Redheaded Stepchild



""I'm gonna beat you like a redheaded stepchild.""

- Lyle, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Redheads who are bullied, picked-on, beaten, or just plain hated for no reason other than having red hair. Sadly, this is not a Discredited Trope.

The expression is from mixed Italian-Irish families in the late 19th century. The red-haired stepchildren would be seen as evil. Also, red hair would underscore that the child is not related to the stepparent, as seen by the physical difference -- and, alas, the Wicked Stepmother (and father, too) is not a Fairy Tale.

See also Wicked Stepmother, Hilariously Abusive Childhood. Contrast Redheaded Bully.

Anime & Manga

 * In Saiyuki, Gojyo is his family's literal Redheaded Stepchild, raised by his stepmother who hated the color red because it reminded her of him, and thus of her husband's affair. The red hair and eyes are proof that he's a half-breed; these are considered an abomination and extremely unlucky.
 * Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion. She's even a real stepchild.
 * from Baccano is a literal redheaded stepchild of the Gandor Family. Mind you, the other three aren't exactly on the straight path either, but at least they are not batshit frickin' insane.
 * Kyo Sohma from Fruits Basket could probably qualify as this and a Redheaded Hero -- and is certainly unwanted by his (biological) father.
 * Yoko Nakajima of The Twelve Kingdoms is literally redheaded, which, in Japan, truly makes her stand out; other people think she dyes it and her mother nags her to dye it black.
 * In the anime version of Elfen Lied, all diclonius have pink hair (only Lucy/Nyu did in the manga). Nobody else does, including the parents of them, so red hair must be some kind of diclonius trait.

Comic Books
"Antagonist of the Day: Come back here so I can beat you like a red-headed stepchild.
 * It seems that this is happening with Marvel Comics right now. Sure, all the characters have bad things happen to them by those Running the Asylum, but the percentage seems to be even higher for those with red hair.
 * Watchmen has Walter Kovacs, the Red-Headed Stepchild of society.
 * Caitlin Fairchild of Gen 13 is literally a red-headed stepchild. This was Lampshaded at one point:

Freefall: She is a red-headed stepchild, you jerk!"


 * Jason Todd is the Redheaded Stepchild of the Batfamily. Jason originally had reddish-blonde hair but dyed it black once Dick handed him the Robin costume, and Grant Morrison decided to highlight this aspect by making it more red.
 * Several characters from the Knights of the Dinner Table use this phrase to mean a severe beating which is completely one-sided.
 * Will Vandom averts this in the original WITCH comics when her mother marries her history professor, Dean Collins. Will was ecstatic when the engagement was announced and she and Dean get along fairly well as it's her biological mother she actually fights with while her real father

Fan Fic

 * Aideen from Keepers of the Elements was this when she was younger, at least until she moved from Scotland all the way across the Atlantic to Canada with her family.

Film

 * The movie Radio Flyer has a literal red-headed stepchild who is routinely beaten until he and his older brother concoct a way for him to escape.

Literature

 * Besides being plot important, The Prisoner of Zenda has a good explanation for the prejudice. The hero has fiery red hair, the result of an affair between one of the traditionally red-headed kings of Ruritania and a female member of his traditionally dark-haired family. Thus, his appearance is a reminder of illegitimacy.
 * Rand Al'Thor of The Wheel of Time has questions raised about his parentage because he has red hair and light eyes, while everyone else in his backwater village has dark coloration, but it's generally attributed to the outlander wife his father brought back after retiring from the military.
 * Occurs, obviously, in Jaye Wells' Red-Headed Stepchild. In this universe, all vampires have red hair, related to the myth about the mark of Cain, while all mages have black hair. Sabina's red and black striped hair is a constant reminder of her half-breed status, and it doesn't take dye.
 * Italian verist writer Giovanni Verga's "Rosso malpelo" is made of this trope. And tears. Lots of tears.
 * Anne Shirley is treated this way by every family and orphanage she goes through before finally ending up at Green Gables. Even then, she gets this reaction from various members of the community. It goes a long way towards explaining why she so vehemently longs for hair that isn't red.
 * Francois of Poil de Carotte is a full biological member of his family, but that doesn't prevent his father from ignoring him and his mother and older siblings from abusing him...until the child is nearly driven to suicide.
 * Referenced in The Tulip Touch, where the narrator uses a phrase that Tulip picked up from her abusive father: "He'll thrash her like a red-headed stepchild! He'll whip her till her freckles sing!"
 * Sixteen Thirty Two: Subverted Trope: Gwaihir "Gerry" Stone is red-headed, and the only one of Tom Stone's sons who is most certainly not his father's biological son. However, the Stone brothers stick together like nothing else, and Tom Stone is the kindest and most loving father to ever exist.

Live Action TV

 * "Summer Heights High" was actually responsible for increased bullying of red-headed children in Australian schools. The show popularized the term ranga - as in orangutan - to describe redheads, as in this scene.
 * Also parodied in The Catherine Tate Show. (Tate is a redhead.)
 * Rhydian Roberts, who was second in the latest UK series of The X Factor, apparently went blond to avoid this bullying.
 * Nicely subverted in the Doctor Who story The Christmas Invasion, when a newly regenerated Doctor asks if his hair is ginger, prompting groans from redheads all over the UK at the expected usual dig at red heads, only for him to be disappointed that it's brown and lament that he always wanted to be ginger. The same was asked by the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 11th Doctors when they regenerated, so it's a Continuity Nod.
 * An episode of Kids in The Hall has Queen Elizabeth walking and talking with a prepubescent girl with long red hair. The Queen compliments her on it: "You have such lovely hair for a demon." She later attempts to get the child to jump off a pier holding a stack of rocks.
 * The Elizabeth in the "Kids" sketch is II, the brunette one we have now, played by Scott Thompson.
 * Elliot in Scrubs hates redheads to the point where she can't touch anything that a redhead has touched.
 * Parodied in a series of Nick At Nite commercials from 1998, which showed scenes of "Phoebe the Lost Brady", who was The Brady Bunch's lesser-known redheaded stepchild. Phoebe was a meanspirited character who caused all the problems (like Bobby's ball breaking the vase--that was actually Phoebe, folks!), and who was eventually edited out of reruns due to unpopularity with viewers. (All a joke, of course.)

Music

 * This is the topic of Tim Minchin's Taboo. It's terrible the way we treat people who look different, and we never like to talk about that word with a couple of G's, an E, an R, an I and an N...
 * M.I.A.'s new video "Born Free" is about the horrible treatment redheads get, taken to the extremes. It opens with a SWAT team raiding an apartment to capture one redheaded young man and goes downward from there.

Theatre

 * The Talisman by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy revolves around this, playing it straight, exaggerating, subverting, and parodying it.

Video Games

 * In Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, one of the subway maintenance engineers upon, spotting the player character, shouts at you: "I'm gonna beat you like the red-headed stepchild I never had!"

Webcomics

 * Bob and George: being beaten like a red-haired stepchild.

Web Original

 * Strong Bad refers to sending your "step-headed red child" off to certain doom in the Homestarmy in one of his emails.

Western Animation

 * The character Phineas, from Phineas and Ferb, and his sister, Candace, are literally redheaded step children.
 * Not that this really counts, since everybody loves them (including their step father). Besides, it's not like they stand out next to Ferb!
 * According to South Park (Cartman), ginger children do not have souls and are likened to the undead. The parents of three ginger children act terrified when the boys talk to them about it. Kyle, though, is a Redheaded Hero.
 * The titular character of Oliver and Company is an orange-furred tabby kitten and plays a subtle version of this.

Real Life

 * Kick A Ginger Day.
 * A little Brit-o-centric clarification may be in order. Dying your hair to a deep, sultry red is not the same as being born ginger. The color is different, and so is the tendency to be heavily freckled, paler of skin, and unable to tan easily. The genetics are rather complicated, but the gene that causes red hair does so because it prevents a certain pigment from being made. This gene also affects other things such as skin tone and generally results in having paler skin than you would have otherwise and causing you to burn more easily.
 * It's also worth bearing in mind that, way back in Medieval England, having ginger hair would mark a person as likely from (or descended from) Celts - that is to say, not English, not native. The general attitude of the English (and especially the Norman aristocracy) was to look down on those from Oop North beyond Hadrian's Wall as generally inferior. The racism may be (mostly) gone today, but the aesthetic stereotyping of gingers remains.
 * In some cases, "ginger" has occasionally been known to be used as derogatory slang for homosexual (cockney rhyming slang - ginger beer = queer), but this is not common, especially outside of that hotbed of cockney rhyming slang, the East End of London. In the 20s.
 * Subversion: the prejudice against redheaded people in England doesn't seem to stop them from acknowledging the exceptional contributions made by members of the royal House of Tudor, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I -- both of whom were very redheaded. (And, given the number of wives Henry had, Elizabeth was a literal redheaded stepchild to four different women!) This was because they were of Welsh descent (see above), proud of it, and willing to beat up any Englishmen who had a problem with that.
 * There's also the myth that red hair is the mark of Cain, which serves to very visibly brand redheads as his descendants. Like redheads didn't already have enough problems. Although that does pose the question of whether or not all of a redheads' ancestors who didn't have red hair happened to be of Cain's lineage and, if they aren't, how the hell that works. Perhaps all redheads are actually adopted.
 * This charming Australian ad.
 * An albino seal pup was abandoned by its mother because of its unusual coloring, which gave it ginger-colored fur. Luckily, there's a happy ending: it was rescued and taken back to a dolphinarium.