I see red

Part-time model Kate Webby says redheads attract both positive and negative reactions, but never neutral ones. Photo / Martin Sykes

Kate Webby is accustomed to being the only redhead in the room. So much so that if she does meet a fellow redhead at a social function it can be initially troublesome.

"There's this awkwardness between you because you're not used to there being another one," she says. "It's a strange thing but you kind of feel a little bit like they've taken your place.

As soon as you see another one, you think: 'What are you doing here?"' It's not surprising Webby, an Auckland model, feels special. Redheads make up just 2 per cent of the global population and, according to some scientists, are threatened with extinction.

There's a rainbow of hues that are classified as red: auburn, copper, russet, strawberry blond and Titian. Nicole Kidman, Geri Halliwell, Mick Hucknall, Tilda Swinton, Prince Harry and Julianne Moore are just a few celebrity redheads. Closer to home are model Angela Dunn, foodie Peta Mathias and newsreader Samantha Hayes - who inspired an online petition with 151 signatures and a protest song called "All I wanna see is red on your head" when she dared dye her hair blond in April.

By all accounts, it isn't easy being red.

US research has discovered that people with red hair are more susceptible to pain and they need 20 per cent more anaesthesia than others. Redheads are also said to bruise more easily than the rest of us. Then there are the perennial insults in the school playground to contend with. Labels such as carrot-top, gingernut, agent orange and copper-top have stood the test of time.

In some parts of the world discrimination against redheads has extended beyond childish name-calling. Two years ago in Britain a family of redheads fled their Newcastle home following a hate campaign and excessive taunts. The answer, said a local councillor, was that the ginger children should dye their hair "to take the pressure off". Also in Britain, a waitress was awarded nearly £18,000 ($46,000) after being ridiculed for having red hair. And last year, in Calgary, Canada, 13 students were suspended following a "kick a ginger" attack, in which a red-headed teen was beaten.

While such cases are, thankfully, rare here, bullying is common. One Waikato woman says she was so traumatised by bullying for being a redhead that she dyed her hair brown at the age of 15.

"I felt singled out; I always felt different," says the 45-year-old who did not want to be named. The taunts escalated at high school; she was spat on, called "blood-nut" and her red hair quickly became "the bane of my life".

She married a redhead man and subsequently had three redheaded children - including one with "real pumpkin hair".

Determined that they be spared similar humiliation in the playground, she coloured their hair when they were aged about 10.

"No way were my kids going to suffer this," she says. The woman, who will never return to her natural red, attributes her children's success and confidence as young adults to the fact they escaped the ignominy of growing up red-headed.

Debbie Kokay, 41, says it was tough growing up red-headed and freckled in Dargaville in the 1970s.

"I was one of the really, really bleached redheads that have the absolute white eyelashes and the white eyebrows," she says.

"You got the 'gingernut, ginger, ginger', and the other one that really used to get on my nerves because I had a lot of freckles: 'No flies on you, but I can see where they've been'." Kokay, still a redhead and now based in Dunedin, is philosophical about the constant bullying she endured as a child but the hurt clearly lingers. "I just never belonged. I never fitted in with everybody else. They were all the pretty kids; I was the only ginga in my primary school."

Thanks to a loophole in our human rights legislation-which makes it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, etc, but not hair colour - it's theoretically open season on redheads.

Indeed, a newspaper columnist for Britain's Guardian, Simon Hattenstone, wondered if "gingerism" was the last acceptable prejudice. Photographer Jenny Wicks, who exhibited her collection, Root Ginger: A Study of Red Hair, in a London gallery in February calls it "the last bastion of political incorrectness".

In exploring attitudes towards redhair, Wicks muses: "is it mockery, learned behaviour, social conditioning, just a bit harmless fun or historic?"

Regardless, redheads have been warmly embraced by popular culture. Television comic Catherine Tate has a memorable skit centred on rounding up redheads and herding them into safe houses for gingers where they'll be free from harassment.

In Ginger Dawn, an interactive online game, redheaded players must mate with onscreen characters to try to make as many redhead babies as possible before getting sunburned.

And last month local radio station The Edge ran a much-hyped "Hug a Ginga Day" promotion.

Then there are the websites providing moral support for red-haired people.

Gingerism.com is involved in "documenting the use of gingerism in mainstream society", while Redandproud.com has been celebrating "the lot of the redhead" since 2001; it also sells T-shirts bearing the legends "natural born redhead", "ginger genius" and "gingerchick".

Realmofredheads.com boasts 2995 members while Redhedd.com is said to be the largest social networking site for redheads.

As a part-time model, Webby believes being a redhead has a positive or negative, but never neutral, effect when being considered for a job.

There's a sense that redheaded models are a bit edgier than their blond or brunette counterparts. "In terms of high fashion I think they've always been sort of in vogue," says Webby who has detected an increased interest for redheads in local mainstream retail campaigns.

Anna von Roy of Clyne Management, the agency that represents Webby, says, "Redheads have a timeless classic beauty about them ... The ethereal beauty that comes with being a redhead works really well with high-end fashion."

Growing up in Hamilton, Webby hated the other children calling her "Pippi Longstocking".

But there were admirers of her flame-coloured tresses too. "Ladies would stop on the street and pat my head and talk to me about my hair," she says. Even now she says she still gets compliments from strangers.

Red hair is undeniably an intrinsic part of Webby's identity, her cascading auburn locks a striking visual signature. "I feel that, modelling and everything aside, just in life in general I'd be a lot more boring if I didn't have red hair."

Does she have any red-headed role models?

"I quite like Bree on Desperate Housewives. Just because her hair is so red and I like that. She really uses that and I like that she wears red dresses with red hair, because they tell you that you shouldn't do that."

Lucy Fitzgerald is the archetypal self-described "loud and proud" redhead.

"Nothing embarrasses me. It's a terrible trait. I don't know if it's with all redheads but I am definitely shameless," she says.

"I love doing outrageous, crazy things - always have done." She subscribes to the theory that, by sheer virtue of their crowning glory, redheads can get away with behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated from others.

"I have, I reckon, sort of a vivacious freedom." Fitzgerald is director of Kidactive, a booking agency for children's school holiday programmes.

With four children of her own, the 38-year-old is well qualified for the job. Her youngest child Jamie, 15 months, is a redhead too.

"He's a little ginga. And he's got all the traits of the ginga ... He's going to be a handful. He's going to be full-on - like his mother."

Fitzgerald's three older children, all blond with easy going natures, were a bit concerned about their little brother's mop of strawberry blond hair and hoped he wouldn't be teased about it.

Fitzgerald has endured her share of nicknames over the years; she was called "carrot-top" at school in Wairarapa, "big red" as a teenager and "wild red" at nursing college in Wellington.

"Now I hate it when people call me 'red'. I've been called it a few times ... by people who think they know me quite well."

However, she also frequently receives positive comments about her hair. But don't, whatever you do, ask her what salon the colour comes from.

"People say to me: 'Where did you get your colour done?' And I get really cross; this is my natural colour."

Natural, that is, apart from a few judicious blond highlights to add subtle interest to the red.

"I got really cross with my hairdresser once. I refused to pay for my highlights because she made me blond. I don't want to lose my redhead identity."

Being a redhead suits Fitzgerald's exuberant personality down to the ground.

She wouldn't feel quite right with any other colour.

"That's me. I like standing out. The redheads I know don't do things by half.

They do things full-on." She thinks that red hair sits more comfortably on women than men.

"Girls are kind of cutesy but boys ..." Lawrence Goudie is a strawberry blond student who plays lock for Grammar Carlton rugby club. The 26-year-old takes being a redhead in his stride and just accepts the good-natured flak from friends and team members.

"You cop a bit of stick from your mates being the token ginga but I don't really mind it. They call you 'big red', 'ginga', basically all the names," he says.

"Our family's part-Scottish so I think that's where it comes from." Like Webby, Goudie finds himself naturally bonding with fellow redheads.

"I've got a few other redhead mates. When we catch up we're sort of like: 'Oh yeah, power to the reds' sort of thing. It's like our way of giving stick back to the non-gingas."

He shrugs off the inevitable teasing he experienced as a boy in Ngatea on the Hauraki Plains.

"Yeah, I used to get a bit of stick growing up but ... whatever doesn't break you makes you stronger. It sort of sculpts the person you're going to be, I suppose."

In comparison to the women Canvas spoke to, Goudie is more laid-back about the colour of his hair. Being a redhead doesn't really bother him one way or the other. It's no big deal, he isn't especially attached to it and he certainly doesn't view it as part of his identity. In fact, he sees his distinctive mullet haircut as more character defining than his actual hair colour which, ultimately, is no more than an accident of birth.

Coral Mazlin-Hill of St Mary's Bay is not a natural born redhead but has had red hair for almost all her adult life.

Her latent admiration for red hair was heightened when her little sister, Lorie, who had orange ringlets, was born when Mazlin- Hill was 13.

"[She was] just like Little Orphan Annie. She was like a little Asian-tourist magnet," she says.

Overseas visitors sightseeing in Christchurch would loved her distinctive look.

"We couldn't take her to the gardens in the end because we'd walk into tour parties and they'd actually have her out of the stroller and she'd be passed around for photos".

At that time, Mazlin-Hill's hair was plain old brown - decidedly drab in comparison to her sister's attention-grabbing locks. So, at the age of 16, Mazlin-Hill had her hair dyed red.

It's a colour she's worn ever since except for a couple of months when she briefly returned to brown about five years ago.

"I actually got taken aside by lots of lovely ladies in our circle who quietly all said to me: 'Where did your red go? It really doesn't suit you, brown'," she says.

Her hair follicles may disagree, but Mazlin-Hill knows she's a redhead at heart.

"I definitely feel more like me with red. I don't have the most natural shade of red - more like a blue red, a blood red, than an orange red."

In fact, her hairdresser, Danny Pato of D&M Hair Design, decided on this particular fiery hue when Mazlin-Hill took up snowboarding.

He jokingly thought that with a white jacket and white snowboard she needed some way of standing out against the snow.

It's fortunate Pato has a sense of humour; he was entirely unfazed when Mazlin-Hill initially turned-up to the salon with a reddish-brown teddy-bear and requested hair to match it.

"For a number of years after that we referred to my hair colour as the 'bear colour'. These days it's definitely deemed to be the 'snowboard red' or 'Coral's red'."

In Christchurch recently, a carload of boys shouted "ginga" out the window as they drove past Mazlin-Hill.

"I felt quite proud. I'm sure a real redhead [would have found it] quite insulting but for me it meant I'd achieved my goal. I'm figuring it was supposed to embarrass me but, of course, I just went: 'Yay, this colour must work'."

This 31-year-old designer of eyewear and interiors, who typically wears her hair in a glamorous 1940s-style victory roll, vows to remain a lifelong redhead.

"I intend to be one of those 120-year-old ladies with my hair still red: bright red hair, bright red lips, probably red nails."

Flaming famous

Nicole Kidman

The Australian actress hasn't always been happy with the looks that got her noticed. "What with my height and hair - weird, curly, messy - I was considered a bit odd."

Gillian Anderson

At the height of her fame, the former X-Files star was voted the World's Sexiest Woman by FHM magazine. Proof, if any were needed, that ginger can mean gorgeous.

Mick Hucknall

At 14 he was told: "You can't be the lead singer of the band, you've got ginger hair." The Simply Red singer, who celebrated 25 years in the music business last year, clearly didn't listen to his detractors.

Marcia Cross

There are websites dedicated to how to get Cross' hair colour and style. For the record, her colour is "rich, earthy red with hints of spicy orange touches".

Geri Halliwell

The former Spice Girl loved the colour so much she named herself after it. Now, though, Ginger Spice has plumped for the strawberry-blond end of the spectrum.

Julianne Moore

In 2007, Moore wrote the children's book FreckleFace Strawberry, which follows a feisty red-haired child as she learns to love the skin she's in. The book's title comes from the name Moore was called at school. "I hated it," she says.