Basic Trope: Someone who rejects social norms in some way has hair dyed an unnatural and usually bright color.
- Straight: Laura, a free-spirited artist and indie rock musician, has purple and blue streaks in her dark hair.
- Exaggerated: Laura the Eccentric Artist has a whole head of bright blue and purple hair.
- Downplayed: Laura has purple and blue streaks in her dark hair and likes indie rock music.
- Justified: Laura is part of a commune that requires people to dye their hair to signify that they are true artists.
- Inverted:
- Dyed hair is the norm in Laura's world; the fact that her dark hair is undyed makes her a visual and societal outsider.
- Laura has naturally purple and blue hair, and she dyes it dark to conform.
- Laura dyes her hair purple and blue, but she's otherwise a stickler for the rules.
- Subverted:
- Laura was actually just pretending to dye her hair to scare her parents. The streaks are revealed to be clip-on, and she takes them off to their relief.
- Laura turns out to be very normal, and her hair is actually natural.
- Laura dyes her hair purple and blue but is otherwise extremely conservative, only wearing skirts and dresses (and not the kind that show a lot of skin, either), is the only youth in the setting who agrees with the grumpy elders who complain about kids these days, only listens to classical music, traditional folk music, and early phonograph recordings. She makes Archie Bunker look like a hippie by comparison. Laura also is a bit of a Boomerang Bigot, complaining about people with neon hair colors, but when called out claims it's not literally about hair colors but a certain stereotype. She also uses very antiquated vocabulary and is obsessed with seeming like a Proper Lady, even curtseying when meeting someone. It makes you wonder why she dyes her hair such colors.
- Double Subverted: Laura was actually just pretending to dye her hair to scare her parents. The streaks are revealed to be clip-on, and she takes them off to their relief... and then when she gets to her room, it turns out that the dark hair is a wig, and she's actually gotten a bright pink pixie cut.
- In secret, Laura enjoys eccentric art and comments online anonymously, she also likes very experimental variants of classical music, such as black MID Is of classical compositions.
- Parodied: Laura is accepted into art school and instantly gains purple and blue streaks in her hair.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Nobody has dyed hair. Not even the rebellious characters.
- Enforced: The editors think Laura's plain dark hair makes her look too similar to her classically feminine sister Lisa, and asks the artists to give her streaks in her hair to signify her as the more rebellious one.
- Lampshaded: "Of course Laura dyes her hair, she's a true artist."
- Invoked: Laura dyes her hair to copy the punks and rebels she's seen on TV.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: After Laura gets accepted to art school, Lisa asks if she's going to dye her hair like all the punks and rebels they've seen on TV. Laura says no, because she feels truest to herself with her natural dark hair.
- Discussed: "Really, Laura, dyeing your hair purple? You're like every punk on TV."
- Conversed: "Why do 'different' characters on television always have weird hair colors?"
- Deconstructed: Laura quickly learns that she's not as non-conforming as she thinks. As it turns out, dying her hair only ensures that she's switched out a conservative form of conformity for a more liberal one. When this is pointed out to her by Lance, Laura and her friends proceed to jump him in a fit of rage.
Back to Nonconformist Dyed Hair
