Sunday, November 15, 2020

Red Hair in the Media

A little bit of media attention today. I was interviewed, just via email, for an article published by the Turkish news broadcaster TRT World.

The article concerns the stigmatisation of red hair in the UK, and I was one of several redheads asked to give an opinion.



I think the article is quite balanced. I've never really dealt with mainstream media organisations before, so I wasn't too sure what to expect. Consequently it was a nice surprise to see my opinions relayed intact and not misrepresented or taken out of context in any way.

In the article it is questioned whether hate crime legislation is needed to deal with the abuse aimed at redheads.

Obviously prejudice against red hair is quite real, and all redheads living in the UK will have experienced it to some degree at some point. However, by the same token we are living in quite pernicious times regarding free speech too. So I think it's important to avoid creating further avenues for the prosecution of wrongthink.

My quote towards the end of the article was my attempts to express this, so I'm happy it was included. I felt a little bit bad giving this answer to the question - it always feels like you're downplaying genuine abuse - but I think it's good to be a counterweight sometimes.

Also, it was interesting to discover that one of the other redheads interviewed for the article is an actress who often performs as Mary, Queen of Scots. Her work can be viewed here;


She would've been the perfect illustration for the Mary, Queen of Scots post I did a few weeks ago.