Anne Shirley
Anne Shirley detested her "plain red" hair, but many girls probably wished they were redheads because of her. Lucy Maud Montgomery's vibrant orphan, who first appeared in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, was strong, smart and incredibly imaginative. Except when it came to the color of her locks. "I cannot imagine that red hair away," she laments, having already explained "why I can't be perfectly happy. Nobody could who had red hair." Anne, of course, discovers there is something worse in life than red tresses after an attempt at dyeing goes horribly wrong: green hair. For a willful, adventurous girl, however, her natural color seemed appropriate. "You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," Anne tells Marilla. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is."