The Ravishing (and Often Disturbing) History of Red Hair

Things weren't so great for redheads during the Middle Ages. Mary Magdalene was often shown as a repentant prostitute with long red hair, since redheads were supposed to be wantonly sensuous, but things got much worse from there.

Alchemists believed that to turn copper into gold they needed the blood of a young redheaded man. And if that wasn't bad enough, the famed treatise on all things witchy and supernatural, the Malleus Maleficarum, opined, "Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires," and also suggested that the hair colour could be the mark of a witch or werewolf.