Affair Hair

It is funny because Frankenstein's Monster is made of body parts from multiple corpses thus giving the question a double meaning.
Image by StardustDragon, used with permission.

"Aha! A strand of hair that isn't his! ...oh, wait, it's mine."

— Roseanne

A wife suspects her husband is having an affair and can prove it by presenting him with the hair she found on his jacket. The hair obviously belongs to neither the husband or wife (whether because of hair color, length, or texture), and who else could that third party be but a mistress?

The guy will undoubtedly say that there's a perfectly innocent explanation. And sometimes, there really is. And sometimes the man doesn't even know someone with that hair color.

See also Lipstick Mark, a trope that plays out similarly, and Affair Letters, another type of evidence of affairs.

Not to be confused with Sex Hair.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Case Closed plays with this in one chapter. Ran, Sonoko, and Sera find a strange hair in Shinichi's house, which leads Sera to immediately tell her two friends how to build a case around that hair...before revealing that it's highly unlikely Shinichi brought anyone into the house and that it's more likely that Subaru brought a woman to the house.
• Hidamari Sketch: Hiro's father finds a short hair not of his daughter's color while visiting her home and wonders if she has a cat. Before anyone answers, Sae walks in and he immediately accuses her.
• Mission: Yozakura Family: Sayaka, who suspects Taiyo of having an affair, goes to his room to find "evidence" and reports that there are many strands of hair that clearly doesn't belong to Mutsumi in Taiyo's room. Mutsumi calmly points out that those hairs probably comes from her other siblings.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: One single-page comic has Archie becoming the First Teen on Mars. He's asked a bunch of questions regarding the terrain, the weather, etc. Cue Ronnie with, "I have one question. Whose purple hair is this?"

Fan Works

• Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation: Variant. Superman's descendants Adam and Alan Kent are competing over Supergirl's descendant Katherine de Ka'an. One night, Adam insists on staying in Kat's apartment, but she bluntly kicks him out. Before leaving, though, he stares towards Kat's bedroom for several seconds, and Kat realizes he has used his Super-Senses to spot one hair of Alan's head which she forgot removing from her bed.

Films — Animated

• The Incredibles:
  • Parodied when Helen finds a piece of rubble on Bob's clothes, tipping her off that he's been "cheating" on their family by doing secret superhero work.
  • She later finds an actual blonde hair on Bob's super suit, from Mirage, and worries that he's having a more classical affair (but it's actually secret superheroing again).
  • A cut scene had her confront him and outright ask if he was having an affair; in that case, he claims that the hair was from an old lady at the dry cleaner's.
• Parodied in Turning Red: Grandma Wu finds a tuft of red panda fur around Mei's house which tells her that Mei has been "cheating" on her family by secretly transforming into her red panda form. Mei tries futilely to claim its not hers.

Films — Live-Action

• Murder by Death: Sidney Wang tries to one up the detective group's Sherlock Scan by concluding that Mrs. Charleston must have dyed her hair red, because the hairs on Mr. Charleston's jacket are blonde, only to realize the truth halfway through his sentence.
• In That Old Feeling, Rowena's bright red hair is a significant part of the backstory because it proved that she'd had an affair with Molly's father while he was still married to Lilly, Molly's mom. At the climax of the movie, Rowena's bright red hair also reveals that she'd slept with Molly's newlywed husband on the previous night.
• In Clueless, Dionne finds an entire extension of hair in Murray's car and accuses him of infidelity. When Murray joking suggests it might fallen off Dionne's hair, she reacts angrily, yelling "I do not wear polyester hair!"
• In the film Crossing Delancey, an African-American character with curly black hair finds a long, straight blonde hair on her boyfriend, which she takes to mean that he's cheating on her.
• Usually affair hair is found in the bedroom, and belongs to the "other woman," but The Kids Are All Right uses a variation, when Nic discovers the truth after finding her wife's distinctive red hair in a bathroom drain at a friend's house. The woman's excuse of having taken a shower to clean up after working in his garden falls flat when Nic reveals that she found her hair in his bed as well.
• A different take in the The Two Jakes. Our Anti-Hero has sex with the Femme Fatale, then goes to interrogate her rival while constantly plucking bits of sweater fluff off his coat — Not Helping Your Case when you're trying to convince a woman that you're running an unbiased investigation.
• The Punisher (2004). The mafia boss gives a pair of diamond earrings to his wife, so Frank Castle steals one of them and plants it in the bed of The Consigliere (who ironically is a closet homosexual). He also arranges other fake clues to arouse suspicion, like stealing her car while she's inside a movie theater and ensuring it gets ticketed outside a hotel, and placing calls to the consigliere using her car phone.

Jokes

• So this woman says to her friend, "I'm worried my husband might be cheating on me, but I don't know what to do because there's no evidence." "Oh, that's easy," says her friend, "You just check the lapels of his jacket when he gets home, and then if you find a blond hair you say 'Oh, so you've been seeing a blond woman!' Or you find a brown hair and say, 'Oh, so you've been seeing a brunette!' Then he'll have to confess." The woman thinks this is a great idea, so when her husband comes home that night, she checks his jacket. There's no hair on it at all. So she charges in and yells, "Oh, so you've been seeing a bald woman!"

Literature

• A poem by E. E. Cummings in which the wife initially suspects that her husband is having an affair... then he reveals that they have a new cat... then he reveals it's of the wrong colour.
• Lethal White: In this instance it's not hair, it's an earring left in the marital bed, which causes Robin to realize that her husband Matthew is cheating on her with his old girlfriend Sarah Shadlock.
• A Rose for Emily ends with a strand of gray hair found next to a body that's been dead for decades.
• In Wizard and Glass, Roland's friends discover that he's sleeping with Susan this way.
• In the Indian novel The White Tiger, this is how Balram realizes that Ashok slept with the Ukrainian student.

Live-Action TV

• In Young Dracula, they have some fake Affair Hair — Vlad gets some of his stuffed wolf's hair and pretends it's from his mother's werewolf boyfriend.
• This happens in the Your Show of Shows sketch "Argument to Beethoven's 5th" by Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray, just as the couple seems to have made up. At the very end, she figures out that it belongs to the cat, and they're reconciled.
• In My Name Is Earl, Earl finds a piece of Darnell's hair on his pillow, but believes it's his own hair. He does find out about the affair nine months later, though.
• Played with in Roseanne. Roseanne notices a hair on one of Dan's shirts, and is suspicious for a moment, before realising it's actually one of hers.
• Parodied in Paul Merton's TV Show where Paul's wife accuses him of having an affair with Gloria Hunniford on the grounds that her entire wig was in the back seat of the car. Paul reasonably points out that it was, in fact, some hay for the rabbit.
• Brunette Gemma Foster's discovery of a blonde hair on her husband's scarf starts off the whole plot of Doctor Foster.
• A different take in Game of Thrones. Catelyn Stark finds a blonde hair in the tower from which her son fell, leading her to suspect that his fall was not an accident. As the previous episode showed, Bran was pushed from the tower after witnessing the queen having sex with her own brother.
• In an episode of Hogan's Heroes, Hogan's contact with the underground resistance (an extremely beautiful woman), accuses Hogan of this when she finds a blonde hair on his jacket which Hogan says came from "Heidi". Subverted when Hogan explains that "Heidi" is one of the guard dogs at Stalag 13.
• In The Good Fight, Diane suspects her husband of cheating because she found a blonde hair on his clothes. Turns out it's from one of Donald Trump's sons, which actually might be worse.
• Sadakatsiz: Invoked. Derin plants clues for Asya to discover Volkan's infidelity so she can upgrade from Volkan's mistress to his wife. For example, she leaves her lipstick inside one of his pockets and her very distinguishable blond hair strands in the folds of his dark-colored jackets. For context, Asya's hair is brown and Volkan's is a graying black.

Magazines

• Playboy: A gag cartoon had a topless Fiery Redhead finding a blonde hair on the beeper of her male lover. When asked about it, the male has a Oh, Crap! look on his face.

Music

• Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker" has Jay-Z rapping about how "she found a strand of hair, longer than hers". The video shows a toon Mariah finding an Affair Hair.
• Mitski's music video for "Happy" is a subversion. The black-haired wife starts suspecting her husband is cheating on her after she finds a lock of blonde hair in his things. It turns out that he's brutally murdering blondes in their basement instead.

Newspaper Comics

• An early story arc in FoxTrot features Andy thinking Roger is having an affair, when he's really just working overtime. Andy admits she was wrong and they hug, only for Andy to pluck a hair off his jacket and ask "Whose hair is this?"
  • For those who are not familiar with the strip, Roger is balding, and in denial about it.
• There was a strip from The Far Side that caused a bit of controversy because it showed a female chimp picking a blond hair off her chimp husband and asking if he'd been doing more "research" with "that Jane Goodall tramp". As it turned out, Dr. Goodall loved the strip.
  • Jane Goodall herself told the story in the preface to The Far Side Gallery V. Her society was getting ready to sue over the strip when she returned from field work. Her reply was, "Wow, real fame at last!" Now, it's one of her society's biggest moneymakers, appearing on many fund-raising products. Dr. Goodall invited Mr. Larson to Gombe - where he promptly got the snot kicked out of him by a male chimp named Frodo. Just as Planned?

Video Games

• Catherine has a variant, as it's the girl Vincent's cheating with that finds his girlfriend's hair. Vincent also explains the long pale hair as coming from his chest. In another twist, she knew Vincent had a girlfriend the whole time.

Web Comics

• Sabrina Online has a gag along these lines after Sabrina's dad has the tour of Zig Zag's porn studio - while the hair color is nothing to worry about (since both he and Zig Zag are skunks), the length is...
• The Perry Bible Fellowship's "The Blue Hair" inverts this trope, where Wolverine finds a blue hair on his lover and sets out to get Beast. Played with as the last panel shows that hair comes from a blue lion plush next to the girl's bed.
• The Affair from Kind Of Love is kicked off, in part, by one of these when Lina finds a hair on Nick's undershirt that isn't hers. He references the fact that there's a jiu jitsu move that could explain it, but this particular plot thread isn't resolved.
• 180 Angel: A variant of this with Sam's feather in Lilith's hair after spending the night together.
  Xavier: Oh, wow. You got a little something in your hair there.
  Lilith: [pulls out feather and blushes] Okay, maybe she stayed for a little bit but nothing happened.
  Xavier: Yeah, the blush is really screaming "nothing."
  Lilith: [looks away] It was just a kiss...or a few.

Web Animation

• Refreshing Stories: In "I hid under the bed to see whether my wife was cheating and..." Hiroshi found a blond hair in Mika's pillow and interrogated her about it. She tried to convince him it was hers because her mother came from the States, but he didn't buy any of it and found out it belonged to her lover.
• Revenge Films:
  • "My husband refuses to have sex with me, so I walked in on him having an affair": The OP discovered her husband was cheating on her when she found a strand of blond hair on the kitchen table while washing the dishes.
  • "My first husband was lazy, unmotivated, and even cheated on me": OP finds a strand of brown hair while she uses the hair dryer after showering, which clued her in on her lazy husband cheating on her.

Web Original

• Lolcats: Dis Not Mai Hairz!

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