This Recording - Fashion

Real Gingaz Do Real Thangz

by Molly Lambert

Mad Men's sexy secretary Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) is not a natural redhead. But I'm pretty sure her giant rack is real, which is cool since she is built like a luxury ocean liner. Hendricks says she's been dyeing her hair since high school, going back and forth from red to black, because she's a goth.

When I found out Hendricks's hair color was fake, I decided that the character of Joan is not intended to be a natural redhead either, and that her ginger dye job is just another part of her wasps' nest of feminine artifice. Then I was like "Man I am thinking about televisual intertextuality way too much for someone who is not a grad student in media studies. I should really go outside and ride my bike or something."

"YOU'RE A VIRGIN WHO CAN'T WALK"

As a bona fide redhead, I self-identify with anything red. Which means sometimes I end up in very deep conversation with stop signs and ladybugs. The first ginger I loved (post-mirror phase) was The Little Mermaid, but to tell the truth I probably identified more closely with Sebastian the crab. He was also red, and I could not comprehend for a second why Ariel, who was lucky enough to live underwater, would want to trade that in for some stupid legs and life on land with a boring bohunk.

Sebastian De Crab: THAT'S RACIST

Gingers may have more sex than other hair colors (according to some random German study), but this also might be because women dye their hair red to signal to men that they are currently sexually available.

Frieda is me when I played right field

Natural redheads love to talk smack about poseurs with dye jobs. There's a character in Peanuts strips from the sixties named Frieda whose main attributes are talking about her naturally curly red hair and holding a cat that sort of flops in her arms. She bears no relation (aside from hair color) to the Little Red Haired Girl that Charlie Brown fruitlessly crushes on.

Lucille Ball: Not Really A Redhead

The highest percentage of natural redheads in the world is in Scotland (13%), followed closely by Ireland with 10%. In the US, about 2% of the population are natural redheads.

A study found that redheads are harder to sedate than any other people requiring 20% more anesthesia. Inadequate doses cause people to wake up during surgery and have increased recall of procedures.

Christina Hendricks topless as Saffron on Firefly

The idea that redheads are witches is a folk belief in Germanic culture. From 1483-1784 thousands of suspected witches were nearly always stripped and searched for “marks of the devil.” Red hair was certainly considered an abnormality.

Tom Robbins loves redheads and possibly also is one.
He had this to say about them:

"Redheaded women! Those blood oranges! Those cherry bombs! Those celestial shrews and queens of copper! May they never cease to stain our white-bread lives with super-natural catsup."

THE RED SCARE

Famous Historical Natural Redheads (Mostly Evil)