Yikes! Talk about telling it like it is….

A fascinating insight on Chicago architect, Harry Weese. His brother, John, was a senior partner at SOM SF when I worked there in the early 1970s.

By AMY CHUA

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

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Erin Patrice O'Brien for The Wall Street Journal

Amy Chua with her daughters, Louisa and Sophia, at their home in New Haven, Conn.

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

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All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

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Chua family

From Ms. Chua's album: 'Mean me with Lulu in hotel room... with score taped to TV!'

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Yep! I've been there and heard that....

“The album was called ‘Loud,’ and it just fit,” Ursula Stephen, Rihanna’s hairstylist, said about the singer’s new CD and the decision to make her a redhead. “It made the statement she wanted to make.”

But right now red hair is not just one woman’s statement — it’s a chorus. The subtly auburn girl-next-door actress Emma Stone, of “Easy A” and “Superbad,” made her “Saturday Night Live” debut last weekend. Scarlett Johansson and Eva Longoria both gave themselves red highlights in the last year, while the “Twilight” actress Kristen Stewart attempted a strawberry blond. And her co-star Bryce Dallas Howard also fires up the red carpet with flaming locks.

During New York Fashion Week, the British luxury leather brand Mulberry sent models with thick-banged cherry-colored wigs stomping around the Soho House’s rooftop pool. YSL features the red-headed model Karen Elson in new ads for Opium perfume. The auburn-haired Julianne Moore is on the cover of the November issue of Allure, while Christina Hendricks, of “Mad Men,” who has perhaps done more to reinvigorate the color than anyone else, appears on the November cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

“Out of all the colors it makes the most statement — it infers personality,” said Lucia Mace, the stylist on “Mad Men” who is responsible for maintaining the locks of Joan Holloway, the hip-wiggling, smoldering executive assistant played by Ms. Hendricks. “Red is wild and sexy and powerful,” Ms. Mace said.

Recently, it’s taken on a rocker tinge as well. Cameron Mesirow, who records as Glasser, was a CMJ Music Festival darling earlier this month. Ms. Elson famously dyed her hair red after meeting Ms. Hendricks more than a decade ago. And Florence Welch, the flame-tressed British pop-soul frontwoman of Florence and the Machine, has been dying her hair since she was 9, inspired by her favorite Disney character, Ariel, from “The Little Mermaid.”

“It has been all different colors — bright red to more auburn-y-brown red,” she said by telephone from London, between studio sessions. It wasn’t until 2008 that Ms. Welch went with her trademark auburn. “This kind now is the one that suits me best,” she said. At the MTV Video Music Awards in September, her curly tendrils were laid across a bed like seaweed as she performed “Dog Days Are Over,” the soaring opening to her album “Lungs.” (The tune was also featured in the trailer to another famous redhead’s recent movie: Julia Roberts’s “Eat Pray Love.”)

“There’s kind of a big mythology around redheads,” Ms. Welch said. “There’s something kind of magical about red hair.”

For Hayley Williams, the frontwoman of pop-punk band Paramore, red is the color of rebellion. When her band was in the studio recording its breakout 2007 album, “Riot!,” “I decided I wanted to look like an Anime character,” Ms. Williams e-mailed from a tour stop in Australia. “I had my hair 3 or 4 different colors and the orange would fade to this highlighter green around my face. That was definitely my favorite.” She has had what she called “ginger fever” since she was 14 and is no longer sure what her natural color is. Being a redhead is a “form of self-expression to me,” Ms. Williams wrote.

Ms. Mace, the “Mad Men” stylist, said that although Ms. Hendricks, a natural blonde, has been dying her hair since she was a preteen, the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, decided that Joan Holloway’s hair needed to match the Lucille Ball-inspired shade that was popular at the time. “We brightened up her red,” Ms. Mace said. “I get a lot of letters about her hair color asking how do I get it. People love that red on her.”

But Sharon Dorram, of Sally Hershberger, who has handled Nicole Kidman’s signature strawberry blond locks and Julia Roberts’s auburn tresses, said that her New York clients haven’t generally warmed to the hue. “When they see red in their hair, it freaks them out,” she said.

Nikki Ferrara, a colleague of Ms. Dorram’s, speculated that “it could be a social stigma thing.”

“Like some people think redheads are a little batty,” she added. “Or it’s one of those head-turning colors, and people don’t want that much attention from it.”

But a new generation of redheads is explicitly seeking attention. Whitney Scott, a colorist for the hair salon Woodley & Bunny in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said that a recent client, a German woman, asked for “ ‘Sesame Street’ red.” Ms. Scott, herself no square with an armful of tattoos, suggested something more natural.

Ms. Scott’s specialty for redheads is balayage, a form of hair coloring designed to create natural-looking highlights, popularized by celebrities like Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker. Instead of “essentially cooking hair” in foils and coloring the hair in blocky sections, Ms. Scott said, she paints the color right onto her clients’ hair so that it blends more naturally with their own shade and grows out without developing drastic-looking roots. “It’s a lot more forgiving,” she said (and pricey, at up to $300).

According to Ms. Ferrara, brave souls who try to save money by dying their hair at home need to stay true to their natural hues. Blondes can go with a shimmering copper or a strawberry blond effect, while brunettes need to avoid blue or “eggplant” reds, which will look artificial in the sunlight and wash out rosy complexions. “Just like being a blonde, there’s a conservative way of being a redhead and there’s kind of an out-there, fun, funky way of being a redhead,” Ms. Ferrara said. “I wouldn’t make someone be a cherry red if you have a corporate office job.”

For the conservative, she suggested the tone-on-tone technique, which can highlight (or low-light) hair a shade lighter (or darker) than natural locks; or a gloss, which takes about 10 minutes.Sarah Lisitski, an accessories assistant at O the Oprah Magazine and one of Ms. Ferrera’s clients, recently went red, partly inspired by Ms. Hendricks. “It is a ‘Mad Men’ thing,” Ms. Lisitski said. “You think, oh, she’s so gorgeous and sexy and more womanly.” She went with a more subdued look, bringing in a picture of Ms. Stone, the “Easy A” actress. Still, the attention was immediate and glowing. “Everyone was like: ‘Wow! Your hair is red — it’s so nice and vibrant,’ ” Ms. Lisitski said. “I just feel so much prettier.”

Lisa Morris, vice president for hair-color marketing at L’Oréal, said that sales in home-care kits for red dyes have been steady, at about 18 percent of all shades since 2005. But she is seeing a rising popularity of the color among the Hispanic community. Out of the company’s 32 shades of red, a subtle auburn is the most popular seller.