red enough

Last week I posted about how people smile and gush when they see my little, beaming Zoë. What I failed to mention is that after some of them have exclaimed about her hair and her smile, they turn to me and say, “Where does she get the red hair?” or “Does she get the hair from her daddy?”

I try to keep the irritation out of my voice when I say, “She gets it from me.”

Then they look at me in a confused way, as if I had just told them that the red is actually from my grandmother, who happened to come from Mars, and all Martians have red hair, didn’t you know?

Sometimes they smile slightly, and say, as if they were humoring me, “Oh, I guess I can see that.” As if they had just conceded something. As if they were agreeing simply in order to placate me.

Now, I’m the first to admit that my hair has darkened and dulled over the years, but it’s still what I would call red. It’s still more red than blonde. It’s still more red than brown. It still put a check mark in the “red” box when I get a new driver’s license.

But many people seem to think you are only a redhead if you have flaming, crayon-red hair. I don’t know anyone with hair that color, do you? I know people with carroty red hair, with dark, auburn hair, with rust hair. And then there is copper. That’s what Zoë has, and what I had as a child: hair the color of a flashy new penny.

Okay, so I’m sensitive about my hair. When I was in high school it annoyed me when someone told me I was strawberry blonde. I felt as if they were trying to push me into another category, a whole different set of people. They were trying to make me a blonde. “My hair is not blonde,” I would insist. “It’s red.” And sometimes I would even clarify: “It’s actually copper.”

I have always identified as a redhead. It’s part of who I am. My grandmother was a redhead. One of my sisters is a redhead. My father was a redhead before he turned gray. And as a child when people called him red, he shook his head emphatically and declared his hair golden. (Personally, I wouldn’t have chosen that word; I would have called it auburn. Regardless, it’s obvious where I get my hair sensitivity.)

I put up with years of comments about how I must be Irish and how I must have a temper. (All redheads must be the alike, you see. We must come from the same stock. We must have the same temperament.) Invariably, I would become irritated and, if the commenter persisted, angry. I remember when my junior-high Spanish teacher insisted I was both Irish and hot-tempered. I said no, but he wouldn’t let it go. Finally I yelled, “I’m not Irish!”

He smirked. “But you certainly do have a have a temper.”

I was shopping with Zoë and Stella at the mall the other day and a salesclerk, an older man, began asking about the origin of Zoë’s hair color, and when I said it was from me, I thought he was going to have an apoplexy. “You can always tell,” he said loudly, “who is really a redhead.”

Hrrrrmuph. Oh please I was going say, giving him my most withering look. But he went on: “Hopefully you daughter will keep hers.”

He then expounded on the fact that Zoë was such a happy baby because I stayed home with her. (I had admitted, after being questioned, that I worked from home, but all he cared about was that I was at home, fulfilling my motherly duties.) I have all sorts of things I wish I had said to the blowhard, but I rushed out of the store, dragging Stella by the hand before I could think of them.

Now I am wondering: What is red enough? How much red do you need in your hair to be considered a redhead? I also wonder why this is such a big deal to people. Why do they feel they need to draw a line, put me in my place? Are they are worried that if they didn’t, all sorts of people (impostors!) would go around calling themselves redheads when they really weren’t?

Just imagine: thousands and thousands brunettes and blondes laying claim to something to which they had no right. The world might shift off its axis. The sun might fail to shine. Armageddon, people. It could happen.