"Fiery temper"? 7 myths about redheads, fact-checked

Every redhead has a list of lines people throw at her with a grin. I got curious about where they actually come from. Here are seven, with the real history and the real data behind each one.

1. "Redheads have a fiery temper"

There is no scientific study showing that red hair is linked to anger. The idea is just very old. The medieval English text known as the Proverbs of Alfred warned readers never to choose a red-haired person as a friend, and the Secretum Secretorum, a famous advice book for rulers, warned against taking redheads as advisors. Centuries later, the cliché is still around, just repackaged as a joke.

2. "Gingers have no soul"

This one has an exact birthday: November 9, 2005, when South Park aired the episode "Ginger Kids", where Cartman calls redheads soulless and invents a disease called "gingervitis". It was satire, but it escaped the screen. In November 2008, a Facebook group called "National Kick a Ginger Day" gathered more than 20,000 members, and students with red hair were actually assaulted in schools in Canada and the US. Ed Sheeran later said the episode ruined his life.

3. "Redheads are going extinct"

In August 2007, newspapers all over the world announced that redheads would disappear by 2060. The claim came from the "Oxford Hair Foundation", which was funded by Procter & Gamble, a company that sells hair dye. Geneticists quickly pointed out the obvious: a recessive gene can become rare, but it does not vanish as long as people carry it. And millions do.

4. "You must be Irish"

Ireland (around 10%) and Scotland (around 13%) do have the highest share of redheads in the world. But red hair also appears in Wales, England, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Russia and among Berber communities in North Africa. It's rare everywhere, not only in Celtic countries.

5. "Redheads are sneaky"

For centuries, European painters gave Judas red hair to mark him as the traitor. Witches, devils and outsiders got the same treatment, and historians of the European witch trials note that red hair was widely seen as suspicious. The "sneaky ginger" is not a personality type. It's an art history habit.

6. "Redheads are wild in bed"

Funny thing: the data says people are not even that bold with us. In a 2012 study published in Psychological Studies, researcher Nicolas Guéguen had women sit in nightclubs wearing different wigs. With a blond wig they were approached 127 times. With a red wig, only 29 times. The "wild redhead" is a fantasy, and in real life we often get the opposite treatment.

7. "Redheads feel more pain"

This is the one myth with real science behind it, and it's more complicated than people think. I wrote a whole article about it: "Redheads, pain and the anesthesia story".

Being a redhead means being a stereotype before you even say hello.