Pictures of thousands of redheads gathered for a huge annual festival: Red Hair Days

This festival, red is more than just a hair color – it’s an identity worth celebrating.

Thousands of people gathered in a city Tilburgin the Netherlands, this week to celebrate red-haired women and “girls with red hair” at an annual summit, which included bonfires, photo booths, painting, dancing, and even an information session about skin cancer.

“Anything that makes you special, whether it’s red hair or a quality like introversion, is something you shouldn’t hide, celebrate it with pride and vigor and make it your unique selling point,” the festival website reads. It has been attended by people from more than 80 countries over the years.

According to a 2019 academic article, About 1 to 2 percent of people of European descent have red hairAlthough the number may be higher in regions such as Wales, Scotland and Ireland, it depends on the definition of red hair.

Over the years, discussions of bullying, discrimination and “cultural stigma” against people with red hair have come to the fore frequently in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

In Scotland, for example, the deputy leader of the Labor Party caused a scandal in 2010 when she called a senior coalition minister a “red-headed ferret”, an insult for which she later apologized. In the United States, a 2005 episode of South Park titled “The Gingerbread Kids” – in which the main character treats red hair as a disease – has been routinely cited as a cultural contagion of redheaded bullying, and has been repeatedly blamed for reported assaults. . States. UK and Canada, where people took part in a viral movement to celebrate Kick a Ginger Day.

he Redhead Days began unofficially in 2005, when her manager, a painter named Bart Rowenhorst, placed an advertisement in a newspaper for 15 red-haired models and received registration information for 150. Because Rowenhorst “had a hard time saying no,” he asked all the models to gather for a group photo, according to her. British newspaper “Daily Mail”. Festival site. Then the event inspired him to start organizing the event officially He entered the 2013 Guinness World Records for the largest gathering of people with natural red hair, with 1,672 people in a single photo.

With slogans like “A face without freckles is like a night without stars,” the festival kicked off over the weekend, with a huge crowd of redheads in matching T-shirts listening to music, jumping on top of their heads or enjoying a beer. and grass-grilled meat. Organizers told Reuters that about 5,000 red-haired people attended.

The main color for this year’s gathering was hibiscus, which organizers say “looks great on redheads”.

(c) The Washington Post

(Images via Reuters)

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