In defense of the blonde: one Marilyn's plea.

Funny, I never picked up on 'redhead means easy'. Every stereotype I've ever seen with redheads is "don't piss them off, they have nasty tempers." This coming from a woman whose mom was a redhead and a Leo and had a nasty temper. :)

Having been hit on constantly during my entire adolescence because of the "redheads love sex - hopefully with you" stereotype, I'd have to say it's definitely out there.

--Ember--

I'm glad I missed it, then. I've always seen that redheads were seen as the most desireable, but not the most easily 'gotten'. In my little area of the South? That would be blonde. And brunettes were envious of everyone else.

Well, I also got a lot of the "A slut will sleep with anyone, a bitch will sleep with anyone but you stereotype." Why they assumed I was saying yes to somebody at all, though, I'm not sure.

In fact I was turning them all down. So I'm guessing it was the stereotype that prompted them to assume somebody was getting some out of me. But the stereotype was frequently cited in their pickup lines.

--Ember--

Heh. I was generally a bitch.

That's really interested to me because I've been coloring my hair red since I was 17. Naturally it's mouse brown, fine and the grey started up at 16. Everyone who knows me since then is often startled when I tell them it's not "natural" because I'm the 'stereotypical' ballsy redhead with a temper and an attitude.

Hmm, I'm a natural redhead. Folks expected me to be passionate in all ways. They expected me to want lots of sex, to be really intense, to lose my temper easily, and to be pushy and gutsy. They also expected me to be smart, but I don't think that was from the hair.

I have to admit, I DO have a hereditary temper from my Dad's side, so that's fair, I guess. I'm wondering if the pushy and gutsy is a result of being pushed around as a kid, such that you learn to push back, or if that, too, is somehow hereditary, but it does apply. The expectations on my sexuality were the big part of the Redhead stereotype that didn't apply as folks seemed to hope, and so it stands out to me as the one that was the most troublesome for me to deal with as a teenager. The rest of it I couldn't deny, so it didn't bother me as much.

--Ember--

My analagous response to yours is that I was 16 when a certain fast food restaurant premiered their "Wendy's Hot and Juicy" add campaign. This made my senior year of high schoool in many ways a living hell.

I came up with a better way to phrase it in another reply - "I never defined myself by how I looked, I decided to look how I defined myself". Being in theatre, you get a kind of skewed perception about looks. I perceived redheads as outgoing fiesty girls who don't take shit from anyone, and also I like the aspect of being "different" as it's not a common shade. If I thought about any sexual aspect at all it might have been that a redhead was more likely to "take charge" there too - and might well have the guts to proposition a guy if she were so inclined!

I remember reading that in the US, when a woman decides to change her hair color (as opposed to covering grey) the most common color is blonde followed by shades of red. I find this interesting when I read about things in Britain like "Kick a Ginger Day".

Yeah, my experience with Theatre is that redheads are fairly well appreciated there. I've heard directors comment that red hair is just so much more dynamic looking under the lights, and other such appreciation. But that may be the particular directors I've happened to encounter.

I don't think Theatre is the skew, I think all the stereotypes you and I are describing fit together into a larger stereotype, and it's just the reactions that vary.

--Ember--

My experience, being British (and also male and over 50) was that redheaded males, especially boys but also a number of men, got picked on ('Ginger' was one of the least of the epithets -- 'carrottop', 'coppernob', etc. were possibly more common). Redheaded girls seemed to be desirable but no one with any sense would even try anything on because they would (stereotype) rip you to shreds. Auburn, on the other hand, was seen as rather "upper class", desirable but probably not interested in the plebs.

We got some of the "dumb blonde" stuff over here, mostly via American TV shows I suspect, but we also had a number of strong blonde characters on TV (Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds was a heroine to a lot of blonde girls when I was growing up). But more we had the "blonde and pretty girl" equals "don't have to do anything", men would fall over and do anything such a girl asked so she didn't have to try (and in fact there was motivation for her to use her looks rather than do anything herself[1]). Too many fell for that, a few deliberately rebelled against it.

Yes, there are a lot of "dyed red" women over here. Natural redheads are a lot more rare. The same with blondes.

[1] In a similar vein, teachers discovered that a lot of children who "couldn't read" had realised that if you admitted to being able to read you had to do more work, whereas if you "couldn't read" you got put in 'remedial' classes where the work was easier and you could sit there daydreaming while pretending that you were struggling with the text.

The anti-redhead thing has been around for a long time. I believe (but haven't looked it up) that it goes back as far as the middle ages, when the church started teaching that Judas had red hair.