Who cares? Who cares where the mutation arose and who has more of it other than as a matter of intellectual curiosity? As soon as pigmentation is discussed, this sort of thing starts popping up. My father's whole family is blonde or red-haired and freckled and light eyed and I don't ever remember it being discussed as anything particularly valuable. It's just how they looked! If anything, they bemoaned not being able to tan and talked about bleaching creams for the freckles!
I don't get it and I never will. No disrespect to them at all, but who cares who looks more North European? Why would Italians, in particular, care about looking 'more' North European? As far as I'm concerned, this is a foreign ideology to Italy...a foreign ideology whose adoption led to one of the worst periods of Italian history.
Perhaps we should stick to the genetics and leave these value judgments and competitions over meaningless things out of it.
Ed. In the interest of full disclosure, my aunts did indeed bemoan all the freckles, and weren't particularly keen on having photosensitive skin, but they did love having that wavy copper red hair in their youth. It was just such a vibrant and unusual color. It also marked them as belonging to their particular family, which became a part of their identity, I think. As those were still superstitious times, they also told me that boys were waved off them as it was held to indicate a bad temper and strong will. Not that they cared...they were a strong and fearsome group of women, and rather proud of it.
