Natural bright red hair that brightens more through long exposure to sunlight and an abundance of freckles all display mine and my brother’s Irish ancestry. The height and heavy bone structure come from the German side. Growing up, little old ladies would stop my mother at the park or the store to compliment her children’s coloring and kids in school would debate what color my hair actually was (orange was the popular choice).

The hair being the first thing one notices about us, we grew up with lots of positive attention around our ginger locks. I don’t think my brother cared too much about it, but I’m a girl so I was proud and even a bit vain about my hair during the nightmare teenage years. I got through the awkwardness by picking one thing I liked about my appearance and focusing on that.

One day in middle school, we got to sit down and watch an anti-bullying video about harmful stereotypes. Don’t remember much of it now, but this was the first time I had heard anything about many stereotypes cited in the video as harmful. Things like; Asians are good at math and the black kid has to play basketball. What I vividly remember was the redheaded boy who complained that his classmates would tease him for having no soul or ask him if he had one because of his red hair.

One needs to understand this stereotype did not exist in my world before watching this video. I didn’t hear it in public, didn’t hear it in school, didn’t hear in around the catholic church my family went to. If someone had asked me the above before watching this video, my response all unknowing of the insult to my appearance would have been along the lines of “do you have a brain?” And it would have been the perfect way to handle such a stupid question. But it never happened.

Even as a kid, I had the sense this was typical of the well-intentioned, perpetuating harmful stereotypes in the name of stopping harmful stereotypes. That sense has only grown in the years since as every special interest group in the USA vies for public attention on their struggles, while perpetuating many of their own difficulties.

This is just a little personal story. But I feel it speaks to the need to occasionally let things be instead of amplifying negativity in the name of awareness. As a shy teen, hearing the jokes was embarrassing. As a confident adult I’ve circled back to, “Haters, eat your jealous hearts out.”