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alt title(s): Hippie Chick
"She's like... a dirty hippy. Without the dirt."

An overtly left-wing character, usually with a penchant for tie-dyes, crystals, veganism, free love and anything that is 'all-natural'. This character will commonly not be very well grounded, but cheerful; flighty, but not scatter-brained enough to qualify as The Ditz, and will have a tendency to make her opinions known whenever possible. She will love any kind of alternative medicine and will refer to actual real doctors as "allopaths" and "greedy". Of course, she will never actually have a health problem worth seeing a doctor about it, because any problem she has will be all in her head.

Male versions of this character are exceedingly rare, and are mainly depicted as aging 50- or 60-year-old hippies, either Tommy Chong-esque Erudite Stoners or balding guys with ponytails who haven't yet accepted the end of the 1960s. Remember, Granola Guys are just a little out of touch with the modern world but are still sympathetic, intelligent men; Granola Girls are stupid, irrational idiots who aren't just wrong about everything but are proud of it too. It's a much nastier trope than it seems on the surface.


Examples:

Film
  • Brutally parodied in Tim Burton's film Mars Attacks! Annette Bening's character Barbara is a Granola Girl who sets up New Age crystals as she watches the Martians land, believing that they are the saviors of the human race, here to enlighten us. They aren't. She's one of the few people to survive the massacre that follows. Afterward, Barbara claims that they have come to punish humanity for destroying the Earth.
  • Sophia Bush's character in John Tucker Must Die.
  • Michael Caine's character Jasper in Children of Men is an aging Granola Guy, living in the woods naturally with his wife, growing a new immensely popular variety of pot that has a strawberry flavor.
    • Of course, this could also be a reaction to the dystopian nightmare of England, 2018 AD. It is implied that he was left without a choice but to withdraw from society after his wife was tortured by the government.
  • Steve Jobs's girlfriend from Pirates Of Silicon Valley, who had a daughter with him named Lisa. His first reaction when she breaks up with him is to fire the entire Apple Lisa dev team.

Literature
  • Anathema Device from Good Omens is something of a Granola Girl. She's a witch (the latest in a long line of witches) who subscribes to a number of environmentally-conscious and/or New Age magazines.
  • Dawn of the Baby Sitters Club.
  • Parodied/Lampshaded in Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, by Thursday's fictional counterpart, Thursday5, a Lighter And Softer version of her, written after the original complained about the Darker And Edgier first four.
  • Magrat Garlick from the Discworld books, especially in her early appearances, where the citizens of Lancre had come to fear her self-righteous lectures about how meat is bad for your health and how anything natural is good for you.
    • Lords and Ladies mitigates this somewhat, however-Magrat's cottage has traditionally housed thoughtful witches who carefully researched things and wanted to know, for example, which out of a wide selection of identically-named plants is meant when a spell calls for a plant of that name. Granny is a better witch because she knows it doesn't matter, but she nonetheless goes to Magrat for help when someone is poisoned because she knows that Magrat's belief that it does makes her a better doctor.
  • One of David Foster Wallace's titular Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (a collection of short stories) involved a man relating the story of a hook-up with a "granola cruncher" that turned into a most peculiar tale about her managing to get a rapist to not rape her in a truly bizarre manner.
  • Macrobiotic, of the Whateley Universe. I mean, she gave herself the codename 'Macrobiotic', what more do you need?

Live Action TV
  • Topanga in the first few seasons of Boy Meets World.
  • Phoebe from Friends. Slightly less so in later seasons when she ended up a little less hippy and a little more edgy.
  • Janice from The Muppet Show, who apparently had a discussion with her mother at some point about living on the beach and walking around naked. (The Great Muppet Caper)
    • This troper recalls a scene in The Muppets Take Manhattan where she mentions only doing nude modeling if it's artistically valid.
  • Dharma and her parents from Dharma And Greg.
  • Daphne Moon on Frasier claimed to be "a bit psychic". Prior to Lilith's first appearance on the show, she uttered the phrase "I sense a great evil," and was sick with a migraine for the rest of the episode until Lilith left.
  • The trope is played straight in series actually set in the late 1960s or early 1970s, such as The Wonder Years.
  • Buffy The Vampire Slayer featured the short-lived Principal Flutie as another male version of the trope. After some possessed students ate him (he finally found the gumption to threaten them with detention just before dying), he was replaced by the better-known Principal Snyder.
    • ...who utters the immortal, 'That's the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten,' (as opposed to what eventually happens to him).
      • Well, that's the kind of woolly-headed conservative thinking that leads to being eaten. Streets run both ways.
  • Leo from That 70s Show could be an example of this because he's an older hippy stoner who refuses to grow up, although the fact that the show IS set in the 70's makes this a moot point.
    • Though it helps that this character is actually PLAYED BY TOMMY CHONG!
  • Che, Summer's uni friend from the fourth season of The OC.
  • Barney from How I Met Your Mother was a Granola Guy who wanted to join the peace corps. Then his girlfriend dumped him for a jerk in a suit and Barney became Awe.....wait for it...some.
  • Jane on Coupling is one, although some positions she claims to have are not completely true (her supposed lesbianism and vegetarianism).
  • Maddy, from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody is a mild version of this.
  • Has everyone forgotten Chelsea from Thats So Raven?

Newspaper Comics
  • Most of the main characters (with the distinct exception of Sydney) in Dykes To Watch Out For are distincly on this end of the spectrum compared to mainstream Middle America, with Sparrow starting off as the most so. Ironically, in the strip's latter days the biggest Granola Girl is the main male character, Stuart.
  • Sky from Chelsea Boys is a Granola Boy full stop. Vegetarian, idealist, does his yoga every day, raised on a hippie commune in Canada, the list goes on...

Webcomics
  • Aggie of Penny And Aggie.
  • Monique of Sinfest fame is attempting to become one after an ecounter with Barack Obama. Sadly for her she is Cursed With Awesome in that her own sex appeal tends to trip her up, putting her on the Devil's radar.

Western Animation
  • Sheena from Hey Arnold who is a health-nut and hates violence of any kind. Helga even lampshades it at one point: "That's it granola girl, you're dismissed!"
  • Satirized mercilessly in Family Guy in the episode where Death is attracted to a girl who works at the pet store. When he finally asks her out, he discovers to his horror that she says inane things like "you can't hug a child with nuclear arms" and, well, he's The Grim Reaper, what do you think he does? Followed by a Check Please.
  • Posey from the short-lived Mission Hill.
    • Often subverted for comedic value such as in "Kevin Vs. the SAT" (or "Nocturnal Admissions), in which she heals a semi-paralysed pimp precisely so that he can fully feel the pain of landing after having been pushed off the roof.
  • Mr Van Driessen from Beavis And Butthead was a rare male example, nobly trying and failing to get the boys to read self-help books instead of just giving them detention.
    • Mr. O' Neill from Daria is an Expy of Mr. Van Driessen made by different creators set in nominally the same universe.
  • Almost everybody from The Goode Family
  • Hayley from American Dad. Something of a subversion in being grounded, sarcastic and grouchy (sometimes to the point of being a Jerkass).
    • This troper would argue Hayley is more akin to the Only Sane Man given that she seems to be the only person with any common sense, in a universe inhabited by psychotic conservatives, camp aliens and evil needy german goldfish.
      • On the other hand, she's implied to usually be high after noon, has quite liberal views on sex, is downright agressive towards George Bush, seems to have connections with animal liberation groups and on one occasion went to pick berries for peace.
  • Zoop from Iggy Arbuckle.
  • Beth from the animated show O Grady, as well as her mother. Subverted by her employer, Jazmine, who runs The Enchanted Soybean ("A Healthful Life Encounter!"). After returning from an illness to find a radically changed product line including soda and candy bars, she yells at Beth's friend Abby for "polluting" her store and promptly fires her. Ironically, just before the credits we see her locking the store and hiding in the back room so she can eat potato chips, diet cola, candy bars, and read gossip magazines.
  • Occasionally recurring South Park character "Aging Hippy Liberal Douche".
  • Skye Blue from Carl Squared.
  • Miracle from Sit Down Shut Up.
  • Alice from Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. (And Chet, for that matter.)
    Alice: I hate smog. People shouldn't travel anywhere except on foot. Or bicycle.
    [A car horn sounds ourside]
    Alice: Oh! Gotta go, there's my ride.
    Harry: If you're so concerned about air pollution, why don't you ride your bike there?
    Alice: But it's over three blocks!

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