Calling All (Natural) Redheads!

Madisonwrites · Jun 6, 2009

Hi!

If you are a natural redhead like me, then I need your help. I need you to answer two questions.

1. What do you love about your hair?

2. What do you hate about your hair?

Please keep your answers as close to dealing with red hair as possible. My new book centers around redheads.

Thanks in advance and rep points for all!

Cranky · Jun 6, 2009

1. Nothing. That's why I dye it. : D

2. Everything. That's why I dye it.

More specifically, I was teased endlessly (and by that I mean into adulthood) about my hair color. I grew to despise it, and so about five years ago, I took the plunge and dyed it dark brown. Only occasionally do I let it go back to my natural color, and then only to give my hair a break. Other people like my natural hair color better than I ever have. My mother is still pissy that I dye it. LOL

dgrintalis · Jun 6, 2009

1. What do you love about your hair?
2. What do you hate about your hair?

My hair is naturally red, curly and waist-length.

1. I love that it is a unique color. My hair is copper and shimmers like crazy in the sunlight. Because of the curl, it's pretty low maintenance; however, because of the length, I wear it twisted up in a knot secured with hair sticks most of the time.

2. I was teased as a kid and absolutely hated my hair. I hated the color and the curl. I stopped hating the color in my early twenties and the curl when I hit thirty. When it's humid outside, I get a halo of fuzz if I'm not careful, but that's a curly hair thing, not a redhead thing. One thing that makes me uncomfortable is how much it stands out. I don't hate it, per se, but it does make me a little uncomfortable.

Madisonwrites · Jun 6, 2009

Thanks to both of you! You've helped a lot!

johnnysannie · Jun 8, 2009

Madisonwrites said:
Hi! If you are a natural redhead like me, then I need your help. I need you to answer two questions.

1. What do you love about your hair?

2. What do you hate about your hair?

Please keep your answers as close to dealing with red hair as possible. My new book centers around redheads.

Thanks in advance and rep points for all!

1. I love the color; it's identical to my late grandfather's Irish red hair so I like to consider it a sort of heirloom.

2. That as I age, there are a few white hairs among the red and I figure one day I'll have "cayenne and salt" hair rather than the black/gray hair my grandmother called "salt and pepper" hair!

redpbass · Jun 8, 2009

My sister is a redhead; it's that rare dark red that you rarely see anywhere.

She always seemed to like her hair, but I'm sure she got annoyed with everyone she ran into out in public saying things like...

1) If I could bottle that hair color, I'd be rich!
2) Your hair is so beautiful! (in a tone that implies she didn't deserve such a color)
3) You know what they say about red heads! (said with a knowing smile)

Also, Every time anyone ever got her a present, it's main color was usually red, because everyone assumed that was her favorite color. She actually likes yellow, probably as a counter reaction.

thethinker42 · Jun 8, 2009

My hair is really dark (see my av), but it IS red. I'm on the Auburn end of the spectrum, I guess you could say.

Madisonwrites said:
1. What do you love about your hair?

Natural highlights!!! If I spend enough time out in the sun, my hair is Secretariat red with almost blonde highlights. During the winter (well, before I moved to the tropics!), it turned almost brown. But I love having natural highlights.

2. What do you hate about your hair?

The fact that it's a package deal with pasty white skin that sunburns in the dark. Otherwise, I like my hair color.

Maryn · Jun 8, 2009

Both my siblings are natural redheads. My brother, being a guy, is sort of oblivious to things about his appearance which are too difficult to change, but my sister hated her bright red, curly hair until she was in her late 20s.

She hated the fact that strangers felt it appropriate to talk to her about her hair, to call her "Red" or "Carrot-top," to touch it, to comment on her appearance at all.

She hated that at a time when long straight hair was the ideal, gigantic rollers and ironing her hair could achieve the look for only an hour or two.

She hated that we lived in southern Arizona but her pale skin meant she would never tan, only burn, and that very quickly.

And she really hated that her natural eyebrow and eyelash color was a strawberry blonde that was pretty much invisible.

Now, in her fifties, she hates that it's so hard for hairdressers to dye it a shade which looks like a real red.

Maryn, who's dyed hers auburn in an attempt to look like a member of the family

sheadakota · Jun 8, 2009

I always loved my natural hair color- auburn with blonde highlights- I liked the uniqueness about it.- but as someone else said- I despise the pale skin coloring that comes with it- not to many freckles but just once in my life I wish I could have a beautiful tan.
I also hate that as I have aged the color has faded to a dull brown- I now color it to get as close to the original as I can. My hairdresser is amamzing-

RJK · Jun 8, 2009

As a kid, it was just one more thing the other kids used to pick on me. "Carrot top" "Howdy Doody"
As I got a little older it got worse "Red on the head the a d**k on a dog."
Later in life it was the orange pubs. Were the ladies snickering at the color? or was it something else?
Now I'm in my sixtys and all those tormenters are grey, white haired, or bald. I still have my red hair that takes at least ten years off my looks.

daehedr · Jun 8, 2009

love the red hair always have - marked me as Irish which I have always appreciated actually always wanted redder hair hence the use of teenage hennas.

hate the superblond non-existant eyebrows and crappy eyelashes, and red flushed skin that goes with it, hate the rosacea which we are prone to. And yes hate the "fading" we get as we get older.

My son however had beautiful dark auburn with brown eyes and lashes and he always hated the red hair but never had the pale skin, freckles etc., and yet every woman I know wanted his hair colour.

dahmnait · Jun 8, 2009

Madisonwrites said:
1. What do you love about your hair?

Now I love just about everything about my hair. And when anyone says to me, “You know what they say about redheads,” my response is, “Damn right!” Let them figure out what part I mean.

(On a side note, who the heck are "they" and how did they get so much power?)

Madisonwrites said:
2. What do you hate about your hair?

As a kid I hated my hair color. I was teased all the time. I didn't look like everyone else. All the normal complaints of a redheaded child. I tried dying my hair other colors, but the dye never took. After every complaint and every failure to change my hair, my mom would tell me that "people pay big money to get your color and curl." I took me until my early 20s to realize what she meant.

My only complaint now is that as I get older (and my hair silvers more) my color is fading. It's much lighter than the copper it used to be.

Maryn said:
She hated that we lived in southern Arizona but her pale skin meant she would never tan, only burn, and that very quickly.

I grew up in a coastal town where blonde and tan was the norm. I can totally understand where your sister was coming from.

Red-Green · Jun 8, 2009

I like the color--it's the one unusual thing about my appearance and what people always remember about me. And I don't mind being called Red--as my user name suggests. Anybody calls me "carrot top," though, and they'll be picking their teeth up off the ground. (Did I mention I have a traditional redhead's temper?)

What I hate--the texture. When I was little, I essentially had an orange afro. My hair is so fine and frizzy that the only way to tame it is by keeping it long. I have to have it past my shoulders or it stands up in this crazy triangle frizz-bomb.

EFCollins · Jun 8, 2009

My daughter has auburn hair. My hair is very dark but had red highlights. (Had because I color religiously... gray coverage)

My daughter loves her hair. It's silky, smooth and shiny. It's gorgeous.

What she hates about it... It's very fine and she can't do anything with it. It won't hold curl, it will barely stay in a pony tail, and it braids about like it curls. She gets all these flyaways that drive her nuts.

CarolSanDiego · Jun 9, 2009

I love having red hair - I really like the color I got and I love that it's so unique. I was lucky in that I didn't get teased a lot as a kid - I had small freckles over the bridge of my nose and somehow have always been able to get a light tan, so I didn't have the traumatic experience a lot of redheads do. My dad called me "Red" growing up, and I always loved that. Since I was a kid, people have stopped me to compliment my hair color - so I've always felt like somehow I got something cool.

So - I don't hate it. Usually. But I do have to say that I look at some of the dark haired, tanned beauties out there and wish that I could be like them - to me, dark hair and skin is so exotic and beautiful. I do wish I didn't get so many sunburns, and now that I'm in my 30s, I definitely have more crinkles around my eyes than most of my friends do. Can't say I'm thrilled about that!

And- having fair skin, I blush easily, so I get a lot of teasing for that. It seems that I turn red any time attention is focused on me, whether I feel embarrassed or not. And then, of course, there were obnoxious guys in high school that always asked me, "So do red heads also have red... you know?"

Lyra · Jun 9, 2009

You might like what the comedian Catherine Tate thought about being a redhead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUhLIjlTNSk

LaurieD · Jun 9, 2009

Redheads run back on both sides of my family for as long as anybody can remember. My mother's family has a smidge of Native American in their heritage, my father's are strictly Canadian. My father had red hair as a child, it turned black in his teens, and is now mostly gray. My mother has had brown hair all her life. Of the four of us kids, my sister and I have the dark red of my mother's mother and her sisters. I tan after I've burned once or twice. My sister burns and peels. Of my brothers, one has the strawberry blonde and lobstering skin of my father's family and the other has the dark hair and instant tanning skin also of my mother's family.

That said...

What I hate about my hair: I hate that it is straight - perms don't take and a curling iron is a waste of time and energy. I hate that in "dirty" air it turns more brown. I hate that it frizzes in the humidity. When I was a kid, I hated all of it - there were several of us in my grade with red hair of one shade or another and we were all picked on mercilessly. I also have an easily blushing tendency - everything toenails up turns lobster run when I"m embarrassed.

What I love about my hair: By the time I got to high school though, red hair was cool and I loved that for once every one was trying to get my hair color to come out of a bottle. I love that when I'm in the sun, in clean air my hair develops highlights of all kinds - golds, coppers, blondes. I love that redheads are considered somehow different, mysterious, and somehow almost exotic. I love that my kids both have red hair.

AnnieColleen · Jun 9, 2009

My hair wanders somewhere between auburn and strawberry blond; I like it, but I always wished for the brighter red that my mom & two of my brothers had. (Though theirs has gotten darker as well.) When I was little I used to call it "sun-gold".

My mom on the other hand always wished she had dark hair. (The older two in her family were dark, then 3 redheads, then two more brunette.)

It makes "guess the baby picture" games difficult! (difficult to fool people, I mean...too easy for the guessers!) I have to use either winter-hat pictures or very young (<1 year) pictures, from before the color and curl really showed!

Plot Device · Jun 9, 2009

I'm not a redhead (even though my avatar has red hair). But before you call security to have me thrown out of the thread, here's some info I picked up from a hairdresser many years ago along the way in life's journey.

A person with red hair is capable of having more hair folicles per square inch of scalp than any other human hair type in the world. So there are certain red heads whose hair is so unbelievably thick that it's downright unmanageable.

dahmnait · Jun 9, 2009

Plot Device said:
A person with red hair is capable of having more hair folicles per square inch of scalp than any other human hair type in the world. So there are certain red heads whose hair is so unbelievably thick that it's downright unmanageable.

So that's why. I never knew that my hair being so thick was, in part, because of the color.

I actually shave the back (about 1 1/2 inches underneath) to not only keep my head lighter, but also because in the 100+ weather we get here it keeps me much cooler. I also seem to lose more hair than I would think possible to lose and still have a full head of thick hair.

CarolSanDiego · Jun 9, 2009

Plot Device said:
A person with red hair is capable of having more hair folicles per square inch of scalp than any other human hair type in the world. So there are certain red heads whose hair is so unbelievably thick that it's downright unmanageable.

That explains it! Yep - my hair can be downright unmanageable. Never realized that was part of the "red."

I just remembered something that has always bothered me - any time I get upset (which isn't all that often) there's always someone who smirks at me and blames my red hair for my temper/outburst/perfectly normal reaction to asinine comments. It's so deflating to not be taken seriously when I have a serious gripe!

mscelina · Jun 9, 2009

1. I love the way my hair looks in the light.

2. I hate being a self-fulfilling prophecy. My mother was a brunette and I have the same damn temper she did. It has NOTHING to do with my hair.

*throws a plate at the wall*

Gretad08 · Jun 10, 2009

My brother and various other family members are red-heads. He LOVES his hair and so does everyone else.

We've heard the trait is becoming very rare and could become nonexistent in the next 100 years, so he's bound and determined to carry on the tradition...he wants to marry a red head or a girl with red hair in her family.

I could be wrong but I've heard red hair has to be on the both sides of the family to be passed on b/c it's a recessive trait.

Cranky · Jun 10, 2009

Gretad08 said:
My brother and various other family members are red-heads. He LOVES his hair and so does everyone else.

We've heard the trait is becoming very rare and could become nonexistent in the next 100 years, so he's bound and determined to carry on the tradition...he wants to marry a red head or a girl with red hair in her family.

I could be wrong but I've heard red hair has to be on the both sides of the family to be passed on b/c it's a recessive trait.

I don't know, but I think you're right. No one on my hubby's side has naturally red hair, and so none of my boys do. They can get reddish highlights in the sun maybe, but that's about it. Honestly, I'm glad they didn't...I've gotten the most horrible sunburns (turned my skin purple and I could literally see the heat rising off my skin). They've been spared that.

Cyia · Jun 10, 2009

Plot Device said:
A person with red hair is capable of having more hair folicles per square inch of scalp than any other human hair type in the world. So there are certain red heads whose hair is so unbelievably thick that it's downright unmanageable.

Sorry, PD, your hairdresser isn't quite right on that one. Natural redheads, on average, have FEWER than the normal number of follicles per centimeter.

http://www.pg.com/science/haircare/hair_twh_5.htm

(They also routinely require a stronger sedative in anesthesia.)

For me, my dad had red hair, mom's natural color is black. (her parents - dad red, mom black; his parents -- dad red, mom black)

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