Julianne Moore's Tips for Redheaded Pride

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Gorgeous ginger actress Julianne Moore has fronted beauty and fashion campaigns and even walked in Tom Ford's supersecret show. But when she was growing up, she was insecure about her red hair. Moore, whose Freckleface Strawberry books (one of which was turned into a musical starring American Idol alum Sanjaya Malakar) are all about redhead pride, wrote a piece for Bookish about her relationship with her locks.

Red-headed protagonists were hard to come by when I was growing up. Watching movies on television in the basement of our house as a kid, I noticed that redheads came in two persuasions: the comedian (Lucille Ball) or the siren (Rita Hayworth). Where were the regular redheads, like me?

Though Moore tried to identify with brunette heroines like Jo March and Laura Ingalls, she ultimately found salvation with fiction's most iconic redheads: Anne Shirley.

Anne Shirley begins her journey on the comic side of the redhead spectrum–an awkward, unwanted, eager-to-please orphan, prone to breaking lamps and accidentally getting her best friend drunk on currant wine. Her adoptive family, brother-and-sister duo Matthew and Marilla, grow to care for her even though she’s a funny looking red-headed little thing who has a knack for getting in trouble. Then lo and behold! She grows up and one day becomes beautiful, gracious, talented and intelligent. And loving and kind–and her soul mate Gilbert marries her! Her hair is still red but somehow not as funny-looking anymore. Just regular. Like I wanted to be.

Get in line, Julianne. Gilbert Blythe is OURS.
· Required Reading for Young Redheads [Bookish]
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