Redness Sake

I never thought about dying pubic hairs. In the East Bay Express’ favorite letters of 2008 there was a message to the editor about coloring one’s naughty bits. Apparently 40% of women over 40 experience a change in their southern hairs. Now, “Betty Beauty” offers a way for middle-aged women to feel and look younger in all of their glory by coloring their sensitive body hair.

I realized that there was finally a benefit to being red headed: we don’t go grey. Or at least that is what my mother told me. We might, eventually, end up going white, but the red heads in my family have not gone white until later lifetimes. My grandmother, who died in her 80’s had left the world behind with her red hair still afire.

Given that red hair is a genetic mutation experienced by less that 4% of the world population, those who possess the various shades of this rare hair do not undergo what Blondes, Brunettes and Black-haired people experience. This fact became a problem in my 8th grade life sciences course at Willard Jr. High when my teacher said that everyone’s hair would turn grey, eventually. I kindly informed her that redheads do not go grey, though she snapped at me that I was wrong. When I told her that my grandmother’s hair had altered its hue but retained its original fire, she told me that my grandmother probably dyed her hair and did not want to tell anyone. My teacher, who was a royal wench, refused to even entertain the notion that one of her students might know something she did not. Rather than tell me that she would look into the matter, she gave me detention for back talk.

I used to detest the color of my hair. Mostly, no one else had a color like mine where I grew up. Even in my immediate family, I was the only one with this strange hued head. Depending on the lighting it looked orange, gold or maybe strawberry blonde. It wasn’t blonde in comparison to my mother or sister’s hair and it definitely wasn’t as dark as my aunt’s brunette strands. Whatever it was it was weird and I was the only one who had this shade. Okay, perhaps not the only one, but it felt strange carrying a mass of these uncategorizeable tresses on my head.

The first thing I learned about my people was that we were hot heads. That is what a pastor told me when I used to go to church at The Salvation Army. He was the first person I ever met with hair like mine, and his was more enflamed, like a tomato. Apparently popular Anglophone literature depicts my redheaded ancestors as bad tempered and impossible to negotiate with. From Shelley to Salinger, redheaded characters perpetuate illtempered stereotypes. Although all of these representations were not, necessarily, malintentioned: take Queen Elizabeth, for example, who put my red haired people on the fashion map. And, let us not forget about Botticelli whose Birth of Venus painting gave the goddess a head of red. Then, there is my favorite contemporary Black Atlantic mermaid: Mami Wata, who, in spite of being a figure of the African Diaspora, is often depicted with Red Hair. While studying her in all her mermaid glory last Spring at UCLA I was told that she was restricted to the Atlantic, although I was determined to discover her Indian Ocean Counterpart. One day in September while strolling through the Mozambican Museum of Art in Maputo I ran into a painting, whose image was the Mozambican version of me, but with a fin. At long last I had found Mami's East coast cousin A Sereia, with red hair.

I used to think that when I traveled, people would automatically know that I was a foreigner because of my hair. Although in Mexico I was lovingly known as Güera (light-skinned girl), in Argentina I met red headed Porteños who looked more like me than my own family members. In Brazil, mostly, people just assumed I was from the South. I learned, too, that hair determines little when one can dye or change its texture. Because really, Redheads are the most global of souls, we pop up everywhere, from rural Sub Saharan Villages to Nordic ice lands, you’ll find us, a compilation of long forgotten recessive genes, holding on to the last of our kind.

Today, after reading the article about the special hair dye, I wondered, why simply dye ones hair a natural color. If you’re going to go there, why not go all out, like neon pink or purple? It’s not like everyone would see it if you didn’t want them to. I say, Betty Beauty Products better let the girls really have some fun.

Nowadays there are so many ways to spend my money I could hardly think of wasting it on that. Still, one must have options, right? Like for funds for a flight back to the Netherlands, where, for one weekend in September, on Red Head Day in Breda, the naturally toned Red heads of the globe gather to celebrate everything RED.