Gingerfest
As a ‘redhead’ myself, I am often bemused at what I consider, the prejudice within our society of the ‘unfortunate’ few who were blessed with lovely auburn locks.
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| From Blog Pictures |
As a child I initially didn’t think much about it, but I do remember getting called ‘Carrot-Top’ at primary school and me pointing out that carrot tops were in fact green. As I grew older, particularly during my awkward teenage years, I soon realised that what had begun as childish teasing had rapidly developed into a never-ending torrent of abuse (goodnatured or no), ignorant generalisations and in many places full on prejudice: “watch out - redheads have a fiery temper” “You can’t do that because you are a ginger”, “All gingers are ugly”, “I’d never date a ginger” and so on.
This would be further compounded when some of these remarks would prove true, for example; sunbathing or the inability to slip into a crowd. However if I ever bring up the fact that I have felt, many times in my life, discriminated against because of my hair colour, people invariably scoff and continue to poke fun. However as far as I concerned this continued mocking of red-haired people is nothing less than socially acceptable racism.
Which brings me to the following video on the BBC website - an exhibition celebrating the beauty of ‘GINGER’. Hoorah!
However, try watching it but replacing every occurrence of the word ginger with the word you get when you rearrange the first and third letter of the word ‘ginger’.
Not so funny is it…
Hello
I too am a ging and have had ‘issues’ with other peoples comments over the years, yes hurtful, now i really don’t care. I save money on not having to dye it so i have the last laugh! Ha.
hi, i’m the gingerfest photographer and i entirely agree with your comments. the exhibition is actually called “Melanocortin-1 Receptor” and just the opening night event is “Gingerfest” (as suggested by one of the participants).
sadly the media have picked up on a very catchy term and ignored the title of the exhibition which is all about the entire range of physical traits of the MC1R gene, from almost blonde to dark auburn, with everything in between plus freckles and eye/skin colour.
theres a link to another such (yet slightly less offensive) piece from Central tv news on my links page.
lol!
sorry but it seems a hell of a lot funnier to me with the ‘word replacement’ suggestion. It would be absolutely unacceptable :p
Time to go on a hunt… for the ‘gingers’ of Wolverhampton.
I think it looks alright on girls, sometimes a more attractive trait.
I think ginger beards are just shite tho, with no exception (unless you’re a viking) - Vikings are badass.
argh must not try to mock!
That counts as a Fail, Darren. Thanks for the comments peeps. Glad the exhibition isn’t as exploitative as the BBC handling of the story.
I like my hair now - I never liked being the same as everyone else. Maybe the hair is why…