Red is now all the rage for head-turning hair color

Only about three percent of the population is said to have natural fiery locks.
WASHINGTON POST
There's bad news for blondes these days in Hollywood.
Just check out the hair color on some of the biggest stars going: Nicole Kidman. Lindsay Lohan. Tyra Banks. "Desperate Housewife" Marcia Cross. "Will & amp; Grace's" Debra Messing. "Sex and the City's" Cynthia Nixon.
"Red is the new blonde," says Tim Rogers, editorial stylist and spokesman for Charles Worthington hair and beauty salons in London. "She is a head-turning hybrid between the moody brunette and the bubbly blonde. She's not afraid to have fun and get noticed."
Like many trends in fashion and beauty, the redhead rage is cyclical. Queen Elizabeth I of England was a redhead, kicking off a craze for the color as far back as the 1500s. More recently, in the United States, the early to mid-1990s was a high time for the shocking shade -- R & amp;B songstress Mary J. Blige sported a burnt-orange hue and Bruce Springsteen even wrote a song, "Redheaded Woman."
No matter the century, redheads have always been eye-catchers, natural attention-getters.
"Going red is a way to change everything in one fell swoop. All of a sudden, you're a redhead," says Dannielle Romano, editor-at-large for DailyCandy.com, an online guide to new styles and trends. "It's an easy way to get lots of pictures of yourself taken if you're someone like Lindsay Lohan. It's scandalous without actually doing anything scandalous."
For centuries, redheads have had to fight stereotypes. For many, red hair atop a female's head automatically conjured images of wild women, hotheads, femme fatales, sexpots.
Sends a message
Actress Maureen O'Hara was often billed as "strong-willed" or "feisty" during her reign as an acclaimed 1940s and '50s Hollywood star. In swashbuckling movies with pirates and cavalries, O'Hara's red hair sent a message of "robust sexuality," according to movie guides and film biographies.
Covers of Harlequin romance novels are famous for depicting flame-haired women with heaving bosoms and come-hither eyes -- think "Titanic" and Kate Winslet in a corset.
"Redheaded women are portrayed as very strong, independent women," says Druann Heckert, associate professor of sociology at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. "Or the stereotype is the clown, like Lucy (Lucille Ball), or caricatures like Pippi Longstocking, the weird redhead."
Because red hair is so rare in our society -- only about 3 percent of the population is said to have the fiery locks -- such stereotypes tormented many a redheaded child, Heckert says. They were called "Carrot Top," and "Red," or dismissed as the "redheaded stepchild."
"Red hair is so bold," says Heckert, a strawberry blonde. "And kids always pick on what's different. The bolder the shade, the more they felt stigmatized."
But today's celebrities seem to have taken the stereotypes and turned them on their scarlet heads. Gillian Anderson's Agent Scully wasn't saucy on "The X Files"; instead, she was mysterious and tantalizingly chilly. Cross' prim and proper housewife, Bree Van De Kamp, is "Desperate Housewives"' anti-wild child. Miranda, Nixon's character on "Sex and the City," lived in the city, but she wasn't the sexiest character. She was the one who "bucked tradition," says Romano of DailyCandy.
The celebrity redhead boom has started to make its way to the viewers as well, experts say.
Sharon Dorram-Krause, head colorist at the John Frieda salon in New York, says more and more clients have been requesting to be transformed into redheads.
Ripple effect
"There's definitely a more open feeling about going red these days. Usually brunettes try to stay away from it and blondes try to stay away from it," Dorram-Krause says. "When the celebrities start doing it, there's always going to be a ripple effect."
Heckert says she has even seen many students on her Fayetteville campus coloring their hair various shades of red -- the boldest being the fireball shade that rap star Eve made trendy.
"Caucasians aren't the only ones with red hair naturally," Heckert says. "Malcolm X had red hair."
In the fashion and beauty world, says Patty Murphy, a hair designer in Los Angeles, hair coloring has become seasonal. In the same way women change their clothes or accessories as the seasons turn, they're beginning to change their hair color as well.
Brown is dull
"The trend seasonal color in fashion is brown," Murphy says. "Red hair sets off the brown, where brown hair can be dull when brown is in fashion, and red can add more depth and contrast to the entire look. Red hair also seems to have more shine, which is also very flattering and can be a real boost."
And it's untrue that you have to be pale skinned and freckly to pull off a red look, says Rogers of the CharlesWorthington salons.
"The great thing about red is it is such a broad palette, from the deepest auburn ... to the palest strawberry ...," Rogers says. "So you can go as safe or as risky as you want."