Red-Headed Boys

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 18 (Supplement)

Red-Headed Boys

Don’t poke fun at thc red-headed boy. Don’t call little girls “Bobbie’’ Don’t make boys and girls iccl greedv when they are willing to eat wholesome food. These warnings were uttered by speakers at the summer school of tho British Social Hygiene Council at Cambridge. Admonishing his hearers not to poke fun at the red-haired bov. Dr H. Crichton Miller said (reports the Daily Telegraph):— “We all think red hair a joke, because none, here has it in any marked degree; but it is not a joke to the owners. They may grow to regard it as a joke when they reach mature years, but the expcrieticc ih earlier years of having been, on their entry into a schoolroom or going do'wn the street, the signal for a joke has twisted their whole attitude to the human herd. We have all sorts of misapprehensions about the red-haired, person, especially thc red-haired boy. We think that red hair goes with the choleric temperament, whic% is a complete misapprehension. It is thought that rebels and adventurers and wild people like that have red hair as a physical symptom’ of their temperament. That might be true in a slight degree, but the real fact of thc matter was that red hair led to an attitude of self-defence, and the owner might become aggressive trying to compensate himself for what ho felt to be an injustice.” Speaking of thc effect of the absence of a sense of personal value, Dr Alillor mentioned a girl who had bcVomo beyond thc control of her parents. She Was thc seventh girl in thc family, and had always been evcti more de trop than the others. Tho complete absence of personal value led her to try to got her own back on life. Then there Was 19-yeat-old “Bobbie,” a girl, whose mother had wanted a boy and had not hidden that desire. “Mothers who call their little girls Bobbie are calling them something they have no light to do.” Professor AVinifred Cullis, speaking on adolescence, said that a girl at that time needed as much food as a woman living a very active life, and a ..boy needoil as -much food as an active man. Grown-ups leading ondfinary lives did .not require as much food as adolescents. “Do not ever restrict girls and boys when they are willing tn eat wholesome food. Do not make them feel they arc greedy. When one looks back upon one’s early years and thinks of how one wolfed broad-and butter at that time—■well, do rtot restrict young people.’ 1