Fire engine red, flaming
red, red, ginger, orange, auburn, chestnut, strawberry-blond, pink
Shades of this hair colour run through my family, linked
to the recessive gene MC1R. It is mostly in my maternal family.
Two of my cousins have it, my brother, my mother, her
sister and both their maternal aunts and their mother too.
Going back further it seems to have been in my maternal
great grandmother’s family, even in black and white photos you sense some of
those cousins and siblings shared the gene.
I have a feeling that I have heard that my other maternal
great grandmother also possessed these gloriously coloured locks.
I love it, I wish I had it. I hoped (long ago) when I was
pregnant that if I had a girl – she would have it. But no. We do both have some
“warmth” in our natural hair colour, so maybe it is still lurking their in our
DNA.
Of course, with it, come freckles, fair skin, generalisations
about temperament and flippant insinuations that “it’s because you’re a redhead”.
Maybe I will get it one day – out of a bottle. I can
always go back to the dark side if it truly isn’t me.
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