In the event of a Gender Bender, Gender Flip, or just a Distaff Counterpart, it is common for the woman to have light hair and fair skin, even if the man had dark hair and skin.
This is somewhat Truth in Television, as women have fairer skin than men
on average. This is because a woman will need to provide enough calcium for herself and a baby both during pregnancy and while nursing. Lighter skin absorbs more sunlight, which allows vitamin D to be synthesized, and this is necessary to absorb enough calcium from food.
Can sometimes be the consequence of the fact that, due to colorism, the woman is considered sexier with light skin.
Older Than Dirt, because ancient Egyptian and Minoan artists
◊ drew men with dark skin and women with light skin to distinguish the two.
This can also coincide with the woman having a "lighter" alignment, as in more feminine, less aggressive and gentler than the male version; however this trope just refers to skin and hair pigment. See also Gendered Outfit. For animal and nonhuman examples, see Pale Females, Dark Males.
Examples
- When Matsuri of Ayakashi Triangle is turned female, his hair goes from black with red highlights to pink-shaded silver, while his skin gets less tanned. The hair change is actually an incidental case of Locked into Strangeness because Shirogane transformed Matsuri while in a in a form that had silver fur.
Played with in that Suzu (whose hair is darker than Matsuri's ever was) and Matsuri have a yin and yang motif. In that respect, his hair being white associates it with yang, and thus masculinity. - In Birdy the Mighty, Tsumotu has black hair and darker skin than Birdy, who has half white and half red hair.
- Futaba-kun Change!:
- Futaba has black hair when male, while his female form is blonde (sometimes shaded green).
- Inverted by his sister Futana, who has black hair when female and blond hair when male.
- Averted by Misaki who has the same hair color regardless of gender.
- In One Piece, Emporio Ivankov turns a prince into a woman for trying to kill him with a cannonball. In the anime, his transformation comes with an obligatory skin bleaching. Otherwise, transformees keep their hair color and style.
- In Pretty Face, when Randoh gains a girl's face, his hair also turns blond because of the burns he received.
- Ranma in Ranma ½ normally has black hair and darker skin than "Ranko", who has red hair in the anime, and has had a variety of different hair colors, usually not black, in the colored covers of the manga.
- Alpha Flight: Walter Langowski as Sasquatch has blond hair as a man, white hair as a woman.
- Batman has black hair; Batgirl has red hair. Batwoman also has red hair, along with being extremely pale.
- Hawkman has brown hair; Hawkwoman has red hair.
- Robin (1993) featured appearances of all four boys and the one girl who were Robin, and all the boys have black hair while the single girl is blonde. note
- Superman: Usually, Supergirl and Power Girl have a fairer skin than Superman and Superboy. Additionally both girls have blond hair, whereas their male cousin and his younger self/clone/son have black hair.
- Rob Schneider in The Hot Chick switches bodies with blond Rachel McAdams.
- The boy in It's a Boy Girl Thing has brown hair, and the girl has red hair.
- Sexual Chemistry has a brown-haired man turn into a blond woman.
- True in all versions of the show Lalola. At least the lighter skin part.
- Inverted with Xion's dark girl to Roxas’s light boy in Kingdom Hearts, both of which born from about 3 separate people of varying genders.
- Pokémon X and Y: Inverted with Sina and Dexio, the former being an Ambiguously Brown girl and the latter a very white guy.
- Street Fighter has Cammy, who is an Opposite-Sex Clone of Bison, but has blond hair, blue eyes and white skin, and really looks nothing like him. Also, Cammy is a good gal, unlike Bison.
- Kunimitsu◊ in Tekken has red hair, Yoshimitsu◊ has brown hair.
- In El Goonish Shive, Elliot's favored female form has blond hair, confirming to the expectations of this trope. However, this is a deliberate stylistic choice on his part to avoid looking too much like his twin sister / Opposite-Sex Clone Ellen. He can control what he looks like to a degree, and hair color is something he finds particularly easy.
- Ellen and Elliot now play it straight, as Ellen's hair has been changed to green, which renders as lighter than Elliot's brown in black and white. Tedd continues to avert it, having the same colouring regardless of current gender.
- In The Order of the Stick, this trope is Double Subverted when Roy, while genderbent, actually has the same bald head, but ends up wearing a wig that makes him look blond most of the time he is female.
- The Wotch has red-haired "Sonja" when Jason is genderbent, but other characters, like Robin, keep their original hair color.
- In Yokoka's Quest, Yokoka has light skin, yellow eyes, and her hair is white with pink streaks, while her twin brother Mao has more tanned skin, brown eyes, and his hair is brown with black streaks. Their cat forms also have a similar colour scheme. A Q&A strip explains the colour differences as Yokoka having a type of albinism.
