The 10 Best Ginger Genius Happenings of 2016
Whether you view 2016 as a good or bad year on the whole, redheads have been keeping themselves super busy – all 138,000,000 (ish) of them. Here’s our round-up of ginger genius happenings of 2016…
1. Barbies for redhead confidence
Barbie’s #TheDollEvolves campaign revealed ‘curvy’, ‘tall’ and ‘petite’ dolls to “allow girls to find a doll that speaks to them“. And among the new collection was a red-haired beauty – rejoice!
Healthy body image aside, we think that this makeover could take particularly encouraging steps towards helping to instil ginger pride in children from a much younger age.
Read more about the new Barbie collection
2. Jessica Chastain launched Freckle Films
With an all-female team, Jessica Chastain launched her film production company Freckle Films to take on the world with her ginger awesomeness.
3. Van Gogh is ALIVE!
As part of his genetics project ‘Redheads’, Canadian novelist and artist Douglas Coupland scoured the world high and low for Vincent van Gogh’s lookalike…and he found him!
Read more about the ‘Redheads’ project
4. Free zoo entry for redheads
Raising awareness of World Orangutan Day on 19th August, Twycross Zoo opened their doors for free to red-haired visitors, who came from near and far to celebrate orangutans.
Read more about World Orangutan Day at Twycross Zoo
5. We took down Match.com…literally
After noticing Match.com’s above poster advert on the London Underground, our blood boiled. Since when were freckles (and possibly red hair, too) imperfections??
Well, we spread the word and eventually Match took down all of their offensive posters. Ginger justice, indeed!
Read more about Match.com’s anti-freckle advert
6. 360 degrees of gingers!
Attendees of Redhead Day UK 2016 took part in a rare spectacle: 360 degrees of red hair!
View the 360-degree ginger photo
7. Mapping the world’s redheaded population
Set up by MC1R magazine, the Redhead Map project launched a massive digital undertaking with the mission to determine the global hotspot locations of where gingers live. Everyone enters their own location, and the map speaks for itself!
Read more about the Redhead Map
8. RED HOT gets a makeover
Thomas Knights’s RED HOT project takes over the world every year with its exhibitions, calendars and books, but this year the models have been turned into artistic muses in Red Hot II, with glamorous midnight-blue backdrops allowing to emphasise redheads’ porcelain skin.
9. Ginger dogs (rightfully) got their moment in the spotlight, too
RED HOT photographer Thomas Knights noticed that many redheads liked their furry friends to also be flame-haired. So he made a RED HOT Dog 2017 Calendar to help raise money for UK charity, The Dogs Trust.
Get your copy of the RED HOT Dog 2017 calendar
10. The ginger emoji struggle continues…
There may be foxes and carrots, but still no redheads. Not even the new David Bowie emojis will have red hair!
Unicode issued the following statement: “The committee is still considering mechanisms for emoji variation, including hair color. The issues are complex, and discussion is ongoing.”
Read more about the lack of ginger emojis
…but Facebook listened!
Back in June, Facebook released ginger emojis aplenty for both Apple and Android devices, with the change aiming to “make emojis more representative of the world we live in”. Slowly but surely, we’re getting somewhere.
Read more about ginger emojis on Facebook
Happy New Year from the Ginger Parrot team! Here’s to a gingertastic 2017.