Red hair is caused by a mutation in the MC1R gene. It is the rarest natural human hair colour, found in just 1-2% of the global population. There are geographical differences, however, and red hair is more common in Northern Europe – particularly in Scotland and Ireland where the percentage of those with red hair sits at around 10%.
The red of red hair varies in hue from a deep burgundy to bright copper, or auburn, to burnt orange or red-orange to strawberry blonde. It is typically associated with fair skin colour, lighter eye colour, freckles, and sensitivity to ultraviolet light.
The term "redhead" has been in use since at least 1510, while the term "ginger" is sometimes used, especially in Britain and Ireland, to describe a person with red hair. Other somewhat derisive terms for redheads include “carrot top”, "blood nut", "matchstick" and “ranga” (short for orangutan). The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for the use of the term ranga is from 2003, in The Sydney Morning Herald – and the term was subsequently and notoriously used by the lead character “Jonah” in the first episode of the 2007 TV series Summer Heights High as part of the bullying of a young ginger-haired student named Ben. Watch Jonah having a hard time saying sorry to Ben HERE.
In various times and cultures, and due to its rarity, red hair has been prized, feared and ridiculed. At one time or another, having red hair has also been associated with: having a fiery temper and a sharp tongue, being Jewish (some truth in this), being highly sexed and having a high tolerance to pain. Though the details are not clearly understood, it appears that there is also some truth to the pain tolerance thing, having something to do with the body’s hormone receptors.
Gingers, a book of photographs of red haired people was published in 2020 by Scottish photographer Kieran Dodds. Kieran himself is "pale and ginger", what he calls a cliché of Scottish national identity, but he wanted to use the hair colour to document a global phenomenon and send a message: "It's not about hair," he says. "It's about humanity and how we are all made of the same stuff. With the ginger hair you can see that connection." Take a tour inside Gingers with Dodds HERE, and watch singer/songwriter Tim Minchin sing about ginger predjudice at a concert back in 2010 HERE. The chorus lyric: "Only a ginger can call another ginger ginger."
And there are redhead festivals – in County Cork Ireland, in London, in Russia and even in Israel, serving both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish red-heads; but the big one is Dutch. Redhead Day (Roodharigendag in Dutch) is the name of a summer festival that takes place each last weekend of August in the city of Tilburg. The festival started in 2005 in the small city Asten, and was held from 2007 up to 2018 in the city of Breda, in the Netherlands. The three-day festival is a gathering of tens of thousands of people in the city center of Tilburg, including many thousands of people with natural red hair, from more than 80 countries. It’s a festival of reds.
The accidental mastermind behind the Dutch gathering, painter Bart Rouwenhorst, was originally inspired by the artists who famously painted red-haired women such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Gustav Klimt.
And finally, there’s a magazine for that. Named after the relevant gene, MC1R is a publication for red-haired people worldwide, based in Hamburg, Germany that boasts a global community of 75,000.
Everything under the sun … but not too much sun for you rangas.
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair
wikipedia.org/wiki/Redhead_Day
nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/things-to-do-redhead-festival
kierandodds.com/work/gingers
bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54929694
Images
1.The Mackay family, Scotland and a redhead from Jamaica. Photo credit: Kieran Dodds.
2. Queen Elizabeth I of England was a redhead. George Gower painting circa 1588.
3. Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portait as an Artist, 1888
4. Male Sumatran orangutan
5. Summer Heights High, 2007: Jonah resists saying sorry to Ben for calling him a "ranga"
6. Video: Look inside Gingers book with author Kieran Dodds
7. Video: "Prejudice" by Tim Minchin performed in 2010
8. Sea of red, Redhead Day, Tilburg 2022
9. Group photo, Redhead Day, Tilburg 2023, Photo credit: Neogeo1975
10. MC1R magazine
11. Bryant & May "Redheads" matches, today owned by Swedish Match
