Important Haircut/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character cuts their hair to symbolise a part of major Character Development.

  • Played Straight: Bob cuts his hair short after a bad break up to signify that he's moving on.
  • Exaggerated: Alice cuts her hair every time she has a bad day.
  • Justified: The aforementioned girlfriend Bob broke up with made him keep his hair like that, which he hated. Now they're broken up, he can cut it.
  • Inverted: Alice gets hair extensions.
  • Subverted: Bob/Alice cuts their hair but they still have problems in their life.
    • Bob/Alice prepare to cut their hair but decide not to.
  • Double Subverted: They work on improving their lives and decide to cut their hair as a nod to the progress they've made.
  • Parodied: Bob tries to cut his hair himself, thinking it'll improve his life but he makes a mess of it and he gets shunned by society for his god-awful hair.
  • Deconstructed: Alice tries to cut her hair herself, like in the parody example, and it doesn't come out the way she likes it. She learns that if she wants things to get better then she should work on improving her situation and a haircut won't change anything. She lets her hair grow through.
  • Reconstructed: After sorting her life out (and her hair has grown back) Alice gets a hairdresser to give her a new look that suits her without being too radical.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob is obsessed with changing his hair and justifies it by saying he'll change it whenever a bad situation happens. No bad situations happen to him so he tries to get into them to justify him cutting his hair. He eventually does it for the hell of it anyway.
  • Averted: No characters cut their hair in the story.
    • A haircut's a haircut. It's no big deal.
  • Enforced: "We need Alice to give herself a new haircut halfway through the movie."
    • Alice's actor shows up for season two of The Series with freshly cut hair. The writers have to make it work out in story.
  • Lampshaded: "Do you really think cutting your hair is going to solve all your problems?"
  • Invoked: "A haircut is the first step to a fresh start"
  • Defied: "I'm going to actually do something. I'm not gonna be one of those girls who cuts her own hair and her problems magically solve themselves"
  • Discussed: "A lot of people get new haircuts to symbolise changes in their lives"
  • Conversed: "Did you notice that when Alice got a haircut on Teen Drama Show #45 her life started to get better"
  • Played For Laughs: Bob gets a haircut and instantly has good luck for the rest of his life. When his hair grows out, he starts to have bad luck so he cuts it again and his good luck returns.
  • Played For Drama: Traumatic Haircut.

Back to Important Haircut