Reddit can be a wonderful place for people to connect with all sorts of communities. One of the Reddit communities we like to peruse is r/Redhair. It’s an online community of 17k+ people who discuss red hair and all that comes with it. The redheads commenting are not only from the US, they are from all over the world.
In a post from about a year ago, someone asked if the people in the community had ever been teased for their red hair. Here’s what some redheads had to say:
“I’m a woman and I was never teased growing up for my red hair. But I’ve heard many redheads talk about how they were teased/bullied as a child. My first thought was that it was mainly boys that were teased, and I’m a girl. But I’ve heard from an English redhead that she was SEVERELY bullied for having red hair as a child. This makes me wonder if the fact that I live in America is partially why I was never teased. Because America is a country of immigrants, so kids are used to other kids that look different than them. But something that goes against this theory, is that I went to an elementary and middle school with probably 90% Latino children, the other 9% other POC, and the only white kids were the teachers’ children. So, you would assume that a redhead would get bullied, because I was the odd one out and looked different. But I was never treated differently or poorly because of what I looked like.
So I wanted to hear from y’all if you were ever teased for having red hair, how bad it was, if you’re a boy/girl, what country you grew up in, and if you have any other thoughts on this?”
As we continued to scroll the thread, other redheads sound off about being bullied as young as kindergarten and elementary school. For some, the bullying continued through middle and high school. Some redheads didn’t experience anything as a child, but later in life received a lot of flack for having red hair. It seems that the majority of redheads who shared in the comments were bullied, teased or harassed for their hair color.
Another Reddit post appeared a few months later in r/AskUK that asked if redheads are bullied at school these days. The post reads:
“I’m fairly ancient (40s) and have a very young daughter (4yo, reception) with amazingly beautiful waist-length red hair. So far she’s had nothing but compliments, but back in my day red hair put a target on your back. Is that still the case?”
As we read comments from other redheads, it did seem like redhead kids were not being bullied like older redheads talk about in the threads. We were happy to read that society appears to be more accepting around the world. This may be because we’ve grown as a society and our differences are being more embraced, or maybe it’s because red has been the trending hair color for a few years in a row. Is it suddenly cool to be a redhead? We think so.
We’re glad to see bullying is easing up (or so it seems) and we hope there will be a day no one who is different will be teased at all.
Rock it like a Redhead!
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