Listen up, ginger ladies and gentlemen. Our time is now. We’re rising up. Forget the Ginger Liberators Organisation (GLO for short, very funny, I see what you did there), forget ‘Gingers For Justice’ t-shirts in crappy tourist shops, forget amusing jokes about strawberry blondes. This is it.
It’s time to say to yourself once and for all: “Yes. I am a massive ginge. Oops.”
I have been a massive ginge for approximately nineteen years, and in that time I have come to terms with it and learned to apply sun cream with the proper due care. I myself come from a family which is 83% ginger (this is not a joke. This is a mathematical fact).
Sometimes, we go on family outings. We all sit in the same car. We look like an advert. It’s hilarious.
And how I hear you ask, do you come to terms with it? With all its ginger jokes and the inability to wear anything orange?
Fear not, dear readers. For I have compiled, for your entertainment, a list to instruct you in The Art of Being A Massive Ginge (patent pending) (it’s not) (whatever):
1. Man up and accept it.
There will always be the girl in high school who accidentally bleaches her hair a sort of wonky orange colour and insists that it’s blonde. It’s not, love. You look like you’ve had an accident with your fake tan at the weekend. Just man up and move on. Same goes for natural gingers who are hiding under bottles of hair dye. Just make like High School Musical and be true to who you are, grrl.
2. Refuse their Weasley references.
Weasley jokes are only fun at one time of the year: Halloween, when it’s twenty minutes before you’re due to set off to a party, and you have no costume to hand. Put a shirt and tie on and bang, you’re a Weasley. Extra points if you have a twin and you can go as Fred and George (but then take away the points again for being ginger twins. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules).
3. Avril Lavigne, Party Queen
I didn’t actually have any advice for this section. It just rhymed really nicely and I’m fairly sure Avril was ginger at some point circa 2004.
4. Always wear sunscreen.
As Baz Luhrrman says. Man ain’t wrong. You may feel like a pillock now, spending £13 on a bottle of glorified milk just so your skin doesn’t turn the same shade as your hair but in the long run you will have magical age-defying skin while your friends slowly shrivel to withered gravy-coloured walnuts around you. Just look at Brigette Bardot. And then go buy some SPF30.
5. Quit moaning about the sperm bank thing.
What, you’re not special any more? Please.
Sure, I’ve had a bit of a head start, being born looking like a baby orang-utan (real talk), but some people might just be starting out on their ginger-paved path. As the saying goes, some people are born with brilliant hair, and some people have it thrust upon them in the form of bad dye jobs. So go forth. Be proud.
Be a massive ginge.
Josie Miller
Josie Miller is a second year student at Edinburgh University. She studies French. When not studying for her course, Josie enjoys living her life as a professional snowflake princess – this is pretty cool. She can cook some pasta dishes and on another note knows far too much about Korean boybands: B.A.P., Block B, Big Bang…that’s just the Bs.
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