Long Hair Is Feminine: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Long hair tends to be among the [[Tertiary Sexual Characteristics]] used to establish a character as female.

 

* [[Bald Women]]<br />Baldness on a woman indicates that something's wrong with her.

* [[Braids of Action]]<br />Braids are a way for an [[Action Girl]] to keep long hair that doesn't get in the way.

* [[Butch Lesbian]]<br />Short hair as part of non-feminine package.

 

Contrast [[Boyish Short Hair]].

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Samurai High School]]'', when Tsukiko decided to enter school as a boy, she considered cutting her hair but her brother said it'd not be necessary. Just holding it in a ponytail would be enough. He was right. Also, he wore a wig to pose as his sister.

 

 

* In most fanfics which feature a male character [[Gender Bender|turning female]], said character will automatically get long hair. Because hair length is clearly determined by the presence of two "X" chromosomes.

 

* The Disney Channel movie ''Motorcrossed'' had a girl cut her hair short to make her look identical to her twin brother.

* The [[Milla Jovovich]] version of ''Joan of Arc'' has Joan annoyed that the soldiers aren't taking her seriously because she's a woman, so she hacks off her hair in the hope that she'll be considered as one of the men.

* The biopic of the first female U.S. firefighter has said woman having to cut her hair short for health and safety reasons, and she complains that she looks like a boy now.

 

* Fantine in ''[[Les Misérables]]'' is heartbroken to have to sell her hair — her crowning beauty, which [[Rapunzel Hair|falls all the way to her hips]] and [[Hair of Gold|is a beautiful blond color]] — but she does it without a second thought to earn money for her daughter, Cosette.

* In ''[[The Rape of the Lock]]'', an assault on Belinda's hair is considered an assault on her person, and her beauty, though her hair is still about 90% intact.

* One short children's book (the name escapes this troper) dealt with a girl lamenting over her shortened hair making her look like a boy after a haircut. The trope is [[Inverted]] when she meets a contruction worker with long blond [[Compressed Hair]] who reminds her that hair length doesn't make the gender.

 

* In ''[[Veronica Mars]]'', the Veronica of flashbacks, when she was a fairly stereotypical high school girl, has long hair; present-day Veronica, having become a [[Guile Hero]] by way of [[Break the Cutie]], favors a much shorter, more severe cut.

* An episode of ''Chicago Hope'' had a subplot about a boy who had been raised as a girl. When s/he found out, s/he cut off all his long hair to look more like a boy.

* ''Every single one'' of the girls in [[Glee|New Directions]] has long, flowing hair (with the occasional exception of Mercedes when she wears her hair natural) right up until the second season finale when Quinn, having lost her Prom King potential boyfriend, proceeds to fail at villainy as well and gets a cute short haircut from Santana and Brittany to make up for it.

 

* [[Hello, Nurse!|Princess Voluptua]] in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' has [[Rapunzel Hair]] that [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/VolTurn.html spills down to the floor.]

** Tedd keeps his hair long [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2008-05-05 because of this trope] as it distracts people from his naturally feminine face and gets them to blame his hair for his looking feminine. At least, [[Insane Troll Logic|according to Tedd it does]].

* Most [[Rage Comics]] faces are drawn without hair and assumed to be male by default. When an author wants to indicate a character as female, they simply add shoulder-length hair (with a [[Hair Decorations]]) to the corresponding rage face.

 

 

* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Katara, the first prominent female character, is the only girl in the core cast whose hair is long and worn down (if not loose, i.e. braided) at all times. Katara is also the most mothering, nurturing and feminine of the cast — in addition to being the [[Love Interest]]. [[Cute Bruiser|Toph]] and [[Manipulative Bitch|Azula]] both have long hair that is almost always up, and [[Action Girl|Suki]] has short hair.

* Inverted with [[Tomboy and Girly Girl|Jessica and Emilie]] in ''[[Wheel Squad]]''. Jessica has the longest hair of the duo and is so much of a tomboy that, when she entered a figure skating contest and some of her rivals said she had no chance for not being feminine, her friends weren't able to say she was.

 

* The ultimate expression of this trope: The [[wikipedia:File:Pioneer plaque.svg|Pioneer plaque]], meant to show aliens what humans look like, depicts a man with short hair and a woman with long hair.

* Nuns entering a convent would cut their hair off as a sign of them giving up their femininity to serve God.

* [[wikipedia:David Reimer|David Reimer]] is notable for having originally been assigned as male and named Bruce at birth, having his penis accidentally destroyed during circumcision, and consequently being raised as a girl, having genital reconstruction surgery performed on him to remove his testes, and renamed as Brenda in an attempt to simultaneously give Dr. Money, the psychologist who oversaw his case a subject for an experiment concerning gender identity and give [[Mind Screw|David?Bruce?]] a chance at having a happy life as a female rather than live his life as a male with a mutilated penis. The fact that he bore the name David at the time of his suicide in 2004 shows that this went horribly wrong. Contrary to Dr. Money's claims that the reassignment was successful, David did not identify as a girl since his preteen years and began living as male when he was 15. The case was so famous that it was the subject of a documentary. In a reenactment of David's sessions with Dr. Money, they discuss the differences between males and females. At this time, David was still going by Brenda and still thought of xirself as a girl.

'''Brenda:''' Because I have long hair and you have short hair. }}

* Count how many people with longer hair have been beaten up at school or called a "girl".

* Lions invert this.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Universal Tropes]]

[[Category:Hair Tropes]]