Red Heads are Real

There have been a gazillion writing posts and blogs and tantrums from editors about red-headed characters.

Stop with the red-heads they say.

They're uber rare, they say.

No one knows that many red-heads, so stop writing them, they say.

Pfffft, I say.

I say I'm entitled to write red-headed characters. I have a right to write them!!  Let me tell you why.

My grandparents have eight living children, three boys and five girls. Of those five girls, four of them are red-heads, my mother being one of them.

All three of my brothers were born with bright red hair. It fell out, of course, and grew in as that super white toe-headed cute stuff everyone loves.

I have several cousins with red hair. (I can't count them as I don't know the exact number. I have 80+ cousins, so YOU can count them if you want.)

All right, all right, yeah, so of my five girls, only one has red hair. That's a smaller number, sure. And people have been asking me since my daughter was two if I dyed her hair. TWO!  Who dyes a kid's hair at the age of two????  Can I help it that she was born with a beautiful color of auburn??  I wish I had that kind of control over genetics, I'd be rich.

Now lets talk about the hubster's family.

His grandmother and her twin were red-heads. Grandma had three girls; two of them are red-heads.

The hubster was a very bright red-head until his teen years when it darkened to a dishwatery blond. His beard is still red. Of his four sisters, two are red-heads.

The gal across the street from me is a red-head.  Even my best friend's mother-in-law is red!

Come on, that is NOT rare.

Therefore, if I want to write about a red head, I damn well will. So there.

It's when I write about a blond or a brunette that I feel like I'm writing something a little more exotic.

I don't care what the statistics say. I think this freaking out over the number of red-headed characters is batty.

Red hair is real, and I have the family to prove it.