With 4 years’ experience of being red headed, I think I’m air-tight qualified to speak the TRUTH.

1. People will judge you. With red on your head you’re asking to be labelled and, mark my words, it won’t always be pretty. You’ll be a ‘slut’ in Eastern Europe and you’ll be either ‘intriguing’, ‘fun’ or ‘trouble’ in the West. ‘Attention whore’ is always an option. ‘Emo’ maybe, if you tend to wear dark colours. If you’re overweight and a red head, people will assume you have a complex and treat you with contempt. On the other hand, if you’re hot and a red head, do not generally expect to get along with women (though I think Google image search might have a hand in this). Children will look at you and call you ‘Cruella’ despite the inaccuracy, while Americans might go as far as taking you for a socialist. Expect the classic inference of ‘ginger therefore no soul’ to come up pretty often too.

2. Your fashion senses will be tingling like crazy. Why? Because you’re in grave danger of pulling off the wrong colour combinations and I’ll take you through it just to prove it:

Dark green makes you look like a Christmas tree and white clothes will stain from your hair. Wear yellow and people might stop at you instead of the traffic light.  Black is safe but it might attract unwanted attention from Goths, whereas pink only helps if you’re going for ‘grotesque bimbo’. Grey just isn’t an option and, as for blue, you’ll need someone with you at all times to Photoshop down the contrast. The best you can do is use (the right shade of) red to accessorize and accept your fate.

I’m sorry but I never said that being a red head was easy.

3. You will have to adapt your environment. That’s because the red colour gets on EVERYTHING. Clothing, bedsheets, towels, headphones and… walls. Hence, instead of fighting the power with soap and frustration, you’ll have start ‘chameleorating‘. I’m not so sure about the walls, but every other item shouldn’t be a problem.

4. You will be harder to forget. Take that to be your superpower. When you walk into a room, people will notice you’re there. On the downside, they’ll also notice when you aren’t. You need to be aware that, as a red head, you’re pretty high up on people’s mental check-lists, so going incognito will be hard to achieve. Also, don’t try being anyone’s mistress – those red hairs stand out on beds and floors like they own the place.

5. Once you go red, there’s a chance you can never go back. At least not without losing your sense of identity. With time, people will associate you with the colour and they will start calling you ‘Red’, or refer to you as ‘the red head’. Soon enough, you yourself will be referring to the colour of your hair more often than you should and you’ll even sometimes use it to justify your actions. ‘Yeah, I can pull off a stunt like that – I’m a red head.’ You’ll notice how the hair colour slooooowly infiltrates almost every aspect of your life until, one day, you’ll think about what you used to be like before going red… and not remember. Suffice to say, if there’s no memory of that, neither will there be a vision of the future with you wearing any other hair colour. Personally, I dread the day I will wake up to see a brunette in the mirror. It even gives me nightmares. Talking about not being a red head, hi hi, it’s funny – until it’s not. And I’ve already warned my therapist about it.