"I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I cannot imagine that red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, 'Now my hair is a glorious black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I know it is just plain red, and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow."
— Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables
With the pervasiveness of beauty standards in human society, many people are likely to be insecure about or even hate some part of their body, and in some cases, that body part would be their hair. Or more specifically, the natural color of their hair, as it compares or contrasts with what is considered good-looking or proper in contemporary society.
Whether it be a brunette in a world where Everyone Loves Blondes, a redhead who wishes to have Raven Hair, Ivory Skin like Snow White, a blonde who wishes to stand out in the crowd, an albino character who just wants to fit in, or anything and everything in between, this character thinks of their natural hair color as a flaw in their appearance, causing them much angst. If given the means to, they'll happily dye their hair or put on a wig of their preferred color, to varying degrees of success.
Other characters may react differently to this insecurity. Well-meaning folks would likely console them, saying that they're beautiful Just the Way You Are and they don't have to change a thing about them to look prettier. Supportive friends might cheer them on in trying to look the way they want to look. Meaner peers or superiors would undoubtedly bully them about their hair color, causing even more angst and starting the cycle over and over again.
Sub-Trope of Appearance Angst, and Super-Trope to First Gray Hair and Covering Up Your Grey, the former where a character angsts about ageing in response to growing their first gray hair and the latter where they dye it as a coverup. Compare Red-Headed Stepchild and Albinos Are Freaks, where people with red/ginger hair or albinism (resulting in white or light blond hair) are negatively viewed by their peers due to their pigmentation or lack thereof, which can result in this. Related to My Hair Came Out Green, which may result if a character tries to change their unwanted hair color. Contrast Everyone Loves Blondes, Raven Hair, Ivory Skin (or at least the raven hair part), Redheads Are Ravishing and Silver Fox, where different hair colors are perceived as a sign a character is attractive, though these tropes aren't mutually exclusive.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Anne of Green Gables (1979): Like her book counterpart, Anne is a redhead, but she wishes she had dark black hair like her best friend Diana. One day, she manages to acquire some black hair dye and colour her hair… and it turns out green.
- Black Butler: Madam Red hated her red hair… until Earl Phantomhive (Ciel's father) told her he liked it — that it was beautiful, and really suits her. Unfortunately for her, he still chooses to marry her blonde older sister…
- Case Closed: It's revealed that one of Dr. Agasa's childhood friends was a half-Japanese girl named Fusae Campbell Kinoshita. She was very self-conscious of her hair color; her fondest memory of her childhood is Dr. Agasa claiming that he liked her hair.note
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: In between joining the Demon Slayer Corps and being romantically rejected, Mitsuri tried to hide her real physical strength to appear like a fragile lady, and dyed her hair black to rethread back to her infant years, before her hair became pink just as she grew up into a child, all in an effort to conform to the standard of what an ideal bride would be like back then. Mitsuri's family loved her for what she was, but she hadn't met any other potential suitor who accepted her the way she was, so Mitsuri believed herself to be abnormal until she found people who appreciated her in the Corps.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Ako Izumi lists her unusual hair color as one of her faults. Even in a World of Technicolor Hair, her light blue hair color stands out and she mentions it alongside the scar on her back as reasons why she doesn't consider herself anything more than "average".
Comic Books
- Like the original, Anne in Anne: An Adaptation hates her red hair and thinks she'd look better with another color. She and Diana try to dye it black, but it ends up a muddy moss green and cut short.
Fan Works
- This is seen in the Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal. The Smith-Rhodes family has, over the years, unconsciously selected for red hair. Red hair and freckles have therefore become the family's dominant gene. Ruth Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons is the younger sister of two striking redheads who take after their mother, but Ruth inherited her looks from her father, wizard Ponder Stibbons. Therefore, she has her father's very dark brown, almost black, hair. People do not immediately register she is the daughter of respected Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes. Ruth herself wonders why she is so physically unalike to her two sisters, and wishes she had their red hair.
- Kaleidoscopic Katamari: Foomin combines this with Baldness Angst; hair doesn't grow on either of the twin towers that adorn her head, only on the very top and back of her scalp. It's also a brownish-orange/caramel color that she wishes was a much darker brunette; she doesn't think it qualifies for auburn or blonde, distastefully describing it as "brunish". She doesn't bother trying to dye it since her head's typically covered anyway; while her cousin Marcy dyes her own hair quite frequently, Foomin's also seen how that can go awry.
- Pony POV Series: Carrot Top's mane and tail are naturally olive green, but she dyes them orange. This is because other foals made fun of her as a filly, saying it looked like she washed her mane with compost or slime, or that someone threw up on her head. As a result, the color green is a Trauma Button for her; during the Day of Discord, she became Ax-Crazy and started attacking anything and anypony green with a battle axe.
- In the Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic The Third Side
, Shinji Ikari is working on a restaurant after Third Impact. One of his co-workers is a purple-haired girl who dyes her hair because she is ashamed of it. When Shinji finds out, she thinks he'll get freaked out, but Shinji tells him he doesn't understand why it is an issue and reassures her it looks pretty. She was quite surprised because of it. Of course, she doesn't know he previously lived with a woman with purple hair, fought beside a girl with blue hair, and he is in love with a girl with red hair, which is a very unusual hair color in Japan.
Films — Animated
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Lucy's hair is revealed to be cyan with magenta stripes after it gets washed in the spa on Planet Sparkles. When Emmet's friends accuse her of hiding something about her past, Lucy tries to deny that it's her real hair color and that she was so ashamed of it that she tried to recolor it black with a marker. Later, when Emmet is about to destroy the wedding altar, she admits to him that it is her real hair color and she did recolor it black in an effort to seem more mature.
Films — Live-Action
- Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018): Addison was born with white hair and, fearing mockery from her conformist classmates, wears a blonde wig to hide it. Her hair is a secret not just because it's weird, but because she inherited it from the women in her family, who are aliens. Before the zombies were properly integrated into Seabrook, no alien would have been accepted there; her mother was not ready to tell her.
Literature
- Anne of Green Gables: The titular character, Anne Shirley, is picked on for having bright red hair, so she longs for any hair that isn't her natural hair color (e.g. Raven Hair, Ivory Skin) and at one point dyes it green by mistake. To make matters worse, Rachel Lynde calls attention to her hair and her "homeliness" when they are first introduced. While Anne's hair eventually darkens to a more attractive auburn as she gets older, this is still something she never really gets over — in Anne's House of Dreams, she gives birth to her first son and Gilbert tells Marilla that he's over the moon, but Anne is furious with the nurse for telling her Jem's hair will be red.
- The Belgariad: Polgara the Sorceress hated her white-streaked black hair as a girl — it was a Mark of the Supernatural that set her apart from her beloved (blonde) twin sister and reminded her that they had separate destinies. Worse, the white hair was magically impervious to dye and scissors.
- The Diamond Girls:
- Martine dislikes how much she looks like her mother Sue, with whom she has a strained relationship, including having black hair like her. She bleaches her hair blonde to look less like Sue.
- Dixie mentions to Mary that she wishes she had blonde hair like her sister Rochelle who's considered conventionally beautiful, instead of mouse brown hair.
- The Last Hours: Alastair Carstairs, who is half-Persian, hates how he looks obviously ethnic in Edwardian Britain, and decided to dye his black hair blond to look more white. After his Character Development, he is seen with his natural black hair at the end of the third book.
- Lola Rose: Jayni is insecure about having mouse brown hair (along with the rest of her appearance), wishing she had blonde hair like her attractive mother. Her mother says she can't get her hair lightened until she's at least sixteen.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Two of Catarina's Childhood Friends had complexes with their hair colors before meeting Catarina. Both of them grew a better self-image when they become teens.
- Mary Hunt's red hair comes from her mother, Marquess Hunt's second wife from a far lower social status than the Marquess. The resulting Intrafamilial Class Conflict causes her older siblings to bully her out of this, seeing her as a literal Red-Headed Stepchild. As a result, she hated that part of her.
- Sophia Ascart's case overlaps with Albinos Are Freaks, but there's a twist in it — the combination of superstitions surrounding albinism and her father being the sitting chancellor means she became the center of Malicious Slander against her father, to the point she internalized others' insults on her appearance. She has a particular complex on her stark-white hair, so when Catarina suggested her hair is beautiful, she was initially confused, since she thinks it's impossible for anyone outside of her family to have a good opinion on it.
Sophia's thoughts: There's no way this disgusting white hair of mine could be beautiful…
- Villainess Level 99: Patrick hated his dark gray hair color because his relatives said it looked close to black, which is heavily discriminated against in their society. He starts feeling better about his hair color after Yumiella (who has jet-black hair and is a more severe victim of the discrimination, but she's too aloof to care) tells him she thinks his hair looks closer to white and she likes it, and he grows to admire her even more because she doesn't let herself be bothered by what others say about her jet-black hair.
- Warrior Cats: Flamepaw is upset that he is named after an orange-colored object and after his famous orange great-grandfather Firestar, despite having black fur. This is all part of his general frustration with not being able to live up to the legacy of his famous ancestor and feeling he is always judged by said great-grandfather's standards. He ends up requesting a new name, going against typical naming traditions, and gets renamed Nightheart to fit better with his fur color.
Live-Action TV
- 8 Simple Rules: The blonde Bridget frequently makes jokes at the expense of her red-headed sister Kerry. After Bridget makes a joke about not wanting to play Annie because of her red hair, Kerry loses it and attacks her.
- Anne with an E: Much like her book counterpart, Anne is an orphan girl who is worried that the Cuthberts won't keep her. She thinks that if her hair wasn't red and if she were prettier, they might allow her to stay. Similar to the book, Gilbert Blythe calls her "Carrots", causing her to hate him as she is already insecure about her hair color.
- Doctor Who: This was a bit of a Running Gag in New Who; the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors all grouse in various ways about the fact that they aren't ginger shortly after they regenerate.
Music
- Evillious Chronicles: In the Daughter of Evil series, Clarith is an outcast for being the only white-haired person in a village where everyone else's hair is green. She suffers some intense Survivor Guilt after Riliane — jealous that her crush has fallen in love with the green-haired Michaela — orders the massacre of every green-haired woman in Elphegort, and she survives because of her white hair.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Ritz doesn't like that her hair color is naturally white. She gets bullied at school every day, and every night has to suffer in guilt as her mother cries while dyeing her hair red. Her reason for wanting to enjoy her life in Ivalice is mostly because she doesn't have to deal with these problems and can live out her life as a natural redhead.
- Flower Knight Girl: Muscari is deeply ashamed of her dark purple hair, to the point that she tries to hide it underneath her Poke bonnet to keep it out of sight. Her Garden sprite animations that show instances of the headpiece undone depict her either cowering in place or hiding in a box. All this stems from her home village having the cultural view of purple as an "unlucky color", and was subsequently bullied for her natural hair color being exactly that. What helped her out of her general slump and encouraged her to be a Flower Knight is a passerby who remarked, "Purple is a noble colour. It would really suit a Flower Knight. So, don't hate yourself so much."
- Touhou Project: Zigzagged. According to ZUN, Okina Matara used to have black hair, but long ago, she dyed it blonde. She's since come to regret dyeing it at all and has developed a complex over it.
Visual Novels
- The Fruit of Grisaia: Michiru is naturally brunette but painfully bleaches her hair because she believes that proper tsunderes should be blondes with twintails. This ties into the whole Class Clown act she does as she only feels useful when amusing others.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Susan was born a natural blonde but started dyeing it blue-black after she caught her father cheating on her mother with a blonde woman. Since downplayed because, while she worked through some of her feelings about her dad's cheating, the blue-black hair has become more part of her identity (especially since her Awakening caused the dye to magically bond to her hair unless she uses the magic stored in it to boost her abilities).
Web Animation
- Underfity: Daram's hair turns pink due to a drug from Sue. Despite her attempts to dye it back, the color remains for the rest of the series.
Western Animation
- Rugrats: In "Chuckie's Red Hair", Chuckie bemoans all the attention he gets because of his wild red hair, wishing he had normal colored hair. The babies discover Grandpa Lou's tube of black hair dye and apply it on Chuckie. In a major case of Be Careful What You Wish For, because his hair is a normal color, everyone ignores him and he realizes he misses the attention. Thankfully, the hair dye is super cheap and breaks away to reveal his normal hair color under the sun… while Grandpa Lou now has red hair.