Nobody Touches the Hair
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This could be seen as a subtrope of Hates Being Touched, but it's usually used to convey a completely different message about the character. Whereas a character who Hates Being Touched is generally a very reserved or shy character, a character who tells others Nobody Touches the Hair is in general the opposite - the point here is to convey pride and vanity. As Traumatic Haircut explains, the hair is often seen as similar to a peacock's tail - a display - and so it is a very easy symbol for vanity in general. Also, whereas Hates Being Touched is probably about 50/50 comedy to drama, this trope is overwhelmingly comic. Frequently these characters will have very outlandish styles that may verge on Anime Hair and may serve as a Nice Hat minus the, well, hat.
If it is Played for Drama, expect sexual molestation and/or assault to be a major element in their backstory. In this case, it may be resolved with an Intimate Haircut.
Examples of Nobody Touches the Hair include:
Anime & Manga
- Himeko from Kannazuki no Miko, as a result of Domestic Abuse in her childhood.
- Matt from Digimon Adventure says this in a throwaway line. Like a lot of stuff in the dub, it sort of disappears into the ether after that.
- Brook in One Piece will try to prevent enemy combatants from contact with his hair at any cost. This is because being a skeleton, he considers it his only visible trait still the same from when he was still alive, and it won't grow back if it gets cut off again(and considering his sole purpose now is to meet up with Laboon again, he kinda needs Laboon to still be able to recognize him somehow). He protects it to such an extent that he loses his very first real fight in the series in order to avoid damage to his hair.
Film
- Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.
- Ace Ventura. "Don't... mess... with the 'do!!"
- Undercover Brother: Undercover Brother is very protective of his Afro, including telling Sista Girl, "Don't touch the hair!"; telling Conspiracy Brother, "Don't touch the 'fro!", and beating up Mr. Feather when he cuts off a piece of it: "You mess with the 'fro, you got to go."
- Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class uses this trope. This is an in-joke to fans, since anyone who is familiar with the series knows that he goes completely bald.
- Princess Vespa refuses to make herself useful when escaping from the Spaceballs ship until one Mook's stray blaster fire singes her hair, then she picks up a blaster rifle and guns down all of 'em.
Literature
- Soto the History Monk from Thief of Time. The book says that even the most restrained mind has a conditional clause somewhere, and Soto's is, "But not the hair. Don't touch the hair, all right?" He gets around the monastery's shaved-head rules by insisting that he is bald under the hair.
Live-Action TV
- Played for Drama in Inspector Rex, where molested children in an orphanage freak out when their hair is being touched.
- Fonzie in Happy Days.
- Uncle Jessie says this on Full House, to the point where it borders on being a catch phrase.
- On Angel, Spike imagines Angel doing this while mockingly impersonating him.
- Jay-Don is a very loud (as in flashy) vampire who has two main rules: never touch the hair or the glasses. Angel stakes him to get into a heist by impersonating him. He gets rid of the sunglasses quickly but keeps up the fuss about the hair.
- Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter was like this.
- In one episode of Brotherly Love, Lloyd waxes nostalgic about how he and Joe's dad used to horse around together, and makes to muss up Joe's hair. Joe darts away and tells him not to do that. It's a long quote, ending in "Shoot me in the knee caps, that's good clean fun! But the hair is off limits."
Video Games
- In World of Warcraft, Lor'Themar Theron, leader of the Blood Elves, says the following quote when you click on him: Do not. Touch. THE HAIR!!!.
- Don Flamenco from Punch-Out!! has a battle quote telling you not to touch his hair. In the Wii version, it's a wig you can punch off him, which angers the Don.
Web Original
- At the start of RWBY Yang Xiao Long is a fun-loving party girl as well as a Huntress, and she treats most of the battles she gets in as just extra-rough play -- but if you disturb a single strand of her hair, you've pressed her Berserk Button and are in for a world of hurt. However, after the events of Volume 3 this seems to have disappeared almost completely from her personality.
Western Animation
- Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters.
- Rapunzel in Tangled will let her hair be touched only by her adoptive mother, although this may be a case of having being told aforementioned mother that people would use her healing locks for their personal gain. She also does not want to talk about her hair much, to the point she neglects to mention its powers ("I have hair that glows when I sing") at a time when they may be needed...
- In the episode "Life in the Past Lane" of Daria, Jane falls for Nathan, a guy with fantastic dress sense, who turns out to be an aficionado of 1950s and '60s fashion. When the two cut the rug at a speakeasy-themed club, she runs her fingers through his... pomade. He freaks out, and runs to the men's room to fix his do.
- On Johnny Bravo, Johnny has this attitude.
- Lee Kanker from Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy seems to have shades of this attitude towards her hair- she shoves Eddy away from her in "Look into my Eds" when he tries to move her bangs out of her eyes, and if she gets wet/injured/disheveled in any kind of way, she frequently asks, "Does my hair look okay?"
- Though there are no notable instances in Winx Club, the opening theme song does invoke it:
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You can look all you want/ But don't touch the hair! |
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