Links to skin problems?

Today while browsing through Facebook, I came across an event page for Ginger History Month, which is supposedly happening now according to the high school student creator. I honestly don’t think a history month is needed or appropriate. In my opinion, it just brings more attention to redheads and makes them seem like more of a minority.

Scientists are researching redheads a lot more these days and are coming up with a lot of interesting links to problems they are associating with red hair. Mutations of the melanocortin-1 receptor, the red hair gene, have led to scientists discovering that red-haired women are have a lower pain tolerance to some things compared to women with other colors of hair. Some of these things are: redheads being more sensitive to cold and heat pain, and the of subcutaneous lidocaine (an anesthetic) need is much higher for redhaired women. Also, since redheads normally have fair skin, they need to be even more cautious about being in the sun for too long and need to take great care of their skin becuase there are higher risks of getting skin cancer.  

Now…it’s time to work on the rough draft…

Going Extinct?

As I said before, less than 2% of the world’s population has red hair, and only about 4% actually carry the red hair gene. Many scientists believe that by the year 2100 natural red hair will be very rare or completely wiped out of existence. Because it is a recessive gene, if a red haired person and a brown haired person have a child, the baby will have brown hair becasue brown is the dominant color. I can honestly say that I personally would hate to see red hair disappear completely, but then again after thinking about it, I can’t help but wonder if it would be better if it would go extinct. That way no more kids would have to deal with the hardship of being made fun of constantly about the color of their hair, they wouldn’t have to deal with the stereotypes that people generally give kids with red hair (violent, agressive, soul less), and most of all these kids would not always have to deal with the feeling of not fitting in with people in their surroundings. I would hate to see it go just because it is such and interesting color. A friend of mine this past weekend was looking closer at my hair after we began talking about the senior exit project and he got to see how my hair has many multiple different colors of hair in it, such as brown, blonde, red, and orange all mixed in one. He thought it was really cool that my hair consisted of so many different colors to create to color I have now. Luckily, there are people in the world who don’t care what color of hair a person has but instead cares about the things that actually matter like someone’s personality. These are the people I become friends with, the ones who don’t make fun of my hair color, call me names, or make me feel left out of any situation. But now I’m just kind of rambling/babbling on, so now for a different thing.

“We’ve all seen them, on the playground, at the store, walking on the street. They creep us out and make us feel sick to our stomach. I’m talking, of course, about ginger kids.”

Eric Cartman, South Park, Season 9, Episode 11

This quote from the South Park episode greatly upsets me. This idea became transfixed in the minds of young people and now is becoming a huge problem in society. If everyone begins to think like this and have these types of thoughts, then does it really surprise anyone that redheads get abused or feel like they don’t belong in society? While there are some redheaded people that didn’t mind the episode, and even liked it, I am not one of those people. There are too many events of abuse taking place now after the episode was aired for me to even begin to like it. I hate hearing about fellow redheaded people being abused just based on the color of their hair, it’s like making fun of someone because they’re fat or have a different color of skin, and that just isn’t necessary at all. Hopefully after the Senior Exit Project is done I will have enlightened at least one person about discrimination against redheads and made them want to help change things for future generations of ”gingers”.

Change of Topic!

As of the middle of last week, I have decided to change my Senior Exit Project Topic. Instead of doing my research on fear, I will now be researching discrimination against redheads. In 2005, there was a South Park episode (season 9, episode 11) titled “Ginger Kids”. This episode caused a lot of controversy after it inspired violence towards people, more specifically younger people, who have red hair, freckles and fair skin. Partially because of this episode, a 14-year-old boy from Vancouver created a Facebook Group called “Kick a Ginger Day”. On November 20, 2009, there were numerous attacks reported about people actually harming redhaired children. This was an unnecessary and uncalled for day and was just used as an excuse to use violence against specific people. There are many people who find these attacks offensive and classify them as a hate crime. While hate crime does not specifically classify hair color as one of the terms, it was still an attack against a specific group of people, so therefore in my mind it should still be considered one. It is almost the same thing as if there was a “Kick a (insert race/sexuality here) day”. It was still an attack specifically meant to hurt a certain group.

Less than 2% of the world’s population has red hair. Because of this, people think redheads are “mutants” and “have no souls”. This is not the case. Redheads are people too. We have souls, feelings, and all that jazz. But seriously though, whoever would stoop so low as to make fun of someone for something they cannot control (ie. hair color, ethnic background, height) is obviously someone who needs to be checked out and quite possibly find some other way to occupy their time. Now, most of you would agree with me when I say that everyone judges people and makes fun of someone at some point in their life, it’s human nature to do so, but why should we not try to change the ways of people and work towards creating a place where people aren’t afraid to go somewhere just based on the color of their hair, especially to school?

As a side note: With me being a redhead I have experienced some of this being made fun of just based on my hair color. I have strong feelings against terms that make fun of redhaired people, such as “ginger”, “fire crotch”, “ginge”, and ”carrot top”. I have actually considered dyeing my hair so it isn’t red anymore, which lead to me changing my topic. I began to search ways to dye red hair without damaging it and came across articles relating to the “Kick a Ginger Day” and became infuriated with the idea that people hurt other people just based on the color of their hair. Thus, the new topic.

Anxiety and Phobias

I have had no time this past week to look up information and research my topic. All of my time has been spent towards being at robotics and making sure out robot is reading to be shipped tomorrow. Sorry in advance. Next week I will have more information and be able to post a longer entry with more information. As for now, this is what I have found for today…

Fear begins as anxiety. Sometimes this anxiety can be grown out of, other times it can’t be. When the fear can’t be overcome, it turns to being a phobia, or consistent and severe worry.

I found this website and I think it could be helpful to me. I haven’t really had too much of a chance to look through the site. http://www.fearexhibit.org/brain

“Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain” -Mark Twain.

As I was scanning through this application on my iPod for famous quotes, the quote from Mark Twain came up. “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain” I felt that this quote directly related to my project so I remembered it to later put in the blog post. Basically, Mark Twain is telling us that we need to face our fears in order to conquer and defeat them. This is a really good idea. The reason we fear things is normally because of a bad experience of some sort, so if we face that bad experience and can get past it, then hopefully it’ll lead to getting over our fears.

Some fears are much harder to get over by just facing them though. For example, if someone is afraid of dying, that’s something mentally that they need to work on rather than being able to physically face death itself. Because, well obviously if they’re dead they can’t get over that fear very well. Sorry, some sarcastic dark humor. But on the other hand, if a person is afraid of spiders, or even the dark, that is something a lot more feasible to get over.

Here’s my idea of questions for my survery, if you have any suggestions and/or ideas that could help me, feel free to comment! Thanks!

Age:

Grade:

Male or Female:

What is your biggest fear?

Was there some sort of experience in your past that led to you having this fear?

Do you think at some point in your life you will be able to get over and move past this fear?

How much does this fear effect your life?

Survey of Fear

Currently I am planning on writing/making a survey for fellow students to answer to get imputs about what types of fears other students around my age group have. I’m not sure exactly what this will help determine, but I’m thinking that it could relate to age being a factor on what our fears are and whether or not we will grow out of them eventually.

In this survey, I plan to ask what their biggest fear is. Also, I will ask what they believe causes these fears and if they think they will be able to overcome them in the future. Once I have a finalized version of the survery, I will post it to this blog and you can comment on what your fears are and help me with that portion of my research if you would like.

Finally…A Decision!

After much thought about the two topics I had narrowed it down to, Fear and Hovercrafts, I have finally decided to do my Senior Exit Project over Fear. I feel like there might not be enough information about hovercrafts currently to be able to do a solid project on it even though the idea sounds extremely interesting to me. With the topic of fear, I am curious to research why we have fears, what causes them, and how they affect our lives. Although, as I research, I may find other interesting things about fear to research and add to my subcategory list (actually, I’m hoping that I do find more). Currently I have just have done some basic webpage browsing in hopes of initially becoming more informed about some basic and common fears and what may cause them, such as being afraid of the dark, heights, and small spaces.

Still No Decision…

Well, I still have yet to completely decide on a topic for my Senior Exit Project. I have narrowed it down to two topics. Hovercrafts and Fear. I’m fairly sure that I have eliminated Depression as a possible topic because I think it would make me sad to read and learn about it. Both of my current choices for topics are interesting to me. For Fear, I was planning on maybe researching and finding out what makes us afraid of things, how it effects our lives, and how to overcome these fears (if possible). However, I still am interested in learning about Hovercrafts, so now I just need to do some basic research on both of these topics and decide between one of them.

Confusion

At this point in time, I still am not quite sure what I want to do for my Senior Exit Project. I was thinking maybe doing something about Hovercrafts and how they could become a possibility in the future and look also at how it would change the efficiency of traveling. Another topic I am considering is researching Depression and how it can affect you and the people around you. I’m not quite sure though how much information I could find about the Hovercrafts, so that topic may not completely work. Any ideas and/or help?