He barely has any luck and he barely has any hair!
Some characters have outrageous, gravity defying hairdos. On the other hand, there are characters like this, with only two or three strands of hair. To a casual viewer, a character with Charlie Brown Baldness will appear, well, bald. However, the character may occasionally mention getting a haircut, or other characters will comment on said haircut or colour. The current Trope Namer is Charlie Brown, who, at first glance, appears bald save for a few short curls in front, but according to Word of God, just has incredibly light blond hair, buzzed short (as was a popular style for boys in the 40's and 50's). Keep in mind Charlie's father is a barber.
If the character is a child, expect jokes about the character suffering from cancer.
Contrast Furry Baldness, where an animal character is "bald" despite still having hair, feathers, or fur, and Prematurely Bald where a character is actually bald despite their young age.
Examples
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Advertising
- Cara Confused from the UK's Confused.com ads is a rare female example. Though she was originally a character of ambiguous gender before she was given a voice and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
Anime & Manga
- In Osomatsu-kun with Chibita, who’s known to have a clean bald head save for his thick wavy strand on the back of his head.
- Chaozu in Dragon Ball rarely appears without his hat, but he removes it in his first encounter with Krillin to show that he has one (and only one) strand of hair on his scalp. Krillin, a former Buddhist monk who keeps his head shaved until the Buu arc, is infuriated.
Comic Books
- Cuori Grassi: Rocco's appearance during The '90s was that of an apparently bald teenager with three blond Idiot Hairs protruding from his head. Later issues portray him as having normal blond hair, so it's kinda implied he's always had it like that and his baldness was merely a stylistic choice.
- Jimmy Five from Monica's Gang, who is often called "baldy" despite having, well, five strands of hair (two of which somehow flatten the top of his head).
- Billy Whizz, his brother Alfie, and their Dad, in The Beano. They all have two long hairs and the rest of the head is bald. There are little dots on Billy and Dad indicating that theirs are buzzcuts, but Alfie, being a toddler, lacks this, and so plays the trope straight.
- Tintin has that single absurd-looking tuft sticking up in front.
- Titeuf also has the same thing going on as Tintin - but exaggerated and then some way beyond.
Comic Strips
- Charlie Brown from Peanuts, pictured above. According to Charles Schulz, he's blond, but since his father is the local barber, he maintains Charlie with a perpetual buzz cut. Apparently, that's what Schulz's father did for Charles himself.
- Lt. Fuzz, ironically, in Beetle Bailey
- Iggy from Little Lulu. Igg has visible "stubble," though, making it clearer than many examples that it's the result of a buzz cut.
- Joey from Dennis the Menace (US) eventually became an example of this trope via Art Evolution. In the earlier comics, he had a full head of curly hair before it turned into a single strand.
- Jon’s brother Doc from Garfield is usually drawn with four strands of hair on the top of his head, some angles particularly when he looks straight ahead depicts him with short black hair.
Literature
- Greg Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid is depicted with just three strands of hair sticking out of the top of his head in a tuft. Since Greg in the live-action movies has a full head of hair, Greg is generally considered to have hair in the book as well.
- A classic series of Chinese children's storybooks, San Mao, so named for the young protagonist having only three hairs on his head.
Live-Action TV
- A rare female (and live-action, for that matter) example of this comes from Nanalan', whose main character (three-year-old puppet Mona) has two pig-tails on her head and nothing else.
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Video Games
Baldi from Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning has a singular strand of hair atop his 3D misshapen head.
Web Animation
- In Bonus Stage, Joel, for the first two seasons, had four long black hairs; his designs past those two seasons had blond hair filling the spaces between those black hairs.
- Caillou’s cousin and female counterpart Boue from Caillou The Grownup is bald save for eight strands of hair on the sides of her head tied in pigtails.
Web Comics
- In The Order of the Stick, Belkar appears to have a Bald of Evil, unless you look closely — he has tiny reddish hairs sticking straight up. Looks something like a buzzcut. Note also that the hair on his head is identical to the fur on his feet.
- Averted in Weapon Brown: Chuck really is bald, with a few stray curly hairs on his head.
- In Arthur, King of Time and Space, Arthur's own webcomic The Thing of Shapes to Come initally portrays him with three strands of hair, as part of its exremely stylised nature. This is probably intended to represent that he has a very high forehead, somewhat resembling a receding hairline even as a teenager. In-universe Art Evolution eventually fixes this. Prior to Arthur creating his own comic, there was a Lampshade Hanging when Merlin claimed to have sketched a Chibi version of Arthur ... and it was Charlie Brown.
Western Animation
- Sumo from Clarence has a buzzcut, however he looks completely bald except for some random hairs spread around his scalp. According to the pilot, him and Clarence shaved it off.
- Wayne from The Cramp Twins has a few strands of hair on his head, but he's still treated as having normal hair: in "Haircut Horrors" he he needs a haircut, while in "Lice-ence to Kill" he gets lice, and becomes completely bald at the end of the latter.
- Robot Chicken parodied Charlie Brown's perceived baldness in a Peanuts skit, having him yell out for Linus because he was supposed to take Charlie to chemo.
- The title character in the preschool cartoon series Caillou is drawn bald. This is because he was originally from a book series in which he was a baby, and when it came time for him to become a toddler, the addition of hair made him unrecognizable, so they left him without hair.
- Most of the male characters on Ed, Edd n Eddy suffer from this. Ed appears to have a ring of short, black hairs around the edge of his scalp, which becomes an orange pompadour when styled in one episode. Kevin has something similar when he takes his hat off, but in red. Eddy appears to only have three foot-long hairs coming out of the back of his head. Jimmy has an odd, poofy hairstyle (described by other characters as resembling a chicken's rear end) which blends seamlessly with his skin color. Johnny is the exception, as while he also has a multitude of tiny black hairs, he is stated in-universe to be bald.
- Nightmare Ned's title boy has a few strands of hair that stick straight up.
- The eponymous character from Doug, as well as Skeeter.
- Similarly, on Stanley, another cartoon by the same production company, Jumbo Pictures, both Stanley and his best friend Lester have only a few strands of hair and that's it.
- Tommy Pickles from Rugrats. Which is probably to be expected, since he is a baby. This also applies to his younger brother, Dil Pickles.
- Also justified with Stewie from Family Guy for the same reason.
- The Simpsons
- Homer Simpson is mostly bald, but what little hair he has is stylized as an M over each ear — part of a zigzag pattern going around the back of his head — and two strands looping over the top like a comb over. In The Simpsons Movie, Bart pulls on the M and it unravels as if it were one strand.
- The Simpson kids have hair the same color as their skin. "To Surveil With Love" has Lisa being mistaken for a Dumb Blonde, and "No Loan Again, Naturally" has Bart's hair reverting to its natural red from lack of sun exposure. In "The Blue and the Gray", they start obsessing over where their head ends and the hair begins, with Lisa hastily drawing a hairline with marker.
- Since The Simpsons has Negative Continuity, the kids' spikes are alternately hair and parts of their skulls.
- There is also "22 Short Films About Springfield" where Lisa gets gum stuck in her hair and has to go to a barber to have it removed, resulting in a new style.
I finally look like a real person!
- Lampshaded when Homer joins the Stonecutters.
Homer: I swear, that if I ever reveal the secrets of the Stonecutters, that my stomach shall become bloated, and my head plucked of all but three hairs...
Moe: Um, I think he should have to take a different oath.
Number One: Everybody takes the same oath! - Ralph Wiggum has only a few strands of hair hanging down from the top of his head. In one episode his father describes him as "balding."
- Gerald McBoing-Boing has only a squiggle on his forehead to indicate hair in the original theatrical shorts. In the TV series, his hair is colored blond, thus averting this trope.
- Harold Berman of Hey Arnold! is shown with only a few strands of buzzed short hair whenever he removes his baseball cap. It is never officially confirmed whether or not he's actually bald. Brainy is also this, since his "hair" is the same color as his skin a la Bart Simpson (which may be intentional since Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett is the brother-in-law of The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.)
- Lily Loud in The Loud House only has a tuft of blonde hair on her head for the same reason as Tommy Pickles—she's only a baby. That said, come Season 5 of The Loud House and she still retains this trait at the age of two.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: Subverted by Numbuh 1 as he is bald. The show never disclosed what happened other than saying it was Delightful Children's doing and that Numbuh 5 blames herself for it.
- Pim from Smiling Friends has a single strand of what looks like hair sticking straight up from the center of his head. It's actually an exposed nerve ending.
Other
- Caricatures of Chuck Jones by his fellow Termite Terrace animators often depicted him like this— and one such example shows up near the end of the cartoon Page Miss Glory (along with caricatures of Tex Avery and Bob Clampett).
- Generally, people tend to draw babies like this. Slightly more explainable as babies don't have too much hair.
