Also known as twin tails, handlebars, or bunches. A type of hairstyle where the hair is gathered into two "tails" on either side of the head. Usually, but not always, left loose; braided tails have a more Granola Girl or Tomboy connotation. The hair must be gathered above the top of the neck; hair gathered below the jawline generally says something entirely different about the character.
This is used as a visual clue that the character is young and/or immature. This view may have come from the Chinese custom of unmarried women wearing their hair in two buns on either side of the head (which if combined with the twin tails yields a well-known icon), or from the modern European custom that a grown woman wore her hair up. This can also be associated with nerdy girls. As a result, it's not unusual for a girl with pigtails to also have Nerd Glasses and/or Pubescent Braces to showcase her geekiness/nerdiness.
If an older woman is trying to disguise herself as a child, expect her to sport pigtails. Also can be found on an older woman if the writers want the audience to grasp that she's child-like in temperament: playful, fun, and possibly innocent. If the character is evil, this may indicate that she's an immature psychopath to some degree.
Could also show up on a Little Miss Badass.
Pigtails are commonly found on Tsunderes, either full pigtails or a variation ("Tsundere Tails"), which leaves the majority of the hair down with tails on each side of the head. This may be to indicate her childish temperament: prone to physically expressing displeasure and temper tantrums; or to symbolize her dual nature (tsun-tsun/dere-dere). Twintails are one of the three parts of the ultimate Grade S Zettai Ryouiki (the other two being Grade A Zettai Ryouiki attire and Tsundere attitude).
Can be combined with Regal Ringlets, in which case they're indicative of both high social status and youth, perhaps suggesting the wearer is a spoiled child or interested in the lolita fashion scene. Another popular variation is replacement or pairing with loads and loads of hair decs.
This is a very common trope in porn to make older actresses appear younger, especially when paired with a Sexy Schoolwoman outfit.
Note that this trope is not absolute. Many Girly Girls wear completely different hairstyles, and this is also commonly found among many tomboyish girls (often combined with Braids of Action, as the image for the Tomboy page shows). This is frequently done to show that, despite their masculine hobbies, such female characters may have some girly streak.
Compare Tomboyish Ponytail. Not to Be Confused with a literal meaning of "twin tails" where a creature or character (or aircraft
) has two or more tails. In "handlebars" case, do not get confused with the mustache style.
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Examples:
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Advertising
- The iconic symbol of Wendy's hamburger chain is a drawing of a young redheaded girl with such pigtails (ostensibly a depiction of Dave Thomas' daughter, whom the chain is named after).
Art
- Omanuke Bishoujo Zukan: Featured on Yayoi-chan to contrast the beer she's drinking and Kotori-chan to contrast her bleeding wounds.
Asian Animation
- In Happy Friends, Sweet S., the sole female of the main Superman team, has two little pigtails poking out of the back of her helmet. She's a Kid Hero like the other Supermen and is gentle and kind, serving as The Heart of the team.
- Power Top Plate: Yu-ha has bushy orange hair fastened into pigtails, and is quite a cheery and cute teenage girl. She's also the only female member of the T-Team.
Comic Books
- Anne in Anne: An Adaptation wears these until she has to have her hair cut from a bad dye job.
- Anne of West Philly: Like the original novel, Anne wears these during the day (and a sleeping bonnet at night) until she has to have her hair cut from her attempt to do it herself.
- Archie Comics:
- Betty Cooper can be seen with this hairstyle sometimes, especially in the 1960s, though she usually prefers a Tomboyish Ponytail. She fits the "tomboy" stereotype to a T, though this is usually her girlish, younger side showing.
- When Archie was genderswapped his female version, Archina, wore pigtails to exaggerate her youthfulness and because Archie is a de facto All-American Boy.
- Several Astro City characters sport these — American Chibi, Matilda "Tillie" Armstrong, and Cammie's nine-year-old cousin Holly in "Pastoral."
- Jules from Bazooka Jules has two small pigtails that grow all the way down to the floor when her powers activate. She can be a little childish at times and despite being a teenager she's still into Hello Kitty.
- The Beano:
- Ivy the Terrible, a preschool-age tomboy who used to appear in the comic, had her hair in bunches, which generally followed her motion-lines to emphasize how active she was.
- Minnie the Minx, another tomboy from the same comic (probably around ten) has more constrained pigtails (which may actually be plaits, Depending on the Artist) with bows at the end.
- The Cardboard Kingdom: Both the Animal Queen and Sam have pigtails, and they are both young girls. Though the Animal Queen's are much longer and puffier, and Sam's are shorter and coming the bottom of her head.
- Harley Quinn usually has her hair done up like this, however it's usually covered by her hat. She is an immature woman (or at least she acts like one). This came in full effect after the New 52, where she's done away with the jester cap and uses her half-black-half-red hair to replace it. In contrast, when she's depicted as "sane" or as a civilian, she is usually depicted with a more mature-looking ponytail.
- Belle the Tinkerer from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) has a large pair of these as her default hairdo.
- Supergirl:
- In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, the main character has two little pigtails which make her look younger, so enhancing her civilian disguise.
- In Bizarrogirl, Kara braids her hair into cute twin pigtails which make her look younger than she is.
- Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark started out with an Ivy League cut, but when she started growing it out she put it in twintails that made her look even younger than her age in order to have a more feminine hairstyle.
Comic Strips
- Baby Blues: Played with in an early 90s strip. Wanda tries to put Zoe's hair in pigtails for the first time, but since Zoe's still a baby, they turn out stick-thin. Darryl quips that he thought she had sprouted antennae.
- Madam & Eve: 8-year-old Thandi is always shown with her hair tied in two small bunches on top of her cornrows.
- In Peanuts, Violet, who's sort of a combination of tsundere and Rich Bitch, often wore her hair in pigtails in the early years of the strip. This was eventually changed to a ponytail, which remained Violet's hairstyle through the remainder of her appearances, except for a brief appearance in one 1989 strip in which she was again drawn with pigtails.
- Hilary Forth in Sally Forth (Howard) had her hair in pigtails when the strip started. When she was aged up to a teenager, she dropped them.
Fan Works
- Advice and Trust: Hikari wears this hairstyle. They make her seem younger, even though Touji calls her the "pigtailed dictator".
- The Child of Love: Asuka wears this hairstyle, even after becoming a mother, and she still wears them in her late 20s.
- Minor character Mikoto from the Higurashi: When They Cry oneshot Cicada Psalms is described as a little girl with pigtails. Her girlish fondness for her teacher Keiichi is meant to emphasise how much Keiichi has changed since he moved to Hinamizawa.
- In the drabble Cure Floof, Love styles Inori's hair into pigtails, so they can match.
- Doing It Right This Time makes a minor plot point out of both Hikari and Asuka doing away with this look in favour of a more "adult"-looking hairstyle. In Hikari's case, it's only for a special occasion, but Asuka has made it permanent.
- Evangelion 303 makes a plot point of Asuka ditching this look: After recovering from her breakdown, she stopped wearing her hair in pigtails because she wanted to seem more mature.
- Ghosts of Evangelion: After the War Asuka kept wearing her hair braided in pigtails for many years.
- HERZ: Asuka is twenty-six years old, has got her hair cut...and she still wears pigtails right like when she was thirteen.
- Deborah of Junior Officers, the team's biggest Girly Girl, wears her hair in fat pigtails.
- Last Child of Krypton: Several characters wear this hairstyle: Asuka, Hikari, Sakura Suzuhara...
She clapped with joy, pigtails bouncing, and he turned in horror and saw it.
- The Legend of Genji:
- Nami wears her hair in braided pigtails, which are meant to show how she is the youngest of the main characters.
- Genji's little sister Shai is a 10-year-old girl whose two low pigtails highlight her youth.
- Ikki's 12-year-old daughter Ling Ling has her hair tied into twin tails.
- In The Legend of Total Drama Island, Katie and Sadie arrive on the island wearing their canonical pigtails, befitting their canonically childlike personalities. When they get makeovers that include ditching their pigtails for big hair, they look "five years older than they had the day before", according to the Storyteller. Noah further lampshades this by saying, "The kiddies have grown up." Shortly thereafter, the "grown-up" Katie and Sadie get caught up in one of the story's most grimly dramatic adventures — just in time for Sadie's birthday.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, secondary character Hikari wears twin pig-tails, and she freely admits that hairstyle makes her seem more juvenile. This comes back around in the Epilogue, by which point she has long since stopped wearing it, but she decides to don it for a meeting with her old friends, whom she hasn't seen for years, to make herself more recognizable to them.
- In The Second Try, Asuka wore this hairstyle when she was young. When she grew up, though, she had to get her hair cut because her daughter kept pulling on it. She saw it as another aspect of her childhood fading and was briefly rather upset about it...until Shinji said it made her "look like a mother".
- Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka usually wears this hairstyle, using her neural hairclips to braid her pigtails. She only undoes them when she is acting as Supergirl and needs to hide her identity.
- Male example with Kiriha Sadamune from Tales of the Undiscovered Swords, whose red hair is worn in twin pigtails. They are frequently compared to carrots by his Big Brother Bully Ishida.
- In Thousand Shinji, innocent, naive Hikari's twin pigtails are the first thing Shinji notices about her when he meets her.
Films — Animation
- Maria Posada as a child in The Book of Life. Averted, as even at that age Maria's personality was basically the same as when she grew up; she loved swordfights and Manolo's music, and was very outspoken on her views of marriage. Word of God says that hairstyle is meant to represent her love of pigs.
- Care Bears:
- The Care Bears Movie: Kim, the ten-ish year old girl that the Care Bears help, wears pigtails with pink ties.
- Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation: Christy's camp friend Dawn wears her hair in pigtails with pink ribbons, similar to Kim above. Ironically, Kim's voice actress reappears in the film as Christy.
- Sheeta in Castle in the Sky... at least until Colonel Muska shoots them off — which, not coincidentally, comes at the point where Sheeta stops running and confronts him for the last time.
- Princess Anna in Frozen (2013) sports braided pigtails, even into adolescence, as a way of emphasizing her innocence and naivete. In Frozen II she briefly sports them again early on, but spends the rest of the film with her hair either down or in a bun, highlighting her new maturity.
- In Inside Out, Riley has pigtails, until she is a preteen.
- Cindy Vortex has these in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. In the TV series, she trades it for a Tomboyish Ponytail to go with her Tomboyness Upgrade
- In the Studio Ghibli short film, Koro's Big Adventure, the titular puppy's owner, Sawako, wears her hair in pigtails (since she is basically Mei Kusakabe, only 2 or 3 years older).
- Lady's ears in Lady and the Tramp are vaguely evocative of this trope.
- In My Neighbor Totoro, the irrepressibly energetic four-year-old Mei has her hair tied in tails, contrasting with her older sister's tomboyishly short haircut.
- Tiana as a child in The Princess and the Frog.
- In The Rescuers, Penny has two short pigtails.
- In The Swan Princess, Odette has braided pigtails during the tomboyish phase of her childhood.
Films — Live-Action
- Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed adaptations is a subversion, looking like an innocent child but being evil underneath.
- Amy, the young Mafia Princess in Casino, perhaps showing she's one of the few truly innocent people in the movie.
- In the 1914 silent film version of Cinderella starring Mary Pickford, Cinderella wears her hair in twin braids while in rags, emphasizing her innocence. Her fairy godmother changes the braids into Pickford's iconic Regal Ringlets when she sends her to the ball.
- Cthulhu: Worn by Tori Spelling's character when she tries to seduce the protagonist. When that doesn't work (as he's gay) she resorts to other methods.
- Gas Food Lodging: For much of the early part of the film, Shade is wearing her hair in girlish pigtails. This is both to mark her as distinct from her sexually adventurous older sister Trudi and to set up a Letting Her Hair Down rite of passage when she stops wearing the pigtails as she starts pursuing boys.
- Prim in The Hunger Games. Notably, she just has a ponytail in the sequel. Peeta also recalls a time when Katniss was younger and had two braids instead of one.
- Claudia from Interview with the Vampire starts as an innocent girl but when turned into a vampire, she gradually becomes more jaded and evil while retaining the appearance of a child.
- Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass sports these when out of her superhero costume.
- In the Deborah Kerr version of King Solomon's Mines (1950), Elizabeth's brother suggests braiding her hair in pigtails to protect it from the humidity. She protests that she can't, as she's a grown woman. Apparently cutting off the hair is preferable to looking a little immature.
- The Legend of Billie Jean has Putter with braided pigtails, played by Yeardley Smith, who voices a little girl we all know and love in a prime-time, long-running animated sitcom.
- Lolita wears her hair in messy braids throughout the 1997 film, which (along with an orthodontic retainer) are used to make the teenaged actress playing a girl who is twelve younger. Subverted later in the movie when Lolita is enrolled at Beardsley College, showing how Humbert is forcing Dolores to maintain a childlike appearance when (thanks to his actions) she's grown up.
- Through much of the 1938 version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Shirley Temple wears her signature curls in pigtails as the imaginative, spirited Rebecca.
- Ángela Vidal in [REC] wears her hair like this at the start of the film, reflecting her image as a Naïve Everygirl TV reporter covering what she thinks is just a routine call for the fire department. Once it becomes clear what sort of movie she's actually in, her Adrenaline Makeover includes her swapping the pigtails for a Tomboyish Ponytail.
- The Rock: The wife of the FBI agent (played by Nicolas Cage) wears these while having sex with him.
Wife: You like my pigtails, honey?
FBI Agent: Yes, they're very naughty. - In Sky Riders, the kidnapped three-year-old Susie wears her blonde hair in pigtails.
- Spring in a Small Town: 16-year-old Xiu wears her hair in pigtails. This underlines her bubbly, cheerful personality, which contrasts with her older brother and his wife, both of whom are mired in depression and a failed marriage.
- Emily Browning sports blonde pigtails to play the appropriately named Babydoll in Sucker Punch. The pigtails help convey her innocence. In the brothel world at least, she is a virgin.
- In The Coen Brothers' True Grit (2010), 14-year-old Mattie wears her hair in two long braids. Naturally, it makes her demeanour all the more jarring.
- Evey in V for Vendetta disguises herself as an underage prostitute for a priest. Part of her costume is pigtails, the other part is a Catholic schoolgirl outfit.
- The Wizard of Oz (1939): Dorothy sports braided pigtails throughout the first half of the film. After her makeover in the Emerald City, she wears her hair down with a bow instead, but the pigtails have become far more iconic.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: Jubilee sports these instead of the Boyish Short Hair she usually wears in the comics and is significantly more girly here.
Literature
- In the A is for Amber books, a Prequel picture book series to the Amber Brown titles, Amber Brown sports these as a means of enhancing her Deliberately Cute Child appearance.
- Actiphons: Incredible Isabelle, one of the main eight characters in this British picture book series sports these, keeping in with her innocence.
- Anne of Green Gables has the long, braided pigtails hanging down variant.
- The Baby-Sitters Club: This is enforced with Mary Anne, whose strict father won't let her take down her pigtails even at age twelve. Her being allowed to wear her hair loose is a major point of character development, as is the short haircut she gets later in the series.
- Beware of Chicken: Rou Tigu has these, in keeping with her general Farmer's Daughter aesthetic.
- Big, Beautiful Fun: Elaine's a bespectacled, nerdy second-grader who always keeps her hair in braided pigtails with blue bows or blue ribbons. Curiously, she maintains this hairstyle for the rest of elementary school, all of middle school, all throughout high school, the duration of her undergraduate career, and the entirety of her graduate school studies. This is likely to illustrate her continued nerdiness, playfulness, and fun-loving nature.
- This is Genki Girl Mary-Lou Trelawney's signature hairdo in the Chalet School series, and she calls them "Kenwigses" as a Shout-Out to Nicholas Nickleby. When she becomes a senior, she ditches the Kenwigses and wears her hair in a single tail instead, as a sign that she's growing up. Then she gets it all chopped off after an accident and it grows back curly.
- In Anne Rice's hardcore-bondage-porn novel The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, in one bizarre pony-play scenario the heroine — aged 15 — is forced to wear her hair in braided pigtails that start near the top of her head, to make her look even younger than she is.
- Dies the Fire by S. M. Stirling. Action Girl Astrid Larsson keeps her girlish pigtails as they help lower the tension a notch when meeting new clans and negotiating safe passage through their territory.
- Element Bots: Luminaria's a Fembot and a Genki Girl who has white, light bulb-shaped pigtails.
- The title character of Franny K. Stein is a seven-year-old Mad Scientist with pigtails.
- The protagonist of Girls Kingdom, Misaki Hotaru, wears her hair in small pigtails held in place by scrunchies modeled after her favorite food: donuts. They serve to emphasize her girly, slightly naive personality and her slightly gluttonous nature.
- Gloomy Goth: Raven's a bespectacled, nerdy young Goth woman who keeps her auburn hair in pigtails.
- Holiday Heroes:
- Kia's a playful, fun-loving young woman who always keeps her bluish-black hair in pigtails.
- Lin's an affectionate, friendly, and bespectacled young woman who always wears her brown hair in pigtails and has a strong sense of humor.
- Evoked in Little Women, when Jo responds with disgust to Meg's suggestion that she behave in a more mature, feminine way now that she's old enough to wear her hair up:
Jo: I'm not [a young lady]! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty!
- An odd use: in Matilda by Roald Dahl, the evil schoolmistress Agatha Trunchbull hates pigtails and punishes all who wear them. A girl named Amanda Fripp protests that her mother likes her pigtails. Trunchbull responds, "Yer mum's a twit!" Then she grabs the girl by the pigtails and throws her over a fence. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that a woman who hates everything about children — and girls in particular — would of course hate a girlish hairstyle like pigtails.
- The title character of Holly Beth Walker's Meg Mysteries series, roughly 12-years-old Meg Duncan, has pigtails.
- Pippi Longstocking, of course, usually wears her red hair in two horizontal braided pigtails sticking out either side of her head. This is entirely in keeping with her zany, childish glee.
- Jill Simon, a character in Patricia Reilly Giff's 1980s Polk Street School series, wears her hair in not one, but two pairs of Girlish Pigtails. This fits with her character, as Jill is something of an immature crybaby.
- The Proudest Blue: Faizah, younger sister to Asiyah, has her hair tied into little pigtails.
- Rainbow Magic shows a variety of pigtail styles for their fairies.
- Samurai Scarecrow: Kasha, Yukio's little brother, has Japanese-looking pigtails.
- Spurned into Oblivion: Yolanda's a bespectacled, energetic, and fairly nerdy middle schooler who always keeps her kinky black hair in pigtails.
- Cindy Wakowski a.k.a Red Riding Hood of The Supervillainy Saga sports a pair of these, which fits given that she's a Harley Quinn Expy.
- Princess Frida from Unimaa is described as having large blonde pigtails. It's likely because she wants to give off an aura of childlike innocence to hide her true nature.
- In Wayside School, Leslie has pigtails which Paul is tempted to pull. A stage adaptation gives her pigtails speaking parts, and the animated adaptation makes her pigtails controllable, as demonstrated when Leslie played bongos with them.
- The Wheel of Time:
- One of the Wise Ones threatens to do this to Egwene if she doesn't stop acting so childishly. This threat is followed up on, with short skirt to match. It doesn't entirely work, thanks to cross-cultural differences: in Egwene's hometown, wearing a pair of braids is a sign of a woman reaching adulthood. However, she gets the gist of the intent enough to still be embarrassed.
- Aiel Maidens, who take Honor Before Reason to extremes, do this with the addition of carrying dolls after a particular failing.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz doesn't specify Dorothy's hairstyle, but the original illustrator, W.W. Denslow, drew her with braided pigtails. This look became so iconic for her that some other illustrators outside the main series have followed suit, as did the movie. Other adaptations typically depict her with this hairstyle too.
- The Worst Witch:
- Mildred Hubble. In the spin-off to the television series adaptation Weirdsister College, she cuts them off, which is probably symbolic of her growing up.
- Her best friend Maud sports the loose version of these for the first two books, but it has grown out by the third book and she braids them.
Live-Action TV
- In the 18th cycle of America's Next Top Model, this would be the enforced hairstyle for "30-Never" Eboni. Much to her irritation.
- In Angel, Wesley ends up in a not-entirely-healthy relationship with Amoral Attorney Lilah, who is aware of Wesley's unrequited interest in geek girl Fred. So in "Apocalypse Nowish", just to get Wesley's gears spinning, she does a fetish impersonation of Fred, complete with pigtails to show how she sees Fred's relative immaturity.
- Olive on A.N.T. Farm sports pigtails as a part of her little girl disguise on the episode "FraudulANT".
- In an episode of Arrested Development, Maeby tries to fool the security guard at her grandmother's apartment complex into giving her the mail by putting her hair in pigtails and riding up to the security booth on a razor scooter. Her response when he points out that she's a little old to be getting all that mail: "Babysit me!"
- In The Big Comfy Couch, Loonette's signature hairstyle is pigtails sticking out from holes in her hat.
- Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine: Cheerful and free-spirited Momoko always has her hair in bunches or plaits. She also usually wears pink.
- The Brady Bunch:
- Cindy Brady wore these for three whole seasons to keep up the appearance of The Cutie, much to the chagrin of actress Susan Olsen. In Season 4 they were changed to braided pigtails, and finally she got to start wearing her hair down in the last half of Season 5.
- Maureen McCormick also wore pigtails for virtually all of Season 1. She let her hair down for only a couple of scenes, including one where Marcia was going to the school dance, before wearing her hair down to start Season 2.
- Eve Plumb wears her hair in a clip for most Season 1 episodes, but wears pigtails during the Grand Canyon episodes.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Buffy sports pigtails during Giles's dream sequence in the episode "Restless". Buffy's attitude in the scene is that of a much younger child, and Giles is essentially her father.
- Buffy sports pigtails while working incognito at a Greasy Spoon in "Anne".
- Dawn sports them in 'Forever' whilst trying to help Buffy choose a coffin for their mother's funeral, emphasising how young she is (despite already being taller than her older sister), how devastating this is for her, and explaining her actions later in the episode.
- Laura Quinones in Carrusel wears this hairstyle. She is one of the girlier girls in the class, as well as rather immature (except for being very precocious when it comes to romance), and not a good student.
- El Chavo del ocho: Since the cast of the show is composed entirely of adults, this hairdo serves as one of the visual clues to identify characters as young and immature.
- La Chilindrina has pigtails that are always uneven (in early episodes, they used to be long twintails until El Chavo cut them short in a barber episode).
- La Popis also shares this hairdo, but her hair is so short that her pigtails are only noticeable in the animated version of the show.
- The 1978 version of Paty has this hairstyle, especially in La Saga de Las Nuevas Vecinas, but in other appearances, she only has a ponytail.
- Sarah Walker from Chuck, when she's undercover as Weinerlicious girl and later, Orange Orange girl. Provides a great contrast to the sexy, sophisticated spy look she sports when it's time for missions.
- Dollhouse:
- Ivy has pigtails, which suits her personality as the second least mature member of the Dollhouse staff.
- Echo sports them while dressed as Kiki in the episode "Belle Chose", to show how ditsy her persona is meant to be.
- On Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Dyna Girl has very long pigtails.
- Buffy in Family Affair, even as the actress grew up.
- Family Matters: Judy Winslow wears her hair in braided pigtails in Seasons 1 through 3. Every single Season 1 episode she has her hair in several braided pigtails with various colored ribbons and accessories, and many Season 2 episodes have her wearing this hairstyle. In seasons 2 and 3, she often wears the more traditional two (or three) braided pigtails. Her hair is only seen down twice in Seasons 1 through 3. Her final season before she disappeared she wore her hair down, including in her opening title credit.
- In the TV film adaptation of Flowers in the Attic, Cathy is shown wearing pigtails in the first part of the film to make the 14-year-old Kiernan Shipka look a little bit youngernote .
- Phoebe, the most free-spirited of the girls on Friends, occasionally wears her hair in pigtails.
- Winifred on General Hospital regularly sports braided pigtails, which make her look like she's in her teens, when her actress is in her 30s.
- Mary Ann Summers from Gilligan's Island frequently sports these. She's implied to only be in her late teens/early twenties, making her one of the youngest (if not the youngest) of the castaways.
- Rikki Chadwick from H₂O: Just Add Water frequently wears her hair in pigtails. Ironically she is the most tomboyish of the group, but she is the most free-spirited as well.
- On Heroes, during one flashback sequence, Claire's hair was put in pigtails to help make her appear about five years younger.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022):
- "...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding": Claudia sometimes sports braided pigtails (this is her hairstyle when Louis de Pointe du Lac rescues her from the burning rooming house, when she's shopping for her own coffin, and when she's Bug Catching during a boat ride with Louis) as a visual cue to viewers that she's a young girly girl.
- "The Devil's Road": As part of his androgynous rock star act, Lestat de Lioncourt styles his long hair into pigtails tied with black ribbons in order to appear more feminine, which is also enhanced by him wearing heavy make-up.
- Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger: While Mei usually wore a Hime Cut, she'd occasionally do her hair in pigtails, braids, or odangos, showing that while she was an established warrior, she was still a Genki Girl.
- The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House: Sumire, a teenage geisha trainee, wears her hair in two braids by the side of her head.
- Twin braids is the Telenovela shorthand to say that the heroine is truly, totally innocent. Except in Maria Jose, where in addition to the innocence connotation it shows the indigenous roots of the heroine.
- In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, a few episodes (ex. "Food Fight", "Bloom of Doom") would have Kimberly or Trini tie their hair in pigtails. Since it was the nineties, they would always be paired with big, colourful scrunchies.
- In one episode of Murphy Brown, Corky's staying over at Murphy's home and acts as if it's a slumber party. Corky says, "We could braid each other's hair!" and braids Murphy's into pigtails; when Eldon comes over and sees Murphy, he says she looks "like an old Heidi."
- Kari Byron of the MythBusters, practically Once per Episode. Sometimes it's for style, and sometimes just to keep her hair out of her face (or the machinery), but it always indicates that the build team is deliberately hamming things up or testing something particularly outlandish.
- Abby from NCIS often sports pigtails as a visual clue of her youthful personality. Actress Paulie Perette mentioned in a behind-the-scenes short that she began braiding her pigtails because her long hair got caught by the wheels of Abby's mechanic roller-board.
- Mona Vanderwaal from Pretty Little Liars displays two pigtails, as well as glasses, in flashbacks prior to Alison's disappearance, to emphasize her status as "loser".
- Soleil Moon Frye's character in both the live-action and animated version of Punky Brewster. She's an energetic young girl in the show and currently provides the page image.
- Sadakatsiz: Derin comments that pigtails are childish, as she jokes that her parents are wearing clothes too formal and freaking out as if she's going to her first school gala. She'll have to change from her ponytail to Zeynep's (her baby daughter) pigtails.
- Schmigadoon!: Betsy, the local farmer's beautiful daughter, wears her hair in two curled blonde pigtails to emphasize her innocent beauty. Josh is discomfited by how young she seems when she pulls the moves on him.
- When Jordan from Scrubs is posing as a younger woman to impress her new gynecologist, she sports pigtails.
- Subverted by the rogue Vala in Stargate SG-1, who is anything but childlike or innocent. Given the character, though, it's possible she's doing it deliberately to mess with people.
- Terra Nova:
- In the first season premiere, Maddie is shown with pigtails at first, in order to make her seem older after the 2 year Time Skip.
- Zoe often sports them, but that's because she's 7.
- Even though she's clearly a grown woman, Chrissy Snow from Three's Company occasionally wears her hair in pigtails, fitting with her airheaded personality.
- Chloe Thunderman of The Thundermans is always wearing her hair in high pigtails to symbolize her youth, and she never loosened them until she grew up years later.
- Liz Skinner in Timeslip has girlish braids. Partly to identify her as a bit of a tomboy (though not as noticeably as some tomboys on television), but mostly to make her look younger. Her character was originally written to be just 12 years old, but later scripts revised her age up to 15; the reason for this being that the actress chosen was actually 18 at the time, and it was all they could do to convincingly make her look 15.
- Rui Takada in Ultraman X is the Girly Girl to Asuna's Tomboy Girl and her status as that is marked by her pigtails.
- In The Vicar of Dibley, the verger Alice sometimes has these, emphasizing her Womanchild status.
Manhua
- The mischievous titular character of Little Cherry sports two of these, which notably stand out after she's stopped being depicted with a flower headband about five years after the manhua's debut.
Music
- Chibi of The Birthday Massacre wears her hair like this in some of their videos. Also occasionally combined with a school-girl outfit. All it does is make her look creepier. That was probably what she was aiming at, though.
- Devin Millar often wears his hair in twin pigtails. He also has an animated girl character named Millicent, who also wears pigtails but is blonde.
- Male example: Kurt Harland of Information Society often wears unusual hairstyles on stage, including pigtails.
- Miley Cyrus's appearance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (yeah, that one) had her wearing pigtails shaped like a teddy bear's ears, fitting the "dancing teddy bear" theme of the performance.
- The members of M-Kids, who are Tamara Cambre, Davina Cambre, and Britt De Winter wore their hair in twin pigtails to reflect their youthfulness.
- The 1969/70 Mark Lindsay hit "Arizona" isn't about a state but about a pigtailed hippie girl.
- Britney Spears is both invoking and subverting this trope when she sings "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)" in pigtails.
- Emma Bunton, a.k.a. Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, especially in the early years.
- In The Statler Brothers song "I Was There", the male narrator describes a woman he's known all his life. In the opening lines, getting ready for her prom, she has "bought her first heels" and "combed those last pigtails from her hair."
- Toni Basil sported this hairstyle both on the cover of the single and the music video for "Hey Mickey," to compliment her cheerleader outfit.
Pinballs
- In WhizBang Pinball's Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons, Hellen has one, while Ellen has two. It helps in their Innocent Farmer's Daughter personas.
Pro Wrestling
- Women in wrestling, especially during various kinds of "costume" matches, will pull their hair into pigtails for the sake of the outfit.
- AJ Lee tends to favor these. She's frequently mistaken for much younger than she actually is, so this is probably to emphasize that.
- Claudia Del Solis seems to have worn as many as ten braided pigtails. Presumably, they are extensions.
- Rare Male Example: "Exotic" Adrian Street wore these as part of his Gorgeous George persona. He was far from the last pro wrestler to do so.
- Gail Kim often wears her hair in pigtails when she wrestles and she makes them badass. She won the first TNA Knockouts title while her hair was in pigtails as a matter of fact.
- Leva Bates has a set of ring gear prominently featuring pink skulls with pigtails and is known for wearing her hair that way too.
- Loca, one half of Women Of Wrestling's first tag team champions, CagedHeat and alumna of WWA Mexico, had four pigtails.
- Lorelei Lee tied ribbons in her hair that had the same visual effect.
- Mia Yim sometimes wrestled in pigtails, such as in 2014 when she won the SHINE Title belt in China.
- During her first year in the WWF, Molly Holly regularly wore her blond hair in pigtails. She even wore them again when she reprised her original persona at WrestleMania 25. Her character was that of a sweet country bumpkin who was the Token Wholesome in contrast to the rest of the vampy Divas.
- At GCW Adults F-N Only #7, MsChif figured she left a bad first impression on new arrival New-Age Retro Hippie Daizee Haze and decided to "correct" it by skipping around while wearing a giant pair of pigtails. Haze was not amused.
- Rip Rogers used to regularly wear his hair in pigtails with a top knot while working as a jobber in WWF and WCW.
- Shark Boys are blue or silver. Shark Girls are pink. But if you're color blind, Shark Girls also have pigtails.
- Tamina Snuka of all people sported these when she fell in love with Santino.
Puppet Shows
- Red Fraggle from Fraggle Rock has a set of pigtails that stick out and the tips look like pompoms. It gives more emphasis to her tomboyish personality.
- The Puzzle Place: Kiki has pigtails, and compared to the soft-spoken Jody and sassy diva Julie, she's overall the most childlike and Genki Girlish of the show's three main girls.
- Sesame Street: Betty Lou (never as prominent a character on the show as in the tie-in storybooks, but still present) is a little Anything Muppet girl with long braided pigtails.
- Under the Umbrella Tree: Gloria has pigtails –- a good reminder that she, Iggy, and Jacob are supposed to be children, despite their Ping Pong Naïveté.
Theatre
- In most productions of the opera Hansel and Gretel (1893), Gretel has pigtails. This is an effective way to make an adult soprano look more like a little girl.
Toys
- The brunette version of the My Friend Cayla doll came with the doll's hair in double pigtails.
Video Games
- Iris Sagan from AI: The Somnium Files wore high pigtails as a little girl and wears low ones in her late teens.
- Alba: A Wildlife Adventure: Alba has twin ponytails, emphasizing her youth (she's 11 or 12 years old).
- Britney Bloodrose from All Points Bulletin, ditzy rich teenager playing gangster for fun.
- Ar tonelico's Misha bears the rare tomboyish braided pigtails.
- In Before Crisis, one of the prequel games to Final Fantasy VII, Elena appears as a student, complete with pigtails and a schoolgirl uniform.
- Little Cereza in Bayonetta has an absolutely gigantic pair. Given she grows up into Bayonetta herself, the long hair is basically required.
- Bethany in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance sports a pair, as a shorthand to show her as meaning to be one of Isaac's "girlier" personas along with the bow-wearing Magdalene.
- Rachel Alucard from BlazBlue has very long twintails and is predictably a Tsundere as well as a badass Elegant Gothic Lolita Vampire princess.
- The unnamed heroine of Chuxie 2 is a teenage girl with pigtails on both sides of her heads, and spends the entire game wearing dresses and skirts. Then again she's a trainee exorcist who turns out to be surprisingly good at battling supernatural forces.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has Yuriko Omega, a joshikousei with Psychic Powers and questionable mental health who fights for the Empire of the Rising Sun.
- Ayumi Shinozaki from Corpse Party wears her hair in two blue pigtails, making her seem younger than she actually is.
- Dark Souls: This is one of the female hairstyles players can choose. According to Miyazaki, a female graphic artist asked that this hairstyle be included when she had to leave development due to illness.
- In the twelfth Dark Tales game, Lilly has her red hair in a pair of braided pigtails. It highlights the fact that she's an innocent little girl. It also adds to her incredible creepiness when she falls victim to Demonic Possession.
- In Dead as Disco, the K-Pop "AI-dol" Arora has her hair in this style plus Odango Hair, to represent her genre's associations with young fans, young artists, and youth culture.
- Pandora of Death Jr., who is also a little bit of a Creepy Child, wears pigtails.
- Etna of Disgaea is a Tsundere with pigtails.
- Tiny Kong has these in the Donkey Kong series. She can also spin her pigtails around for slower descents.
- Subverted by Paragon Branka of Dragon Age: Origins. Technically, she wears her hair in pigtails, but there's no sign of the usual girlish innocence associated with this style: she's an evil and somewhat Ax-Crazy Mad Scientist.
- Dragon Quest:
- Dragon Quest V: Bianca wore her blonde hair in small, cute twintails when she was ten.
- Jessica from Dragon Quest VIII, even though she's an adult and quite buxom as well. Bonus points for being a Tsunde-redhead.
- Etrian Odyssey Untold: Frederica "Ricky" may have slept in a stasis capsule for over a thousand years, but she still wears her hair in small twintails that emphasize her "born-again youth", girlishness, and innocence from amnesia.
- Final Fantasy:
- Vanille in Final Fantasy XIII. She's portrayed as both child-like and childish by the game.
- Midori from the Guitar Hero series wears them to emphasize her Genki Girl nature.
- Cindy from Kindergarten is a kindergarten-aged Girly Bruiser and attempted (but very unsuccessful) Fake Cutie, and to emphasize this she wears her blonde hair in pigtails paired with a pretty pink dress.
- Jinx, the Loose Cannon from League of Legends, whose long, braided pigtails reach almost down to her feet. They look very similar to Cammy's from the Street Fighter series.
- Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami: Nana Sakurai has pigtail in her pink hair.
- Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw sports these, along with the requisite child-like girlishness.
- In Love & Pies, a flashback scene shows Amelia wearing pigtails as a child.
- Liliane Vehlendorf of Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy is an Ojou (complete with a Meido Mana) as well as an extreme case of both the TsunTsun and DereDere sides of the spectrum, and she sports these pigtails.
- Noire from the Neptunia series wears her hair in this fashion and is your typical Tsundere girl. Same with her sister Uni.
- Persona:
- Yuka Ayase from the original Persona is a rather immature kogal who sports high pigtails.
- Persona 3: As shown in "The Answer", Mitsuru Kirijo used to sport this style in her younger days, both as a kid (when she first awakened her Persona) and in her early teens (when she recruited Akihiko into S.E.E.S.).
- Persona 4:
- Rise Kujikawa wears her hair in high pigtails to emphasize her girly Idol Singer persona.
- Nanako has pigtails because she really is a little girl.
- Persona 5: Teenager and part-time model Ann Takamaki wears her hair in two low pigtails.
- Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Nekaneminorpe has pigtails and acts like a perky little girl, despite her Vague Age.
- Pokémon:
- The female protagonists (Kris and Lyra) of the Johto games have pigtails and are young.
- The female protagonist (May) of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire somehow manages to keep them up without any visible bands.
- Cowgirl Kitt, a female rancher who works at Roster Ranch in Pokémon Champions, keeps her blonde hair in braided pigtails.
- Pro Evolution Soccer allows you to put these on your created players. Bear in mind that most soccer games are Always Male, and this one's no exception.
- Radiata Stories: Ridley Silverlake has these for the first half of the game, a reflection of her tsundere personality.
- Momo Karuizawa from Project Justice has these, which fit her very youthful appearance.
- Red Alert 3: Yuriko wears her hair this way (held in place with psychic dampeners), but while her age isn't given her personality is anything but childish.
- Katherine Warren wears her hair in two pigtails in Resident Evil 2 (Remake), which doubles as a fairly practical hairstyle during the Ghost Survivors scenario.
- Candy from the Richman series has two large pigtails that go down on her shoulder, fitting her cute and kind personality.
- Uriel Chuluun in Rift, who's the rebellious daughter of a Defiant leader and (based on some of her dialogue) possibly a borderline Psychopathic Womanchild.
- Roots of Pacha:
- Ibon, the middle child of Acre and Croll's family and one of the romanceable characters, wears pigtails to show that she's younger than Jelrod, although she removes them during her Union (wedding) with you.
- Akhi and Tayta's kid daughter Hunna is a cute little girl with two low-hanging pigtails.
- The Roottrees are Dead: In the Steam version of Clark's family photo, one of his young daughters, Jessica, wears pigtails.
- Rebecca Walsh from Rumble Roses displays pigtails in three different colors depending on how and where you pick her: red◊ as Candy Cane (the tomboyish Tsundere Punk Rocker, which is her default), or blond◊/brunette as Becky (the girlish cheerleader). Specifically in Becky's case, it is brunette in the PS2 game and blond in the 360 game.
- Aika from Skies of Arcadia, which suits her outgoing and slightly childish personality.
- Squigly from Skullgirls sports these, at least until her parasite Leviathan pops one off so he too can see.
- Marine the Raccoon from Sonic the Hedgehog is a very childish Genki Girl with pigtails to match.
- Talim and Amy in almost all their appearances in the Soul Series (Amy takes this a step further), and Tira in Soulcalibur IV. All three characters are purportedly cute girls aged 17 or younger.
- The "Spiral Tailed Helm" in Spiral Knights sports huge pigtails, providing characters with a feminine appearance.
- Female Inklings in the first Splatoon have huge pigtails as their only hairstyle when they're in humanoid form, made out of a pair of their squid tentacles. Future games give players more hair options, but this remains as the default "Hippie" hairstyle and is used by the Series Mascot orange Inkling.
- Cammy White and Mika Nanakawa/Rainbow Mika from the Street Fighter series have versions of this hairdo. While Cammy's braids seem to be there just to emphasize that she's young, Mika's twin tails seem to hint at her personality, which contrasts with her being one of the largest females, in more ways than one.
- Toadette from the Super Mario Bros. series has these, befitting her upbeat, childlike personality.
- Tales Series:
- Presea from Tales of Symphonia, although her youthful personality is apparent in the second game.
- Anise from Tales of the Abyss is the Token Mini-Moe of the bunch.
- Elise sports these in Tales of Xillia 2, which could be viewed as being symbolic of her having gotten over her shyness issues from the first game. You can also give them to anyone in the party (guys included) once you find the appropriate accessory.
- Ling Xiaoyu from Tekken has pigtails to go with her youthful Genki Girl personality. Even after she graduates high school, she keeps the pigtails (though they become slightly smaller).
- Mint from Threads of Fate (1999). She's incredibly selfish and childish, too.
- In the Tomb Raider series, teenage Lara sports these, in contrast to adult Lara's long hair.
- Touhou Project:
- Komachi Onozuka. She also wields a rather hefty scythe.
- Hatate Himekaidou, Aya's rival, who is often portrayed in fanon as younger and less experienced than Aya.
- From the Trails Series, we have Estelle Bright, Tio Plato, KeA Bannings, Alfin Reise Arnor, Celine Millstein, and Nadia Rayne who wear their hair like this. This gets lampshaded in Hajimari where having a party that includes this group and win a battle has all of them discussing this trope.
- Valkyria Chronicles:
- Edy Nelson has a hairdo like this. She's also immature.
- Alecia sports them, but it seems more to highlight her innocence than anything else.
- Jeanette from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines fits into the "Tsundere" type.
- Clementine starts wearing a pair in her hair after Lee cuts it in Episode 3 of The Walking Dead: Season One. She has this hairstyle until near the end of Episode 5 of New Frontier, where she has Javíer cut her hair even shorter.
- In Wuthering Waves, Zhezhi is a shy Bespectacled Cutie who wears lots of pink. To complete the look she also sports pigtails.
- To emphasize her youth and (in her mind) inexperience as a maid and a Hollow-diver, Corin Wickes of Zenless Zone Zero wears her hair in two large pigtails.
Visual Novels
- CLANNAD:
- Although it's hard to tell, Kotomi has these. Definitely the childish kind, as she's been sort of caught up in the past since her parents died.
- Sunohara's little sister Mei, though she's actually a child.
- Danganronpa:
- Junko Enoshima in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc sports these which is the first clue to her true nature as a Psychopathic Womanchild.
- Toko Fukawa, also from Trigger Happy Havoc, wears long, trailing, braided pigtails, and like Junko, she's secretly a serial killer. When she reappears in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, she instead has loose Messy Hair.
- Celestia Ludenburg, another THH character, wears her hair in drill pigtails to show how regal and refined she is.
- Peko Pekoyama from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair wears her hair in twin braids, showing that she's both elegant and an Action Girl.
- Hiyoko Saionji, also from Goodbye Despair, wears giant blonde pigtails as part of her kawaiiko act; she looks nine, but she's actually seventeen. This earned her the Fan Nickname of "banana head".
- Maki Harukawa from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony wears her hair in pigtails that almost reach the floor. Like Junko and Toko above, she also has a high body count, but unlike them, she's much more mentally stable, as she's a professional assassin.
- Angie Yonaga, also from Killing Harmony, wears two thin, loose pigtails, showing her carefree personality.
- Coco in Ever17. She's 14, looks 9, and acts 5. Most of the time, anyway.
- Downplayed with Rin Tohsaka in Fate/stay night. She's a sharp-witted and sharp-tongued young woman, but for all of her maturity, she's a young girl at heart. Also a Grade S Zettai Ryouiki.
- The Fruit of Grisaia: Michiru sports these in order to further facilitate her tsundere personality.
- Asa and Yoru in If My Heart Had Wings both have long twintails. They're also both the youngest girls in the cast, though Yoru actually has a mature personality that belies her appearance.
- Makoto, of Kanon fame. She is largely a moe character though, albeit still with some slight tsundere-tendencies.
- Little Busters!:
- Sasami has the half-up kind, as fitting her Tsundere personality.
- Komari has little pigtails with hair decs on either side of her short hair, though they're not very big — in this case, childishness is definitely the intended impact.
- Magical Warrior Diamond Heart: The protagonist, Valerie, often wears her hair like this and she's definitely the most childish and energetic of the cast. And when transformed into her Crystal Warrior form she sports humongous pink drills.
- Miyuki of Tokimeki Memorial combines this with Anime Hair.
- Satsuki Yumizuka from Tsukihime. She's the only (well, sort of. She was supposed to be, anyway) love interest who actually does start basically normal and unaware of all the bad things going around.
- Umineko: When They Cry: Ange Ushiromiya is probably one of the more mature and level-headed characters, but she still uses hair clips that Battler gave her when she was much younger. Lampshaded by a few characters who say they make her look very childish.
Web Animation
- In AstroLOLogy, Cancer is probably the girliest of the cast with her affinity for all things feminine, and she has a pair of pigtails that resemble crab pincers, befitting the species her zodiac symbol represents.
- Homestar Runner:
- Old-Timey Marzipan wears twintails to emphasize her more traditional "protagonist's sweetheart" personality compared to main-universe Marzipan, who's more mature and whose niceness is a bit dubious.
- In Teen Girl Squad, Cheerleader wears them as part of her stereotypical cheerleader image. She's considerably less mature than So-and-So or What's-Her-Face (it's not really fair to judge The Ugly One's maturity by normal standards) and the most overtly girlish of all four.
- Debbie Smith of The Debbie and Carrie Show wore pigtails that were pink as a young girl. She later outgrew those and turned her hair blonde (her natural hair color) and wavy.
- Serial Designation J from Murder Drones sports these in both her original Worker Drone form and later her modified Disassembly Drone form. Played straight for the former, when she is a cute maid drone for a rich family, averted in the latter, where she’s been converted into a taller and more imposing Murder Machine with business attire and even garter-like designs on the legs. In both cases she graciously averts the usual attitude one would expect from this trope, being a no-nonsense mean girl with a particular disdain towards incompetence. Interestingly, she was originally going to have long, straight hair, but Glitch asked the series creator, Liam Vickers, to change it because it was too similar to Evelyn Claythorne's design from Meta Runner.
- The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: Little Miss Epic sports this as her hairstyle.
- Osanai Nazuna, in contrast to her sister Nazuna's shoulder-length long hair, and to represent her child-like nature, she's got twin-tails that go down to around her shoulder-length. This particular design trait was passed down by Nazuna herself, styling the hair of a Chibi Nazuna.
- Tsumiki from Senpai Club is a parody of shoujo anime protagonists so of course she's a pink-haired girl with Innocent Blue Eyes who wears her hair in pigtails.
Webcomics
- This is the trademark look for Hope from Alone in a Crowd, although she prefers to call them "Hopetails".
- anti-HEROES has Zurie. This is to denote that despite being a high-ranking member of the Ivory Veil, she's still quite immature. Her bunches also have shades of Regal Ringlets.
- DeathSitter: Lloyd hires Felix to babysit his daughter Mary, who has these. She's not actually a child, but she keeps them the various times she changes form into her adult forms. One of Felix's younger sisters has them as well.
- In Dubious Company, Tiren braids Elly's hair with these, as part of a drunken prank. Unfortunately for him, she got the hair-ties from Walter's Cursed MagiTek Room.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Molly the Monster◊ and her clone/sister Golly both have manes of fur naturally shaped like bunched pigtails — which reflects their youth and immaturity.
- Lilith Winterhill of In Wily's Defense, a sign of her immaturity.
- Rachel in Ladies In Waiting sports a pair of these and is also the most innocent and childish of the cast.
- The Last Days of FOXHOUND depicts The Boss with a pair in her youth.
- Missi, the young Genki Girl from Misfile has pigtails that sometimes appear to move with her mood.
- This is one of the most common appearances for female characters in Mountain Time. However, it's done more to emphasize their sex (the main difference between males and females in the comic being that the latter is always shown wearing a skirt) rather than to suggest youthfulness or innocence. In one comic, the pigtailed female comes off a bit like a prostitute. Or not. It's hard to say.
- Chiaki from My Impossible Soulmate used to wear her hair like this, until she decided to shorten it.
- NEXT!!! Sound of the Future: One of the features of Hatsune Miku's default design is a pair of twintails that add to her youthful, innocent image. Each individual Miku android is created with this hairstyle with the intention of invoking this trope for the sake of them being marketable idols, but not all of them end up keeping the style or matching the personality type.
- Averted in the lore of Nixvir in regards to the Nasilp. The females of the species that are described are said to have long tentacles extending down their backs in a bizarre parody of this kind of hairstyle.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Haley's Optimism Alter Ego is depicted as a young girl with pigtails. In #681, it's shown that Haley used to have that hairstyle.
- Subverted with Tsukiko, who is an evil cleric/wizard, a convicted criminal, and a necrophiliac. But also kind of immature, so it sort of fits with the Psychopathic Womanchild angle.
- Roy's mother, Sara Greenhilt, also sports Girlish Pigtails in her afterlife incarnation. Despite Sara dying as a gray-haired old woman, she never stopped seeing herself as the 19-year-old she once was.
- Haley's Optimism Alter Ego
- Wannabe Wiccan Girl from Queen of Wands, in this case also indicating her extraordinarily ditzy mindset.
- Rain (2010): Allison, Rain's childhood friend, wears her hair like this.
- Griffon of Rooster Teeth Comic drew herself with pigtails, even though in real life she usually wore a ponytail. It ties in with her more Womanchild depiction in the comic, when in real life she's viewed as an Action Girl.
- Ten Earth Shattering Blows: Landa, who is a naive nobelwoman, has sported these for the entire comic so far.
Web Original
- DeviantArt:
- In Magical Girl Policy, Spirit Guard Valor wears her hair in pigtails, though not by choice.
- Trope-tan is sort of an example. It's supposed to represent Lumper vs. Splitter.
Web Videos
- In Noob, Couette wears pigtails and started out as a Distaff Counterpart to the franchise's Manchild. Incidentally, "couette" in the French word for the hairstyle.
- The Nostalgia Chick. As time went on, it was to show that even though she tries to be an adult, she's really a childish sociopath. When Chick as a good person appeared in the Critic's holiday special, she had a neat ponytail. Nella and Elisa had their turn when they did parody commercials for "realistic baby dolls". Baby Colic, Baby Scarred For Life, Baby Death Wish... that kinda thing.
Western Animation
- In 3-2-1 Penguins!, Michelle sports these along with some Youthful Freckles.
- As Told by Ginger:
- Dodie has these as she is the perkiest and most immature of the Power Trio. When she starts in high school she wears her hair down. In fact, whenever her hair is out of its pigtails, she appears to be trying to act more grown-up or sophisticated.
- Miranda puts her hair in these when she and Darren start dating.
- Meng from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Immature she certainly is.
- On Beat Bugs, Buzz sports these along with a general cute child look.
- Betty Boop's younger cousin Buzzy Boop sports a pair of braided pigtails.
- The Boondocks: Jazmine wears her hair in two large afro puffs in the show and has a girly, childlike personality
- Gretchen from Camp Lakebottom has these, although they're probably meant to be ironic since she's a cynical Deadpan Snarker.
- Codename: Kids Next Door:
- Numbuh Three's younger sister Mushi, who is a young girl with a peppy and childish personality. Subverted in that she turns out to be mean and calculating.
- Numbuh Three herself used to sport these when she was younger; although she grew out of the pigtails, she didn't grow out of her childlike behaviour. She's also a Type B Tsundere.
- Box Lunch from Danny Phantom. Fitting since she is the youngest ghost to appear in the series.
- Daria:
- Brittany certainly fits the "blissful ignorance" version.
- Stacy typically wears her hair in a pair of braided pigtails. She's also easily the nicest member of the Fashion Club.
- Dee Dee from Dexter's Laboratory. She's older than Dexter but acts more like a little girl.
- On Doc McStuffins, Doc McStuffins herself sports these, along with a purple hairband with a pink flower.
- Anabella from Doki wears these to show that she's cheerful.
- Vicky's little sister Tootie in The Fairly OddParents!.
- The young daughter in Familia Tipo wears her hair permanently in pigtails. She's immature and bratty.
- Sonia and Leah Glady from the French cartoon La Famille Glady. Weirdly, Sonia is actually Leah's mother, and yet she uses very girlish pigtails.
- Fireman Sam:
- Lily, who is the youngest female character at 2-3 years old, wears short pigtails with red baubles.
- Hannah wears her hair in braided pigtails to show her tomboyishness, thus combining this trope with Braids of Action.
- Pistol from Goof Troop possesses a very large pair of these befitting of her Genki Girl characterization.
- Harley Quinn (2019): Harley had these as a child and reverts to them after breaking up with Joker.
- Season 2 of Hilda revealed the title protagonist had these when she was little.
- Hey Arnold!:
- Helga G. Pataki has pigtails but is a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, not the standard cute Girly Girl. She is a Tsundere, though.
- Girly Girl Lila has pigtail braids, playing the trope more straight than Helga.
- Penny, Gadget's young niece from Inspector Gadget (1983). In the sequel-ish spinoff series, she upgrades to slightly less girlish ones◊.
- Jem:
- Kimber and Pizzazz both wear pigtails in flashbacks to their childhood. In Pizzazz's case, it signifies when she was more innocent and happy, back before her mother left and when she still got along with her dad.
- One of the few times Kimber changes her hairstyle in-series, she wears pigtails to go with her cowgirl getup.
- Loopy from the Life with Loopy segments of KaBlam!. Fitting, as she's the youngest kid in the show (at seven).
- Eugly from Kaeloo wears her hair in pigtails. She also seems to be a Girly Girl, although there are no tomboys in the show's cast.
- In Kim Possible, the "flashback" scenes from "A Sitch in Time" show Kim with pigtails as a young girl.
- Annie from Little Einsteins definitely fits this trope, since she is the youngest member of the team.
- Lana Loud of The Loud House has two long braided pigtails, while her twin sister Lola wears her hair down.
- Dorothy Ann from The Magic School Bus. Despite the pigtails, she's actually the bookworm of Ms Frizzle's class.
- Vendetta of Making Fiends (one of the characters even refers to her as "the pigtailed one"), though obviously being an Enfant Terrible, she is a subversion.
- Meg from Mega Babies has green pigtails to contrast her pink skin.
- Miraculous Ladybug:
- Kid Hero Marinette/Ladybug sports her hair in two low bluish-black pigtails. In the switch from animesque to CGI, the size of her pigtails was toned down.
- Marinette's young friend Manon Chamack also has these, and it's more justified for her as she's only five.
- To season 4 to season 5, when Rose, who has short hair, transformed into the superheroine Pigella, her hair grows turns into pigtails.
- Molly of Denali: Trini is a young girl who has braided pigtails with beads.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: Jenny Wakeman, the protagonist, is a teenage robot girl with pigtail rocket thrusters on her head. She has a cheerful girly personality and isn't immune to having childish or bratty moments.
- My Little Pony:
- My Little Pony 'n Friends: Megan's younger sister Molly wears her hair in pigtails to contrast Megan's ponytail.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: As a filly, Starlight Glimmer had these.
- Oh No! It's An Alien Invasion: Lily, the youngest member of S.W.E.E.T., has these.
- The Owl House: Halfway through Season 2, Willow Park starts wearing her hair in pigtails that double as Braids of Action, a sign of her Character Development from a Shrinking Violet to The Big Gal of her group. By the Distant Finale, however, she has cut her hair short in line with her new career as a professional Flyer Derby jock.
- Cylindria from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, has black and pink striped pigtails.
- Bubbles of The Powerpuff Girls. While all the girls are the same age, Bubbles is considered The Baby of the Bunch.
- Sashi Kobayashi from Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero has these, although given her tough, no-nonsense personality, it's more of a subversion. However at the end of the Season 2 finale, she loses them
- In Ready Jet Go!, Mindy wears her hair like this, portraying her innocence.
- Both Spinelli and Gretchen of Recess wear pigtails, though neither one falls under the standard "girly" or "childish" archetypes: Gretchen is the geek of the group, while Spinelli is a Cute Bruiser Tomboy with a short temper, though she is (month-wise) the youngest of the gang.
- Angelica's pigtails in Rugrats seem to serve as a contrast to her true nature; the adults think she's a sweet innocent girl while she's actually a spoiled little bully.
- Kandi from Station X is the fashion-conscious one of the group, and has pigtails.
- Super Why!: Red, Jill, and Joy wear their hair like this, fitting their childlike personalities as they're children (or baby, for Joy), despite Red being a tomboy. In Red's case, they turn into Braids of Action when she turns into Wonder Red.
- Total Drama:
- Katie and Sadie are energetic, dramatic, cheery, and overall childish girls whose hair is tied into upstanding pigtails with hair ballies. The pigtails are paired with mullets to signify their love for the '80s.
- Zoey is an only child from a small town where she doesn't really fit in. Her short hair is done up in pigtails and accentuated with a flower, which signifies her Girl Next Door-style shelteredness and inexperience.
- Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race: Kitty is the younger, more carefree, and excitable sister of Emma. Where Emma wears her hair elegantly loose, Kitty has hers tied into long pigtails with ribbons.
- Total DramaRama: The core cast are toddlers, so some of the girls have pigtails to signify their youth.
- Courtney's short hair is done up in pigtails. Along with her pink shirt and Proper Tights with a Skirt look, the pigtails play into her conformist need to be the ideal little girl.
- Gwen's hair is tied into upstanding pigtails, which would be adorable were it not for Gwen being a Creepy Child. As is, the way her pigtails stand up evoke the way arms that are raised to scare look.
- The girl in the commercial for the Everything Horse in "Melter Skelter" has high pigtails coupled with a pink outfit to heighten the girlish cuteness needed to get audiences invested in the product.
- Transformers: Transformers: Animated:
- Eight-year-old Sari has them, but keeps them even after she upgrades herself into a teenager. They're still there even when she transforms to robot mode.
- Professor Princess, who's definitely childish.
- Winx Club: This was Musa's signature hairstyle for the first four seasons (short pigtails in seasons 1-2, long pigtails in season 3 and some of season 4), despite her identifying as a tomboy. Stella also has this hairstyle, but only in her fairy form, with her base fairy form using low pigtails and her headband changing to a blue color.
- Despite being at least 14, Hay Lin of WITCH goes through various forms of pigtails during the series. The comic does show her with her hair down at certain points, but for the most part, she has her hair up in pigtails.
- Daizy from Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! has pigtails that resemble dog ears which are held up by flowers.
- Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Yadina, the innocent, cute Cheerful Child, wears pigtails.
- Kimiko Tohomiko of Xiaolin Showdown sports this as her default hairstyle when not in Expository Hairstyle Change mode.
