Recently, several publications announced that redheads, or gingers, as many affectionately call them, would soon be extinct. Media outlets around the world quickly picked this up in headlines, chatting with “genetic scientists” and other hair experts who were convinced that redheads would be extinct by the year 2060. Is the redhead population declining as rapidly as some think? Will the red hair gene survive, or is it endangered?
Rest assured, all the commotion about redheads facing extinction is nothing more than a myth. The misinformation, often attributed to the Oxford Hair Foundation, mistakenly suggested that recessive genes, like those responsible for red hair, could “die out.”
In reality, recessive genes don’t vanish completely, though they can become rare. They only disappear if the person with that gene dies or doesn’t have children. So despite redheads becoming few and far between, there are enough people out there with the redhead gene that, unless some epic worldwide crisis happens or we experience the apocalypse sometime soon, redheads aren’t going anywhere.
Some of the content referring to this supposed phenomenon used the Oxford Hair Foundation as a reputable research foundation or scientific institute conducting independent studies. It only takes a quick online search to discover that the Oxford Hair Foundation is financed by Proctor & Gamble, a huge corporation selling many beauty products—red hair dye is one of them.
In the latest myths warning us of the extinction of redheads, certain news outlets claimed that an issue from National Geographic magazine from September 2007 was the origin of the claims. This turned out to be incorrect. In reality, the National Geographic issue in question merely presented some statistics in a short article about redheads.
While the story’s data was accurate, it only referred to “news reports” of the redhead extinction rather than supporting those claims. Although National Geographic explicitly said that “while redheads may decline, the potential for red isn’t going away,” the damage was done. The misunderstanding about the redhead population becoming extinct has become widespread and is still believed everywhere.
