Life as a Redhead

I’ve been reading Roots of Desire, a book all about red hair. In it are facts such as these:

Eve… is also frequently depicted wearing nothing but her long red hair. Judas Iscariot is painted as a redhead, as is Mary Magdalene. In Greek mythology, redheads turn into vampires when they die. During the Spanish Inquisition, flame–colored hair was evidence enough that its wearer had nicked hell’s fire and therefore had to be burned as a witch. An 1886 book by Augustin Galopin noted redheads as the strongest scented of all women. I learned that a person could be beaten “like a red-headed stepchild”; that, in 1912, phrenology revealed redheads make the best waitresses; that Hitler reportedly banned the intermarriage of redheads for fear of ‘deviant offspring”; that a Corsican proverb has you spit after passing a redhead; and that, in the words of an American political pollster, “you can’t sell one on television. They look fickle.”