“My speech is entitled ‘Ginger Kids.’ Children with red hair, light skin, and freckles. We’ve all seen them. On the playground, at the store, walking on the streets. They creep us out, and make us sick to our stomachs. I’m talking, of course, about ginger kids.”
In the November 2005 South Park episode titled “Ginger Kids” the character Cartman makes a presentation in class about redheads an encourages students to discriminate against them. The episode perpetuated myths that redheads have no souls and even inspired national “Kick a Ginger Day.”
But red haired individuals have been gaining extra attention – wanted and unwanted, positive and negative – long before the controversial episode aired and possibly even more after. Redheads, who make up roughly 2 percent of the population, stand out, and are often singled out in the media and in everyday life.
Nicknames for redheads span from kind, to comical, to offensive, such as Bozo the clown, tampon top, carrot top, baby carrot, Archie and Big Red.
The Red Head Radar is a blog that photographs various redheads on the streets of New York and occasionally asks them about their experiences as redheads. One woman photographed on the site said, “Sometimes you call me ‘Ginger.’ Sometimes you call me ‘Red,’ which is annoying and pisses me off because I have a name. And what else do you call me? Oh, I’ve gotten ‘Fire Crotch’ at least seventeen times.”
Junior communication major Lindsay Tarlow says that as a child she felt like the target of discrimination, even when people were not intentionally offensive. “Now I accept, enjoy and embrace my hair,” she said. “Now being different is a good thing.”
Tarlow acknowledges that she receives an added degree of attention and lacks the ability to conceal herself wherever she goes, “I can usually feel myself being noticed, it is the first description of me now matter what I’m doing or where I am,” she says.
Matt Greif, a junior accounting major, says he never received many comments about hair until after high school. “When I met a friend for the first time she came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I wouldn’t normally do this because you’re a ginger, but I like your hat,’” Grief said. “That was the first time I ever got a negative ginger comment,” he said.
Redheads are often stereotyped to be loud, hot tempered, fiery, or funny. Greif says his hair has helped shape his personality. “People usually assume I’m a clown,” he said. “There are times I wish people would take me more seriously.”
For Tarlow, friends often describe her personality as “crazy.” “Sometimes people say I wouldn’t be as funny without my red hair and some guys just assume that redheads aren’t their ‘type,’” she says.
Like many groups that are often discriminated against, redheads have a special bond. Tarlow says that there is automatic camaraderie among redheads. “We usually acknowledge each other a second longer than normal,” Tarlow. “I even have friendships that are pretty much based on being redheads.”