Why I'm lucky to be pale and interesting

I was a young girl in the late 70s and early 80s, when nobody cared about or had heard of the dangers of the sun, and skin cancer was not yet to be feared. Everyone had tans, except me, the fragile redhead who avoided the sun on my head because I didn't want to collapse from sunstroke. White clothes were in, which had to be accompanied by rich bronze suntans. As a result of my laziness (not taking a hat with me whenever I went outside), I had unattractive and large blotchy looking freckles on my face. Rebelliously, at boarding school, I laid on the grass and pulled my skirt up, saturated my legs in baby oil and waited. A few of us girls found a private spot in the school, (in the horse paddocks, for my school had facilities for equestriennes, also the place where the bad girls hid away and smoked) where we revealed more of our flesh to the sun, some hoping for an all-over tan, although I knew deep down that that was far too much for me to aspire to. One summer I even tried gradually exposing my skin to the sun, in increasing increments of time, which I had heard guaranteed a development of a deep, brown and permanent tan. All to no avail.

It's not easy growing up pale in a community of people largely of Maori or part-Maori descent - a beautiful race of people, even the fairest among them tanning effortlessly at the merest hint of the sun. That was in the North Island, but now I live down in the South Island, where a lot of Scottish people settled many years ago so those of us with the melanocortin 1 receptor are more common, and the day we moved here I was shocked to see eight people in one day with red hair. (Yes, I was so shocked that after the third person I spotted I started counting.)

By the time I was 18, I had given up on the suntan dream. I had begun the long journey of accepting myself as I am, and most summers from then on found myself under the nearest tree, wearing a large hat, happily reading my book. (I did get through quite a bit of fiction, Janet Frame and Margaret Atwood becoming firm faves.) Although the blotchy freckles on my face have mostly long faded (possibly helped by the bleaching power of lemon juice in my early 20s), I find the freckles on my arms and hands a sign of a delicate and humble beauty, that can only be the prize of those of us blessed to be part of this minority. (Pffft, so there are a group who openly ridicule redheads I believe? I have not come across any in my orbit, and long may that last). Anyway, I began to embrace the unique look that was mine, pale and interesting, and it was from this point on that my love affair with hats was born.

The first hat I wore and loved, aside from the hideous things I had to wear for church which I wore but did not love, was an antique black hat which I purchased in the 80s from a store in Sydney. I wore that until it was nearly falling to bits, and then had another one made exactly like it by a milliner. Not exactly, but the same style, which I have found to be most flattering to me, and practical as far as keeping the sun off my face and decolletage. I have a number of other hats now as well, with various uses. One is good for the garden - it is broad and ties well, so that it will not come off even when bending to the strangest angle to pluck something stuck fast in the soil. Another is good for a trip to the park, even with a breeze, it will not come off and is able to be slung over my back if I am walking with the sun behind me, or have popped indoors or whatever.

Even when out of fashion, (actually hats are never in fashion, except for occasions like the races, which I never go to) I still wear my hat, and this is why I am lucky to be pale and interesting, because I always have an excuse to wear one. I wonder if one summer season there will ever be a big fashion for hats, or something odd but practical, like the bonnet. I can see the headline now "Holly Hobbie makes a resurgence" or "the Little House on the Prairie look is back"! I know, it will never happen, but if it does, us pale and interesting types are the ones the look will suit most, and we'll be ready, and able to stretch that trend out just a bit longer. Vivienne Westwood, what can you do with a bonnet?