Charlotte

I never particularly felt like an outcast growing up, one of my older brothers is also a redhead. However, one day it hit me when I was asked if my brother and I had the same parents as our two older siblings. I’d never thought we looked drastically different to the other two, but clearly that’s what other people thought looking from the outside in. Nowadays we just joke and say that mum had an affair with the milkman.

 

Throughout primary school I didn’t face much negative attention. I never found that girls were particularly nasty about my hair colour, more so the boys who would just snigger about being ‘ginger.’ I would occasionally complain to my mum who would give the typical response “They’re just jealous,” or “Boys pick on you when they like you.”

 

Once I started high school I would take a bus to school, which we shared with another school. This was my first real encounter in which I was picked on because of my hair colour. 

I remember making a remark to a teacher that if I treated someone else the way I was treated, it could be considered Racism or Bullying. But because it was a remark made about the colour of my hair, it was just brushed off as if nothing had ever been said.