Hug a Redhead Today!

If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100. The reason, according to scientists at the independent institute in England, which studies all sorts of hair problems, is that just 4 percent of the world's population carries the red-hair gene. The gene is recessive (and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene. Dr. John Gray's often publicized explanation of his foundation's findings: "The way things are going; red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century." The gene responsible for red hair - known as the melanocortin 1 receptor, or MC1R - was only discovered in the late 1990s. People have a good chance of being born with red hair if they have a mutation of that gene. Red hair is found in all ethnic backgrounds but is most commonly associated with people of Celtic descent. (I am not Irish although I play one on March 17th.)

Maybe I need to have my friend the rocket scientist (ok, ok, genetic researcher) look into this…let me know your thoughts T.

So I have a few thoughts about this possibility:

~Thank goodness I will be gone because a world without Red is no place to live!
~“Studying all sorts of hair problems”; who decides that is what they want to do with their life?
~Recessive my arse: My dad, me (obviously) my brother, and now my son. I won’t even get into my dad’s 7 siblings. (some of which are shown here)

~As I read the article about my people’s pending doom, I thought back to the ridicule I experienced as a young child and then the near celebrity I received as I reached adulthood. I have grown to love my red hair and “angle kisses” (now that I have the sharpie off my skin from my sister connecting the dots in an attempt to see how many I had as a youth; why did I let her do that?) and think of them as my trademark.

Quotable and red:

"She has no name, the red-haired girl from the bog, but she is easy enough to identify, for old legends declare that anything red and white is fairy born. ... Her dancing partners should have recognized their danger, for red-haired girls with milky skin - and anyone resembling them, even non-redheads wearing red petticoats - are omens of ill fortune, folklorist Lady Wilde informs us, while archaeologist Thomas Westropp records the belief that a mere glance from a red-haired girl can kill a horse or a man."- From "The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit" by Patricia Monaghan

My husband might agree with that last part some times!


A young man marrying a redhead asked his father for some marital advice. The father said, "Just remind her who wears the pants in your family." The evening arrived; the new husband tossed his pants to his bride and said, "Here put these on." She did and said "I don't fit into these." "That's right!" he said, "and don't you forget who wears the pants in this family!" With that she flipped him her panties and said, "Try these on." He looked at them and said, "I can't get into your panties!" She said, "That's right - and you won't until your attitude changes!"