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France to hold its first festival in honour of redheads

The Local France
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France to hold its first festival in honour of redheads
Photo: Pascal Sacleux

Brittany in western France is set to hold the country's first festival dedicated to redheads, giving French bearers of the rare hair colour a chance to celebrate the flaming locks for which they often face unfair ridicule.

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Regularly the victims of prejudice and mockery, French redheads will soon have a chance to hold their heads up high at the first festival in France set to be held in their honour. 
 
Dubbed Red Love, the event will take place on August 25th in the city of Châteaugiron in the northwestern French region of Brittany. 
 
The brains behind the festival is French photographer Pascal Sacleux, a redhead himself who previously held an exhibition to highlight the prejudice facing the country's ginger-haired people called "Brittany: Freckles rock".
 
And it was while taking the photographs for the exhibition that the idea for the festival, which follows in the footsteps of other similar events already held in other European countries, including England and the Netherlands, came to him.
 
French actress Isabelle Huppert. Photo: AFP
 
"This kind of festival already existed in many European countries, England, Scotland, Ireland or the Netherlands in particular, but nothing in France," he told Le Parisien.
 
But the event is not exclusive and you don't have to be a redhead to go, with Sacleux, who has previously called gingerism "a form of racism that has persisted for centuries", stressing that everyone is welcome. 
 
In total, 3,000 people -- both redheads and non-redheads -- are expected to attend Red Love. 
 
It is believed that just 1-2 per cent of the human population possesses the ginger gene, with the Celtic nations leading the way and northern France is also ahead of the global average.
 
Famous French redheads include such luminaries as the first Norman king of England, William the Conqueror and French actress Isabelle Huppert.
 
And fans of French police drama Spiral will also be familiar with the flaming locks of actress Audrey Fleurot who plays lawyer Josephine Karlsson.

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