I Said Red

My favorite colour may be yellow, but I love red hair. I think it is a residual effect from reading Anne of Green Gables at an age where my ideas of beauty where still in a protean state. In the book, Anne-with-an-e is mortified by her carrot top. She spends most of the book raging against her hair colour and her natural ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in the end, she gets her wish and her hair darkens into a 'handsome' auburn. Saving readers from having to worry about Anne's hair in the next books in the series. A great relief, because let's face it, my hair never grew into a beautiful auburn like Anne's. And I like Anne. She was a bosom friend, and it would have been terrible to have to hate her because I could never achieve her hair colour. So Anne and I remain on good terms. Sadly, though my passion for red hair has never really dimmed. So I have spent years colouring my mousy, undesirable brown to various shades of glorious red.

But I think there was more to my desire to be a red head then just the flashy colour. I had an idea in my head that red heads where naturally argumentative, yet terribly clever. Like a Scottish serving wench who wins the heart of the local lord by being both rude and fetching at the same time. The kind of woman who would slap his face and then set off over the moors in her tartan skirts, head held high.

But it was also a little bit about sex too. While all the girls in high school were going blond, having heard that they might have more fun, I bucked the trend. Marilyn Monroe may have been a bombshell blond, but Rita Hayworth was a sassy, sexy redhead. One flick of her red locks and she brought men to their knees. And let's face it Rita could have acted circles around Monroe. Ok, so she died of Alzheimer's, but I don't think you can blame that on her red hair.

Picture from Flickr