All of ["The Comeback"]'s nuances are reflected in Cherish's most distinctive physical characteristic, her long red hair with its painstakingly organized curls that have been flipped back and away from her face. That hair is gloriously thick and the waves fall with an unnatural precision. The hair appears Breck Girl clean, devoid of the styling products now used to give hair an informal, slightly messy appearance. Hers is hair meant to be tossed in slow motion during the opening montage of "Baywatch."Givhan doesn't mention it, but red hair and comedy are indelibly associated with Lucille Ball. But of course, Cherish is wrong about a lot of things, so Kudrow's analysis of how Cherish thinks must be understood in that light. But I have a feeling Lisa loves Lucy.
In constructing the character, Kudrow has said that Cherish's hair color was a calculated decision. In Cherish's mind, "blond is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy." And, presumably, brunette isn't funny at all.
Red hair is a touchy topic with me. My natural hair color is red — see it here — but not so red that I couldn't spend my entire childhood insisting that my hair was in fact not red, despite the tendency of strangers to call me "Red" and even "Carrot Top." As an unstably pigmented American, I had to endure both freckles and the early loss of hair color. Anyone fighting the latter problem should know that going lighter makes it less noticeable. If you see me today, you may consider me blonde, but I am incapable of seeing myself as a blonde. Though I spent my entire childhood denying that I had red hair, I now insist that I have it. I know it's a delusion, but the mental imprint is too strong to shake.
Why is red hair so meaningful?
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15 comments:
It is a most easily remembered characteristic.
When I was a kid, me and some friends liked to pilfer cases of beer from neighbpor's garages / porches. Once I was spotted but a innocent schoolmate who also had red Needless tosay, he was a little mad at me when I saw him in school later that week.
btw, what is this word verification you have installed? It's annoying!
I don't have anything on hair color, but wanted to note as a former Red Cross Water Safety Instructor -- aka. swim teacher --what a great service you are providing readers by publishing that photo. So many people seem to think it's uncool to actually WEAR the life preserver -- ski vest type, personal flotation devices (pfds) excepted. So a great illustration of what we say in the trade... Don't just pack it; wear your jacket!
Goldsoundz: My hairdresser tells me I have the thickest hair of anyone she's ever worked on, by such a margin that it makes her laugh!
Thanks, Mary. We were canoeing from one island to another on a lake. You'd better believe I kept the jacket on the whole time! It looks cute, doesn't it? They don't call it a Mae West for nothing!
Red hair is meaningful because people with red hair interacted significantly with people in cultures all over the world, and cultural memories are long. But unless you want to turn your blog into a cryptoarcheology discussion board, best to leave it at that. :)
Eddie, the picture is from 1980!
Those are purple overalls. I had pink overalls too that year. It was some kind of trend of the time. I was a law student, btw.
As to why I changed my haircolor — I yielded to nature. If you look closely at that picture, you can see that I already had many white hairs. It is easier to make white hair blonde than red! I could stop fighting it and go around with a big head of stark white hair.
Miklos: I started dying my hair because the proportion of white was such that the remaining red didn't "read" as red. It changed to a mousy color that I just didn't identify with. If I could have leapt to all white, I might have liked that. What I didn't accept was the dullness of the middle ground.
Robert: I once was assigned a book to review that said Kukulcan, the Mayan culture hero, was actually the Irish Cuchulainn. Both cultures describe him with red hair! Is that what you had in mind?
Wow--a lot of women (and no men) in my father's family have reddish hair that's mostly lightened to strawberry blond w/ age; and I've never heard word one from anyone about it having special "meaning" to any of them and we're pretty close. This is news to me.
Also, I don't tend to think comic blond woman on TV equals dumb. I think of "Hot Lips" Houlihan and Samantha Stevens. Maybe they played blondness against type.
The Comeback is so good. I've liked it from the beginning, but now I actively look forward to watching it every week. "Hello, hello, hello!" Last week was too funny. I don't want to give away the big joke if you haven't seen it yet. I think the yoga episode wins for my favorite so far.
Speaking of redhead comediennes, Kathy Griffin's show's pretty good too.
Okay, I don't like this word: uafsvcsp
I agree that red hair is awesome. I had it dyed black for a few months, which was a huge, huge mistake.
I was unaware that fair-skinned people go gray earlier though, so thanks for the heads up.
Both my parents had dark brown, nearly black hair (and blue eyes). My brother and sister have blond hair. Light hair is a recessive trait, so it makes sense enough. Of course, we all have blue eyes.
The mythology is that redheads have ready access to their emotions (ie, have tempers) and are fun to do it with. I spent some time on this, to the point of being between anecdote and data, and found it ... true.
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