Wednesday, April 18, 2007

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.”

3 comments:

Cabeza said...

At one time or another I have felt or thought all of these things about Warren.

JKC said...

Warren, we actually thought about getting Roots of Desire for you for Christmas. But it got some really bad reviews. I hope they were wrong. This post would be better, however, if you would share the entire subtitle.

Warren said...

I'm halfway through it now. I don't think it's worth more than $10, and that's mostly as a converstion piece, although it has some interesting facts in it.

And the subtitle is "The Myth, Meaning, and Sexual Power of Red Hair."