kira didn't have her moments, she was a teenager for the majority of the show, and teenagers are nothing if not argumentative. So, even though Reba played the stereotypical hot blooded read head that always had to get the last word in, Kira was on the other end of the spectrum, which I think was a great decision by the directors to not type cast both redheads in the show with the same personality.  

I encourage anyone to check out this show, whether you are ginger or not, because it has some important life lessons squeezed between witty retorts and playful banter. It can be serious or sad, depending on what you need at that time, all the while being a classic 30 minute sitcom where everything works out in the end and everyone forgives each other. 

Favorite Time of the Year

Everyone has that time of the year where they feel warm and fuzzy inside. For some its Christmas and the exchanging of gifts, for some its Valentines Day when you can feel the love swirling around you. I thrive on Halloween. We get free candy, get to dress up in ridiculous costumes, and pay to get the crap scared out of us at haunted houses, all without any of our peers being able to judge us, because they are doing the same thing. Out of everything that comes with Halloween, dressing us is probably my favorite. Realistically, my favorite part is probably taking my little sister out trick or treating and getting free candy, but for the purposes of this blog, I'll be discussing costumes.
This year, in honor of this blog, I decided to dress as someone or something that has red hair. This task proved to be harder than I imagined, because even though redheads are rare, there seem to be many redheaded costumes. Some of my top choices were Fiona from Shrek, Pippi Longstocking, the Little Mermaid, a vampire (I just feel like redheads fit the vampire persona), Strawberry Shortcake, Daphne from Scooby Doo, Blossom the redheaded Powder Puff Girl, or the original Ginger from Gilligan's Island. These were just a few of the ideas that I found or thought of that I liked and thought would be easy to put together. Like I said before, for the small percentage of  the earth's population that redheads represent, they were a common theme in Halloween costumes. It was a close race, but in the end I decided on Kim Possible. I also seriously considered Ginger from Gilligan's Island, because its possible she was who started the term "ginger" and because I had already discussed it in previous blogs, Blossom from the Powder Puff Girls, because then I could convince two of my friends to go as Bubbles and Buttercup so we could all trick or treat together, but I had to choose Kim Possible because it was part of my childhood. It also worked out very well in the end because I was invited to trunk or treating with a youth group whose costume theme was Disney, and as Kim Possible I'll fit right in.
 If you check back later this week (after Halloween of course), you'll be able to see pictures and a description of my costume.

The Best Of All Gingers

One of my favorite book series of all times is Harry Potter. I read these books growing up and have always felt a deep connection to them. A very major part of the Harry Potter is the Weasley family- famously known for their red hair. To me they represent the ideal family. Though they have very little in the way of money, they never lack caring.There are 7 kids in the family, and I feel like each one is so different that anyone can find one of them relatable. Bill was handsome studious and thoughtful (at least that is how I always imagined him, he wasn't very prominent in the books), Bill was the adventurer, Percy the uptight rule follower, Fred and George the hilarious yet mischievous twins, Ginny the shy firecracker that knows how to keep her brothers in place, and of course Ron, who can't seem to find what exactly he excels at. These children all balance each other out in the chaos that is their life in the cramped burrow where they live. They are easily identified by the rest of the world by their flame colored hair, as shown by Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Upon meeting Ginny, the youngest, he recognizes her by her hair color and shabby clothing. He looks upon it as an insult, but in my 8 year old mind,  it seemed as though red hair was important, that people knew you if you had red hair. Their hair was also a kind of connection, making it indisputable that they were family. This was especially important when (spoiler alert) Percy tried to leave the family. Though the author never talked about it in the books, in my imagination everyone knew who Percy was. Though he could deny any emotional connection to the Weasley's, he was undeniably their family. The Harry Potter fandom also seems to be split in two about the fact that (another spoiler alert) Ginny and Harry end up together. In my opinion, there aren't enough redhead characters that get the cute boy, so rock on Ginny. Same goes for her brother Ron, who ends up with the beautiful and witty Hermoine Granger.
If you want someone else's opinion on the Weasley's, my friend has a blog exclusively on Harry Potter and she wrote about the Weasley family at the beginning of the month. You can check that out here.

Wonderful Discovery of Wonders

If you couldn't tell by the title, I'm very excited to tell you all of a new website I've found. At first, it was solely for humorous purposes and would give me ideas on new topics for blog posts. Recently I found a new section on the website that I honestly thought was a joke when I first saw it. The website is called Raising Redheads (http://www.raising-redheads.com). It's supposed to be for parents of redheads, but I usually log on for a laugh. This is not to say that the site is ill-written or done by incompetent staff. It's the idea that makes me laugh. Like I said, I've known about the site for a couple of weeks, and I wasn't planning on sharing it with you. For some reason, I had never noticed the "events" tab before. Under the tab you will find "a list of various redhead events, festivals, gatherings, and internet groups that have been organized recently to celebrate redheads and gingers!" If you scroll down, you'll find just that. Events taking place all over the world (but mostly in the U.S.). Unfortunately, since the list is not organized chronologically, it is hard to sort through all of the events. Many of the events I found took place in 2013, but from what I could find, the only event that has not passed yet is the Irish Redhead Convention, which as you may have been able to guess, is in Ireland. The convention is in Crosshaven, and is a benefit to raise money for the Irish Cancer Society. Events there include red hair dyeing (for the non-ginger counterparts), fire breathing, and carrot tossing championships. The redhead convention started as a joke, but over the past 4 years they have raised money that has been used for cancer research and developing cures. 
Things like this are what amaze me about our society. Such simple things as having the same hair color as someone else can bring people together in amazing ways. I think it is easy for many people to forget what a wonderful world we live in when we turn on the TV or open a magazine and see the latest heinous crimes people committed or wars being  waged. For some reason, I never saw an article about a gathering of gingers helping to fight cancer. Until now that is. So spread the word, gingers of the world. I won't be able to attend, but maybe you and your friends can go help fight cancer. 

Thought of The Day

Everyone has those thoughts that pop into their head out of the blue that even they don't know where they came from. It has nothing to do with what you were thinking or saying, but suddenly there it is, blatantly staring you in the face. Some fact that seems obvious now and you can't believe you had never thought about it before. Since I have many of these thoughts a day (because I'm sure I have some attention disorder), and many of them pertain to other gingers or my red hair I thought I could share them with some of you. Many people have heard the statistic that after 2050 there will be no more gingers born (I don't know if this is true but if you stick around I plan to look into it in the upcoming weeks). Today it suddenly came to me-I'm a ginger. Duh, right? I should have figured that out along time ago. But 2050 is only 47 years away. So in approximately two generations, there won't be enough gingers for even one of them to be a couple? I find it highly improbable. This also means that as long as I live another 47 years I will be part of an extinct species. Not exactly a "species" per say, but pretty darn close, and that's enough for me.

One of Our Many Woes

Any type of hair colors comes with its pros and its cons, there will always be people that will make fun of you or tell you how much they wish they had your hair. Maybe it derives from the "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" idea, but I feel like people with red hair are born with more stereotypes than any other hair type. I've already discussed a few, such as their fiery temper or devious mind, but there is an old wives tale that I think very few people are familiar with. It comes from the generation that were at the ends of their lives when we just learning how to walk, so it I can't remember how much it affected me, but my mother will tell stories about it whenever the opportunity arises.
The tale goes that anyone who rubs the head of someone with red hair will receive good fortune. This let to little 2 year old Jenna waddling through the supermarket, accompanied by her mother and enjoying an adventure in a new and exciting place, when old women would pass by and rub my head. Some would stop first and comment on how beautiful the color was, while others would simply touch as they walked by. This started happening as soon as I was old enough to be brought out into public, before I could walk or talk, and would be sitting in my car seat that could be placed in a shopping cart. The women who would just reach out and caress my hair without saying a word would sometimes get weird looks from other customers, even the occasional evil eye from my mother if she was already having a bad day. The only humorous part, according to my mother, was my reaction. From the beginning, I hated having strangers touch my hair, but I soon lost patience for it all together, swatting at these women's outstretched hands as if swatting away flies. In a way, I'm proud of baby me-standing up for myself even to these things much larger than me, that logically I should be afraid of.
My first and major problem with this is it is just plain rude. At least some people made an attempt engage in conversation with someone before petting their child's hair, but the fact that random people walking the streets who have never said a word to me could have touched my head doesn't seem right. I'm sure part of it is that those women grew up in a different era, where everyone knew everyone and were comfortable with strangers. These days, everyone is full of what-if's that consume our life. In this instance, what if I had a very low immune system? I could catch something from them and end up in the hospital. That's a very dramatized version of what could happen, buy who ever accused gingers of being under dramatic.
I have to wonder where this superstition came from. Most things that we find lucky are things that are rare, such as a four leaf clover, or things that are beautiful, like a rainbow, or sometimes they're both, for instance a shooting star. Other things that represent luck are completely random (or at least they seem to be in our eyes), including a horseshoe or a wishbone. Maybe read heads can fall into all of these categories, a little rare, a little beautiful, and a little random.

Joke Time

I'm sorry I haven't posted the "Joke of the Week" but to be fair, I did warn you not to expect so much out of me, like consistently uploading a pre-determined post every week. One of the main problems, besides my lack of consistency, is there is honestly a lack of funny ginger jokes out there. When I decided to instill the joke of the week, I assumed there would be an abundance of clever redhead or ginger joke with a play on words or punch line connecting to our red hair or freckles. Instead I mostly only found jokes about gingers being ugly or socially awkward. Quite honestly these kinds of jokes have never appealed to me and none of them were funny enough for me to want to endorse on my blog. However, this week I have stumbled onto a joke that honestly had me laughing out loud, even if it was only because of its simplicity and child-like stupidity.

Q: What do you get when you cross a Jamaican and a ginger? 
A: A gingerbreadmon 

This ginger is done making you cringe from her punny jokes. 

Where it all started

While I know now that ginger has been a slang term for read head since long bef ore I was born, the term was relatively unknown to me in my elementary school and early middle school days (excluding of course the Nickelodean classic As Tole By Ginger, about a nerdy redhead adolescent with some of the most interesting friends around, who I strongly related with for some reason). It wasn't until around 7th grade, around the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010, when I heard the word applied to me. Being the little social outcast I was, I didn't realize where this word had come from or why everyone but me knew it all of sudden. It wasn't until very recently that I found out it had been used in bigger cities for a while, but Iowa being Iowa, was behind in the latest hip terminology. The way it was finally brought to all of my lovely classmates was through a YouTube video. This video, entitled "GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS" was uploaded in January 2010 by the YouTube user CopperCab. This high freckled redhead went on a 3 minute rant in the mistreatment of gingers. To give you an idea of how popular the video is, it currently has almost 35 million views. Videos like these, known as viral videos becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media, and email. One of the reasons this video became so popular so quickly was the humorous aspect of it. Looking at his videos uploaded since the original ginger video, you can see he has tried to maintain that humor to keep the popularity. He attempts to retain the "anger" seen in his first video that brought so many viewers, but in my eyes it shows he is trying to hard to remain prominent. I can always appreciate a good laugh, but when putting things on the internet, I don't think people realize how careful they need to be. This video, or tweet, or status, or even blog post can be seen by anyone who has web access anywhere in the world. Chances are no matter what you are talking about, somewhere in the world someone can truly have their feelings hurt by anything you joke about. As unlikely as it may seem tot you, someone in the world is most likely struggling with the very thing you joke about. That's why I try to be very careful what I blog about, because it is always  hard to tell if someone is joking through writing when you can't judge their tone of voice or body language. For instance, I'm sure at least 10% of the people reading his couldn't tell if I was joking about me being connected to the girl Ginger. That's why I try to only joke about myself, so the only one who can get offended is me! So even when it is something as little as making videos on youtubr, you'll never know if it will go viral, and people across the country will be left wondering if you were serious or not. 
I've also decided that I need some catchy end phrase or signature line to end my posts because up til now they have always just ended, so with out further ado. 
This ginger is done preaching morals and internet etiquette for the day. 

Hair Tutorial!

My hair and I were recently featured in another bloggers hair tutorial. The hair style is half braided, half curled style. If you want a step-by-step tutorial you can find it here. It's a fancier hair style for special occasions, and it took about an hour. She got the idea off Pinterest, but added some off her own flair. Prim sure there are many different spins you can do yourselves, especially for different hair types, but this exact look is most easily achieved for those of you with medium length (mid-chest length) and think hair with long or no layers. The end result was a very elegant look that most people could do at home. Enjoy!

A Ginger... Or A Redhead?

The internet is full of fights, as I'm sure you've all seen from your days browsing the interweb.  Whether it be a childish cat fight between girls on Facebook or people calling each other words so foul I feel uncomfortable reading them, the animosity of the internet encourages people to speak anything on their mind, whether that is a good thing or not. However conflicting the internet can be, it is also a source of unending knowledge if you know how to use it and which sites to trust. That is why I was utterly astounded when I couldn't find where the term ginger came from. I found three that were highly popular, but still no one can definitively prove that any are correct.
The first is rather self explanatory. Many believe that the term is derived from the root ginger. It's not very common in everyday cooking, but what really bugs me is the color. Ginger roots are a sandy or tan color, which does not match up very well with the reddish orange tinted hair we call gingers now. The only explanation is that many ginger flavored snacks, such as Ginger Snaps, have a red tint to them.
Another popular theory comes from the popular sixties sitcoms Gilligan's Island. One of the two main girls sported red hair and freckled skin. Her name, of course, was Ginger. This one seems the most likely to me, as it has a direct relation between the name ginger and redheads.
Others believe that the term ginger came much earlier than the sixties to the nineteenth century when England occupied Malaysia. In Malaysia there is a plant whose fire red flower would but my hair color to shame. It is possible that ginger is an English term from the 1800s but I think it seems less likely than the Gilligan's Island theory.
While the internet may not be able to come to a conclusion regarding where exactly the term ginger originated from, there is a widely accepted definition. A ginger is a person who has red hair, pale skin, and freckles. Pretty straight forward and simple enough. What I was more surprised to see was the difference between gingers and redheads that most people point out. Here I have been using them synonymously, when I could have checked the internet real quick to find out how wrong I am. There is only a slight difference, but one that the people of the internet find important to point out. Redheads have red hair like a ginger, obviously, but normally do not have skin quite as pale or as many freckles. The difference is quite obvious if you simply google the words. If you search ginger, pictures will pop of nerdy boys with bright orange hair and freckles covering every inch of their face. The word redhead on the other hand, yields much more attractive women a darker red hair (many of which look horribly fake by the way) with still pale skin but almost no freckles. It makes sense if you think of the roots of the words. Redhead is merely stating the color of someone's hair, such as brunette or blonde. Ginger is a slang word, and like most slang words were invented to tease and ridicule. We know that the term has been used with negative connotations since the beginning, even if we don't know when the beginning was or why it began. Now I guess it time for all of my fellow people with red hair out there to decide. Are you a ginger... Or a redhead?

Who Wouldn't Want A Ginger?

While looking up some of the statistics for a previous blog post, I stumbled along a little article. Before you click on it, I would suggest reading the rest of my article. You can find it here. However, I should first tell you what it is about. The world's largest sperm bank,  Cryos International, have began turning away donors with red hair. They state it is simply because they have such a high number of donors, but there is not a high enough demand for redhead babies (with the exception of Ireland). Perhaps it's because the soon-to-be surrogate mothers know they don't have the genes to produce a redhead child, so they don't bother requesting it. Maybe, they just don't want a redheaded child. That is pretty hard for me to believe, because throughout my whole life people who I'm just meeting, or maybe people just walking by me in a public place that I've never met before, will come and tell me that they love the color of my hair, and how someone they know had the EXACT  same color hair as me. What are the odds? Back to the topic, it is shocking to me how low the demand is for ginger babies. Maybe it's because I'm a redhead myself, but I've always pictured that my kids could have the same color hair as I do. Apparently to others, that doesn't seem like the reality.

How Much Is A Ginger Worth?

I have always know redheads were pretty important. Or at the very least, I have know that there were so many fewer redheads than there were of any other hair color, and what is importance if not rarity? Look at gold. It's not one of the most expensive items to humankind just because it's pretty and sparkles. It's because of how rare it is. I believe the same can be said of redheads. Even in Scotland, the place with the highest percentage of redheads in the world (a common misconception is that it's highest in Ireland-not true), it is at a mere 13%.  Ireland, following the stereotype, follows closely with 10% of their population as redheads. In the world as a whole, gingers scrounge up a lowly 3% of the entire world. The number is even slightly less in America, where an estimated 2% of citizens have red hair, somewhere between 6 million to 18 million people. Please keep in mind that auburn or strawberry blonde are not included in these numbers, they are calculated separately. Those numbers are lower than any other hair colors- a fact that is almost completely unrequited by data collectors.
While the number of redheads is the world has been decreasing, there were never high percentages of them rising above other hair colors. If rare items are supposed to be the most treasured, have redheads been held above all others throughout history? Unfortunately, in most societies that would be a no. In many societies red hair was thought to tell many things about a person, like a fiery temper, high sensuality, or a devious mind. Many stories from the medieval ages depict redheads this way, especially as beasts of humans that have degraded morals. In Montague Summer's Malleus Maleficarum, he states that anyone who had red hair and green eyes were certainly a mythological creature such as a vampire, werewolf, or witch (another common thought was redheads meant the parents had conceived the child at a time of the month filled with more red than others-can you say tmi?). This was very similar to the Ancient Greeks who believed that after a redhead died they would return as vampires, so they would take preventative measures to keep the from rising from the dead. Following along these lines, during the Spanish Inquisition, many redheads were burned at the stake in Spain because the Church stated they had stolen fires from hell- a crime they did not take lightly. Russians were not the most loving of gingers either. They maid several points in their writings that no saints had been named redheads, and both Adam and Judas, the two worst traitors in the Bible we're thought to be redheads. Even Germany during the time it was run by Nazis, they considered not allowing redheads to marry so they could not taint the other people. Not all societies judged redheads so lightly. In Ancient Egypt, redheads were merely considered very unlucky, and were avoided in everyday life for the most part. In Roman society slaves with red hair were often sold for a much higher price. Unfortunately that might have been the highlight of my kind. With all these things considered, maybe being the most rare hair color isn't worth it after all. 

The Little Mermaid

This week I'm discussing one of my favorite redheads of all time, the classic Disney princess, Ariel. You may tell me that I'm talking like the stereotypical little girl that loves tiaras and princes and ball gowns. This is nowhere near the truth, because the reason I loved Ariel so much was simply because she was a redhead like me. There were princesses of all races, all skin tones, all hair colors, and finally I had found one that matched my flaming red hair (plus she was a mermaid which was and still is my dream). Of course, I thought prince Eric was soooo cute and I trembled right along with the other little girls when Ursula rose out of the sea with the mighty staff of Triton, but the fact that a redhead could be a princess too actually blew my mind. It wasn't because I thought redheads weren't as pretty as anyone else or because I didn't think they were regal enough, the thought had just never occurred to me. Children were supposed to learn that the grass isn't always greener on the other side or that you need to follow your dreams from that movie but I learned to be proud of who you are, especially if you're a mermaid, cause everyone wants to be a mermaid.

On second thought the moral of the story is never give up your mermaid super powers, even for a chance at true love because in the long run, mermaid super powers are much more exciting.

New Ginger Joke!

Time for the second installment of Ginger Joke of the Week! While I'm still not sure if I'll be continuing it weekly, I found this joke and knew I just had to post it. And now ladies and gentlemen, a short story for your reading pleasure.

A brunette, a red-head, and a blonde were in jail when they decided to break out. The girls broke out and the brunette said, "Let's hide in that barn, they'll never find us." So they climbed up the ladder to the rafters and then the blonde brought the ladder up. The next morning, the cops came into the barn and shouted, "Come out with your hands in the air!" The brunette said, hide in those potato sacks, they'll never find us!" So the brunette got in the first one, the blonde got in the second, and the red-head got in the third, all while the police were setting up a ladder to climb the rafters. Once they got up, the sergeant ordered them to kick the sacks. So the cop kicked the first one: "RUFF." "It's just a dog!" yelled the cop. The cop kicked the next one: "MEOW." "It's just a cat," yelled the cop. The cop kicked the last potato sack and the red-head yelled, "POTATOES."

Back when I was a kid in elementary school, I heard many stories similar to this one, only it was always the blonde who took the dim-witted role. These days, I've been told many times that "gingers are the new blondes." I have certainly had my fair share of stupid moments but to call us the new blondes? Out of all the stereotypes of gingers (mainly the fact that we don't have souls), or any groups of people, be it by hair color, ethnicity, or religion, I think the most insulting would be insulting our intelligence.  The fact is there will always be those who are better at certain things than others, and that each person has their own talents. Stupid stereotypes are easily ignored, because you can easily see that they are false. These are the types of things Tim Minchin (see my last blog) is good at making fun of. Now don't let this rant fool you, it's very hard to insult me especially with things as trivial as telling me I don't have a soul. Others, however, are much more easy to hurt. So just as the cliche saying tells you, if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all. Don't be a ginger racist!

Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin is a very talented comedian, songwriter, actor, and composer from Australia. He is well known for thinking outside the box and his wildly teased hair. One of his most popular songs is entitled "Prejudice." The song starts out slow and daunting, his and his words feel heavy, but still with a slight comedic effect, something he has become very good at adding while writing comical songs. He sings about a word that has been used to bully and judge, that we as a society need to stop using. Then, suddenly, the moods changes drastically. The background music changes to bouncy and light, and he starts singing "Only a ginger, can call another ginger ginger." Once the mood was lightened, he continues singing about the woes of being born a ginger, but in a much more humorous light. He also adds in a couple of pros (like the fact that ladies love the gingers). Overall, it's pretty much impossible to not feel happier after listening to this song. His creativity and play on words just add to the humor of his unique look of heavily applied black eyeliner an drastically teased hair. It's safe to say you will never forget him or his songs once you hear or see them.

Even though this is a song of comedy that's meant to be enjoyed and laughed about, I think Tim Minchin has a great way of looking at things. There are a few people in the world that will pick on you for just about anything, but he has found what is, in my opinion, the best way to respond. Laughing right along with them. He embraces all of the funny names people call him, even adding a few that I'm fairly certain he came up with himself. I honestly wish this was how everyone dealt with the negativity in their life because there could be no bullies if the tormentors knew they could never make anyone feel bad about themselves. Alas, humans are full of flaws and insecurities to match them.

Here is a video of Tim Minchin performing the song "Prejudice" live so you can watch it for yourself. (Warning: he says the F word once towards the end so I wouldn't suggest listening to this on a high volume if you're around other people.)



Something New Perhaps?

I'm pondering adding a different segment to my blog, a new idea that came to me just this morning. Along with my other thoughts and historical information about redheads tha I had already planned on posting, perhaps I'll also add a post each week with a "ginger joke" tha ill either male up myself, get from one of my friends, off the Internet, or even if someone replies with a good one in the comments (hint hint wink wink).Though I know this won't add much more intellectual value to this blog, who doesn't need a good laugh everyone once in a while, especially at someone else's expense (I joke of course, this is all in good humor and I would never support any jokes that would hurt someone's feelings)? I don't know if I'll be able to come up with a new one every week, but I'll play with the idea and upload as I see fit, even if it is just because I need something to lighten my mood. Thank you for being patient while I decide exactly what I want to do. And now I present to you all, the Very First Ginger Joke of the Week/A Ginger Joke Segment That May Never Happen Again.

Q: What do you call a ginger who has gone off the deep end?
A: A ginger snap!

Ginger Genes and Assumptions

In the last blog I told you that I got my red hair from my grandma. However, today I would like to more in depth at the genetics of redheads. It is a recessive gene, which means that someone from both your mother's and father's side of the family must also have red hair, which would show that both your parents have at least a possibility of having the red hair genes and passing them along to their children. Since neither of my parents have red hair, but both carried the right gene, I had a one in four chance of having red hair. If only one of the parents had the red hair gene, then there is no chance their child could have redhair, but there is a 50/50 chance that they will also be a carrier. I got the thick, wavy, and bright copper color of my hair from my father's mother. However, when my parents got divorced, I got a half sister who also has red hair. It drives me absolutely crazy when people who have just met us remark, "I could tell right away you were sisters from your red hair!" My sister's hair forms perfect ringlets, colored golden red. Her skin is the classic pale sprinkled with freckles, while I have almost no freckles and my skin is tinted a distinct shade of pink. I swear one day I'm going to be in a bad mood and when someone tells me how similar we look, I'm going to reply with "I don't know what you're talking about. She's adopted." Just to see the look on their face. I'm not sure my mother will appreciate it, though.
People, there are different shades of red hair just like there are different shades of brunette or blonde. Remember that the next time your gonna tell those two gingers how similar they look.

My Blog

For the next 9 months I will be posting on this blog at least twice a week about my life as a ginger in our modern society. I will have segments on redheads who have become famous and what they have become famous for, specific redheads and their impact in history, the statistics on the decline of redheads, movies with redheads, and more. I, myself, am a ginger, and I will also be posting events that happen in my life pertaining to my being a redhead. As the blog continues, I will also include personal childhood stories that pertain to my red hair or easily burned skin. Both of my great-grandmas were redheads, but I am the first of anyone in my family to inherit their bright copper colored hair since them. My younger half-sister, who is 11 years old, is also a ginger, though she has golden red (or strawberry blond depending on the season)curled hair. The rest of my family has brown hair and tanned skin. Some of the posts will be funny, while others will be serious. I have some ideas already but if there's anything you can think of I'd love for you to share them in the comments below. Some of the things you can look forward to are a review of the ginger episode of South Park, a look at the comedian/song writer Tim Minchin, and of course on a very special week of my choosing, a list of the cutest gingers!

I am excited to share with you all the new things I learn on this adventure!