Last night I stumbled upon an article on The Frisky about why men love redheads. It basically says that because we are rare, the thought of capturing one of us is exciting. From what little I understand about the minds of men, this seems to make sense. However, having men fawn all over me because I have red hair has not been my experience. Sure, I’ve been on one or two creepy dates where I guy couldn’t stop staring at or trying to touch my hair. And I am very aware that men (and women) are apt to view me as crazy, or more sexual, or more outrageous, because of my long auburn locks (hence they are generally pulled back off my face, especially at the office). Normally, this is not a plus.
The kind of men I like to date (basically, other MBAs) seem to be looking for the girl next door. I always thought the pretty girls with the mousy brown hair got way more attention then I did. Guys sought them out as they sat in the corner, giggling with their other girlfriends. A guy who gets a girl like this feels like a conqueror. He’s made a girl feel special, a girl that presumably hasn’t gone out with lots of guys. He wants this…innocence (meanwhile, said girl is going around stealthily making out with 50 dudes while I get no action for months…you know who you are). On the other hand, like our mythical friend Joan, I have always been assumed to have some sort of vast sexual experience or power, the second I walk into a room. If I have bright red hair, I must have dyed it (I didn’t) because I am the type of girl who wants everybody to stare at me (I’m not). And if I want everyone to stare at me, I must think I’m pretty hot stuff. And if I think that, I must have had experience….etc. The result is that most guys I glance at tend to cower in the corner in fear. It took my boyfriend 2 years of being my close friend before he realized I was a normal girl capable of a faithful, loving relationship, and not some sex-goddess-from-outer-space (and we won’t even get into some of the comments that came from his guy friends when we went public).
Some of the redheaded commentators on the Frisky article detail memories of being teased and called “red” as children. While I was definitely, mercilessly teased as a child, it had more to do with my huge glasses and highwater jeans then with my hair (they called me Urkel). I do remember getting a lot of attention from adults (of course, I have no other experience to compare it to), and being asked frequently by old ladies “now where did you get that red hair?”. As a little kid, I’d look up sweetly and say, “From Jesus”, which made them swoon (I grew up in the Bible Belt, stay with me here). As an older kid, I’d devilishly reply “from the mailman” just to see the mortification cross my mother’s face. Heh heh…yeah, that’s still funny.
I do remember the first time I went to New York City, on a group trip when I was 16, that it was the first time in my life in which I felt like nobody was staring at me. I loved the feeling of just blending in with the crowd, thinking and feeling and doing whatever I wanted. But again, it’s hard to separate how much of the hometown staring had to do with my hair (versus how much is just small town middle-American culture). I do know that I’ve loved the anonymity of big cities ever since.
Bottom line is, redheads are normal people. We feel pain (in fact, we feel more pain). Our tempers are not any more “fire-y” than anybody else’s, unless you call us “red” and laugh to yourself like you’re the most original person on earth. And we are not inherently ugly (another sterotype I’ve heard over and over, as in “I’m not into redheads”…how could you not be “into” an entire group of people based on one physical trait?). I, in fact, am quite fetching. But I am nobody’s unicorn.
Great post! Nobody wants to feel exoticized. I used to get the same sort of interested wonder as a “Black girl” from some non-Black guys. My boyfriend is Latino now (Go, Mr. C!) and I love that he acknowledges and respects my ethnicity without making it some big, exciting thing. Anywho, I like your comparison of how you sometimes get treated to a unicorn. Today, Dooce’s post is about her regret over a HUGE DRAMA that ensued after a fellow blogger (affectionately) referred to her as being like a mythical hobbit. Apparently, it’s common for people to “otherize” people we don’t know well. I do it too–but to people born as multiples. They’ve always seemed kind of magical to me.
Yeah, I know for a fact there are times that I have made internationally-born friends and even American friends of a different race uncomfortable by asking all about their experiences as X. I took a lot of sociology courses in college and have always found it fascinating to think about how people’s experiences differ based on their gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Though I would, of course, reserve my lines of questions for people I was close to in the name of having an interesting discussion, I only recently realized that asking this stuff can make the other person feel like I am asking what it’s like to be X because I only see them as X (which is not true, I am usually asking because I feel they are like me but X, so I want to know how that one difference affected them…it’s like getting to think about what life would be like if I were X). But yeah, I’ve stopped doing that.
[...] definitely enjoyed the fact that the heroine and her amazingly gorgeous sea-goddess mother are both redheads. And, though some critics might disagree with me here, I thought the English-dubbing was pretty [...]