Brainy Brunette/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character with dark hair is highly intelligent.
- Played Straight: Alice has brown hair and gets the highest grades in her class.
- Exaggerated: Alice's hair is so rich in color that it's almost black and her intellect is so high as to make her a TV Genius with an Improbably High IQ.
- Justified:
- Alice finds her brown hair to be plain so she quietly goes about her business putting her effort into academics.
- Or people with dark hair in the story are given some sort of Applied Phlebotinum that makes them intelligent.
- Inverted:
- If characters know that something needs to be done that's morally questionable and also physically challenging, they call on the brown-haired Dumb Muscle.
- Or Alice is a Brainless Beauty who has chestnut hair. She doesn't mind when she doesn't understand her schoolwork because if she asks a male classmate with a smile and compliment to his intelligence, she can practically get him to do the work for her.
- Subverted: Alice gets terrible grades, but is merely Book Dumb, just like a bunch of her peers.
- Double Subverted:
- But it turns out she was really just Obfuscating Stupidity and reveals herself to be an Insufferable Genius to boot.
- ...until it turns out she is smart, but just too lazy to apply it to her studies.
- Parodied:
- All the smart kids have brown or black hair.
- Or Betty wishes to be smart like Alice, so she decides to dye her hair dark brown to look smart. She becomes a TV Genius overnight.
- Deconstructed: Because Alice has dark hair, she constantly strives to become intelligent because people expect that of her.
- Reconstructed: But deep down, Alice just wants to be herself. She dyes her hair blue and keeps her intelligent personality.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is smart, but switches between blonde and brown hair so often that no one can be sure what is her actual hair colour.
- Averted: Hair color has no correlation to intelligence.
- Enforced: The Smart Guy has brown hair so that people can identify him as the smart guy immediately.
- Lampshaded: "You can tell she's the smart one," said Bob. "Her hair says so,"
- Invoked: "Of course I can win the spelling bee! I'm a brunette!"
- Defied: Alice deliberately becomes Book Dumb in order to shun the stereotype of being a bookish nerd because of her brown hair.
- Discussed: 'We might as well tell Alice about the problem and see what she thinks. She's the brunette around here, so she's bound to have some insight.'
- Conversed: "Weird. Alice and Charlie both have dark hair and they're both really smart."
- Played for Laughs: ???
- Played for Drama: ???
Back to Brainy Brunette