Bottom line - people are going to bully because it creates esprit de corps...

...and if society says that one group is off-limits, then a new group will be nominated for the role of common people we can feel superior to. 

//Older people will tell you that anti-ginger malice is a strange and new thing in Britain, or that in Italy, for instance, having red hair is considered rather attractive. Perhaps it’s because the prejudices of older generations – racism and sexism – have become unfashionable and strictly penalised that these new ‘prejudices’ have emerged. Teasing gingers is possibly the new means of establishing a pecking order in schools, of establishing group cohesion among bullies. Unfair prejudice is indeed hydra-headed.//

Missed it.

Dutch festival brings together hundreds of redheads.

Sunscreen sales must have been particularly good.

Prejudices, or why does Nicole Kidman work so much?

According to Steven Sailor:

A couple of decades ago, I began noticing that the leading lady in a movie was almost always fairer-skinned than her leading man.


It appears filmmakers and their audiences subconsciously associate lightness of complexion with femininity. Yet, nobody ever seems to talk about it.

Medieval Europeans referred to women as "the fair sex," but in contemporary discourse, skin color is associated only with race, not with sex.

We don't behave like that, however. You may have wondered, for example, why Nicole Kidman seems to have a film coming out every few months. She starred with Sean Penn in The Interpreter in April, will be in Bewitched with Will Ferrell on June 24th, and is slated to be in five more movies scheduled to come out over the next year and a half. Yet, the only film she was ever in that earned $100 million at the domestic box office was Batman Forever a decade ago.

Kidman is a perfectly adequate actress. But one reason she works so much is because of her extraordinarily light complexion. A producer can hire her knowing that no matter which actor he signs to play opposite her, she will be fairer than him.

In 21st Century Hollywood, surprisingly enough, skin tone seems to matter more than height in pairing romantic leads. Kidman is 5'10.5," which you might think would cause casting problems, but that doesn't keep her from working nonstop. She is considerably taller than many popular actors, including her ex-husband Tom Cruise, with whom she made three movies.

Audiences famously want their leading men to look "tall, dark, and handsome" (a phrase first applied to that epitome of male glamour, Cary Grant) when they embrace their leading ladies. But, apparently, "dark" is even more important than "tall."

My impression is that female fans are more insistent than male fans that their favorite actresses be fair. Conversely, male fans don't much like pale actors, as Jude Law's problems shedding the dreaded "pretty boy" tag demonstrate.

While black actors like Will Smith can reach superstar status, it's much harder for black actresses, especially ones darker than the half-white Halle Berry, to win massive popularity. For example, in his hit romantic comedy Hitch, Smith was teamed with a fairly obscure Latina actress rather than a black one.

Sailor points out the scientific fact that women are indeed the "fairer sex" and that men seem programmed to prefer lighter women.

I've always noticed that redhead generally, particularly male redheads are comics and comedians, but not romantic lead. The only pale redheaded actor who managed to play against type is David Caruso, who has not had an exactly first rate movie career.

What a sucky mutation

No, it couldn't be the abiity to blast things with your mind or teleport or pick winning lotter numbers. It just had to be greater sensitivity to pain:

A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine. As a result, redheads tend to be particularly nervous about dental procedures and are twice as likely to avoid going to the dentist as people with other hair colors, according to new research published in The Journal of the American Dental Association.

Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color. In people with brown, black and blond hair, the gene, for the melanocortin-1 receptor, produces melanin. But a mutation in the MC1R gene results in the production of a substance called pheomelanin that results in red hair and fair skin.

and:

“The reason we studied redheads in the beginning, it was essentially an urban legend in the anesthesia community saying redheads were difficult to anesthetize,” Dr. Sessler said. “This was so intriguing we went ahead and studied it. Redheads really do require more anesthesia, and by a clinically important amount.”

After publishing research on the topic, Dr. Sessler began hearing from redheads who complained about problems with dental pain and fear about going to the dentist. He said that when someone with red hair is considering a dental or other procedure requiring an anesthetic, they should talk to their doctor about the high probability that they are resistant to anesthetics.

“Because they’re resistant, many redheads have had bad experiences,” Dr. Sessler said. “If they go to the dentist or have a cut sutured, they’ll need more local anesthetic than other people.”

The "urban legend" thing is interesting. I'm sure that most dentists just thought that redheads were a bunch of whiny complainers since, after all, how could hair color possibly interface with anaesthesia resistance? Then someone checked out the "urban legend" and, voila, weird new discovery.

Of course, maybe redheads don't go to dentists because they're just lazy.

Enough of the invidious ethnic stereotyping.

First, it's the story that red-heads will be extinct in a hundred years.

Now, we find out that red-heads have already had "one extinction event" as scientists now speculate that neanderthals may have been fair-skinned and red-headed.

This is not going to help my social life.

Screw Global Warming! This is serious.

Jonah Goldberg links to this troubling article on the imminent extinction of redheads - "Gingers extinct in 100 years".

Gingers????

The article says:

REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world's population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland.

An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair.

Some experts say that redheads could be gone as early as 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant for generations before returning.

National Geographic says the gene at first had the beneficial effect of increasing the body's ability to make vitamin D from sunlight.

However, today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.

Well, I've done my bit to pass along a dormant gene that will bring about a susceptibility to skin cancer and pain in future generations.

Also, divorce. None of my kids have redhair, but I assure them that probably their grandkids or great-grandkids will turn up with redhair, thereby giving rise to scandal and questions about "where did that come from?"