Being ginger's been the making of us

Ann McFerran discusses the gingerism her children have encountered throughout their lives and how they feel about being red heads today. Particularly interesting is the distinctive difference between Canadian and British reactions to red hair.

When we returned to the UK, there wasn't much let-up, only instead of admiration, those who stared and shouted names at my son because of his hair were mostly other children. Copper knob, ginger nut, carrot top, Duracell, ginger ninja; the names were not particularly inventive and, with the exception of the latter, didn't seem to have changed since I was a child. “I was probably oversensitive to the names,” admits Patrick, 30.

I now think that I wasn't sensitive enough to my son or aware enough of the kind of routine bullying that is regularly meted out to gingers, and particularly to young gingers whose hair colour is at its most extreme. I may even have exacerbated the problem: I thought my son's hair was such a spectacular colour that I let it grow quite long to show it off.

Source: Times Online