Long-Haired Pretty Boy

Their locks are as untamed as their hearts.

"There's beauty, stranger… in thy soft form;
Thy fine, bright hair, not coarse like the hard athlete's,
Is mantling o'er thy cheek, warm with desire…
Wooing Aphrodite with thy loveliness."

— Pentheus describes Dionysus, Bacchae

How do you make a Pretty Boy even prettier? Give him long (shoulder-length or longer), flowing tresses of glossy hair! Bonus points for wearing it loose, no matter how impractical this may be.

A lot of these fall under Viewer Gender Confusion, because Long Hair Is Feminine (if the confusion occurs in-universe, it's an example of Dude Looks Like a Lady). Many fall under Mr. Fanservice. This trope is very popular in Anime and Manga, especially those either aimed at girls/women, or are hoping to attract a significant female Periphery Demographic. It's also very common among Elfeminate elves.

Contrast Barbarian Long Hair when it's used in a Hunk.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga

Advertising

• In a 2017 Australian commercial, a woman flirts with two men who are both gorgeous in a boyish way (they're her type), and one of them has long hair which is the same length as the lady's. (Trekkies would recognize the other guy as Evan Evagora, the model-turned-actor who portrayed Elnor on Star Trek: Picard.)

Arts

• John is depicted in The Last Supper as androgynous, pretty, and long-haired to emphasize his status as the youngest, and thus least masculine, apostle.
• Raphael Rooms: Raphael Sanzio's long hair and effeminate beauty are depicted as a self-portrait in "The School of Athens".

Asian Animation

• Pleasant Goat Fun Class: In Travel Around the World episode 12, the goats are in France and meet a rooster man with rather long, feminine hair and an effeminate voice to fit the romantic theme of the country.

Comic Books

• In ElfQuest, Cutter, before he grows a beard. Gorgeous, curly blond mane, cute, rather feminine face... to be fair, though, most male elves qualify, but Cutter does have the most impressive hair.
• He's more manly than your standard "pretty boy" as a giant muscular viking, but The Mighty Thor deserves a mention for his long blonde hair and numerous female admirers. He ain't called Goldilocks for nothin', true believers!
  • Since his Heel–Face Turn, Loki has been increasingly depicted as attractive as possible, so their hair has consequently been depicted as long. Not quite as long as Thor, mostly just to his shoulders or chin. When Loki's character evolved into being actively gender-fluid in the 2010s, with an increasing tendency for him to use his Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities to shift between masculine and feminine forms as he likes, the length of his hair even became something of a way to tell what identity Loki is currently presenting as.
• In Runaways, Victor Mancha was designed to look like the all-American hero for the 21st century, with shoulder-length brown hair and perfect brown skin. A considerable amount of the intra-team conflict in the second series stems from the fact that multiple girls are attracted to him.

Fan Works

• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Harumi Tsukyomi is such a Pretty Boy that he won first place in a female pirate beauty competition, and part of what makes him look like a girl is his ass-length mane of ebony black, meticulously groomed locks.

Films — Live-Action

• Bohemian Rhapsody:
  • Roger Taylor has wavy blond hair that reaches his shoulders, and he's so pretty that he becomes Dude Looks Like a Lady when he's in drag for the "I Want to Break Free" music video.
  • Freddie Mercury counts as this in the earlier parts of the movie when he had long hair and was clean-shaven, before he adopts his iconic Manly Gay short-haired and mustached look.
• The Dark Crystal: Jen has long hair, and Gelflings are the prettiest looking humanoids on Thra.
• The King: The Dauphin has flowing blonde hair that reaches his shoulders.
• The Lord of the Rings: Legolas is the main example, although according to Tolkien, all Elves fit this trope. It is impossible for anyone to have hair as gorgeously maintained as Legolas's without it being all they think about or without access to cleaning agents and facilities. The best analysis of what it would take to keep that hair up on the quest for the one ring can be found in journal for Legolas in The Very Secret Diaries.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Loki in The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War has wavy black hair down to his shoulders, expressive blue eyes, pale skin, a slender build, and moves very gracefully. In Ragnarok, he resembles a masculine version of Hela, who's an attractive woman with similar physical features.
  • At Disneyland, one of the actors◊ who portrays Loki◊ is youthful and has sculpted eyebrows like Tom Hiddleston's Loki in Thor, while his long hair is from Ragnarok.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Charles Xavier combines his prettiness from X-Men: First Class with his long, wavy hair from X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is now styled into a feathered mullet instead of having Messy Hair, and he got rid of the Beard of Sorrow. Apocalypse also plays up Xavier's nurturing qualities.

Literature

• Anita Blake: Micah, Nathaniel and Jean-Claude, among others, have long hair, low muscle bulk and delicate facial features.
• Plenty of men in A Brother's Price. Women keep their hair short and practical; men grow theirs out very long and usually keep it braided. Since men are so rare most women see very few, any man with all of his teeth and both eyes is going to be considered attractive… even so, Jerin is thought of as amazingly handsome. His long hair dangles between his feet when he braids it (granted he is kneeling at the time but that means his hair is at least thigh length and possibly knee length.) and he dresses well. Almost all women who are not related to him make at least one comment on how pretty he is. Paying lots of attention to his appearance is part of his culture, but the beautiful face is genetic.
• Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Randiroc, who Jame first sees via Outdoor Bath Peeping. He has waist-length Mystical White Hair (which is also Barbarian Long Hair, since he lives in the hills). He's so beautiful that when Jame first sees him, she thinks she might be dreaming. He... just let Jame tell it:
  Jame thought at first that it was Kindrie, but only because of the long white hair—too long, surely, unbound, waist-length, clinging to the stranger's shoulders and back. Moonlight turned his whole body into gleaming alabaster except where blue shadows traced wiry muscles and the threads of old scars. He scooped up water and dashed it in his face. It ran down, gleaming, over the hard lines of his chest, stomach, and loins.
• In Dragon Bones, most men wear their hair long (more than shoulder-length) and open (except for old-fashioned Oranstone nobles, who wear it shaved in a specific manner). Ward notes that his brother Tosten is a pretty boy, who therefore has to be careful around sailors. Also, Oreg, who is said to resemble Tosten very much.
• Fablehaven has Bracken, who is tall, willowy, youthful, and has long, soft silver-white hair.
• Frankenstein: The creature was supposed to be this and is still marked as having an oddly beautiful face, but… However, he still has pretty black locks.
• In The Girl from the Miracles District, the Big Bad is described as looking like a male model—the woman Nikita questions is obviously smitten with him—with long red hair.
• Pretty common in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar. The Kaled'a'in and the cultures descending from them, the Shin'a'in and Tayledras, are Non Heteronormative Societys where everyone tends to quite long hair and striking androgyny, with men and women looking quite similar at a glance. A few individuals, male and female, keep theirs shorter as personal preference but usually not having long locks marks an Important Haircut. Because they all work with a particular form of magic that bleaches out their hair all Tayledras end up with Mystical White Hair eventually, something they regard as a beautiful milestone.
  • He's not a Tayledras but Vanyel Ashkevron certainly qualifies. He starts as a Camp Gay teenager and as he accepts a rough life with few luxuries his peacock aspects have to fall by the wayside except when he has the energy and opportunity to pick them up for a bit, but he maintains his lovely long hair and stays gorgeous even after getting Covered in Scars.
• Incarceron Keiro has long blonde hair,bright blue eyes, and is described as 'devastatingly handsome', with several characters remarking on his perfect appearance.He's also rather fond of nice clothes.
• N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: The God of Darkness Nahadoth generally appears an unearthly beautiful humanoid with pale skin and long, ink-black hair that drifts in the air like smoke. Zig-zagged, since he's a habitual Sex Shifter.
• In Kushiel's Legacy, the High-Class Call Boy Alcuin has silky, waist-length white hair and is described as possessing an outright otherworldly beauty, even compared to the uncommonly attractive people of Terre d'Ange. For his part, he has mixed feelings about the attention his appearance gets him, although that largely stems from people presuming that they can buy access to it.
• The Lord of the Rings: Elves are a race of long-haired pretty boys. Though the women are even prettier and have even longer hair. Pick a male elf. Any male Tolkien's elf. Except Cirdan and Mahtan (who are long-haired, but have beards). Legolas in particular is described as being "fair of face beyond the measure of Men." And he's not even the prettiest elf in the series: that's Glórfindel. As far as the wider Legendarium goes, Legolas is actually about average.
  • Boromir, whom Legolas describes as "the Fair" (in his verse of the Lament for Boromir). Given that this is coming from an elf, and an elf prince at that, this is a pretty high complement. His long hair is described as dark and he's pretty young. If he has any facial hair at all it's probably not much. Ditto Faramir.
  • Éomer. Like most men of Rohan, he has long blond hair. Tolkien specifically talks about their "long hair flowing" in his lament for them. Unlike most, he doesn't have a full beard yet. The Rohirrim are based off the Anglo-Saxons, who also very much invoked this trope: at least in the images they produced of themselves, if not always in reality.
  • Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, leading many to speculate that he is descended from an elf (which may be true).
  • Túrin, who routinely gets mistaken for an elf by elves. So much so, that he earns the nickname "Adanedhel": Man-Elf. This is despite not actually being half-elven or descended from elves at all.
  • Voronwë as described by Tuor. Though this may just be the effect of having 1) recently escaped slavery and 2) gone a long time without seeing anyone at all. But Voronwë does have the rather exotic characteristic of silver hair: and he is unusual among his tribe because of this (the Noldor are typically dark haired).
  • And then of course there is the half-elf Dior, the most beautiful being ever. As he chose to be counted among Elves he wouldn't have facial hair at his age, and he presumably wears his hair long like all the rest of the elves in Doriath. Indeed, the half-elves in general are this: Elrond and his sons are also noted for their beauty, even by other elves. This is a-very much deliberate-inversion of the common at the time association between pure blood and beauty. Dior is not only pretty, but also a badass: he kills three Sons of Fëanor, before being killed by Maedhros (who is the Memetic Badass of the entire Legendarium). You don't want to mess with any of Tolkien's Long-Haired Pretty Boy characters, but that goes double for the half-elves due to the whole being descended from a Maia thing. They are pretty, and kind, because they are powerful: not despite it.
• Clip in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Literally the first thing one learns about Clip is that he's tall, thin and has long flowing midnight-black hair. According to himself, he has no problems finding a date when out carousing in Bluerose.
• Maximum Ride: Fang. He's a dark-haired, long-haired pretty boy. He's described as having long shaggy black hair that covers most of his face that he keeps tied into a ponytail, which is later cut to shoulder-length. In the first novel The Angel Experiment, he cuts his hair fairly much earlier than he does in the manga which showed him with extremely long hair for quite a few volumes.
• Merry Gentry They all have ridiculously long hair and are ridiculously good-looking.
• Nightfall (Series): Tristan is described as a Pretty Boy by both his friends and his enemies. And he has long, platinum-blond hair.
• Valli in Outlander Leander has long hair and is described as pretty by Leander, and even wears flowers and dresses. Not to be confused with a crossdresser, though, because it's not considered crossdressing to them.
• in A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel makes much of pretty revolutionary Camille Desmoulins habit of pushing his long locks out of his face. It is believed he got it from a prostitute.
• Prince Roger McClintock's long hair and prettyboy looks, combined with behaving like a useless fop in rebellion to his family, makes his bodyguards dismiss him as a useless load when they become stranded on Marduk as a result of a coup attempt, though as the series continues they realize their dismissal of him due to the appearance was a mistake.
• Rose of the Prophet: Matthew is described this way — he's very attractive, long-haired and beardless (as all men of his people are). This gets him mistaken for a lovely woman repeatedly, as it's so different from the gender norms of men in Tara-kan.
• Kuroki in Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note has shoulder-length hair—the longest allowed in Japanese Middle Grade Literature since that's the longest allowed for schoolboys there. He's the local Chick Magnet, combined with Tall, Dark, and Handsome and The Charmer traits.
• Roiben, an elf with "long pewter hair" from Tithe by Holly Black. The protagonist Kaye first encounters him in the rain and severely injured, i.e., sopping wet and covered in mud and his own blood, and even in that state Kaye describes him as "beautiful in a way that made her breath catch" (this is one of the reasons she knows he's a faerie).
• Whateley Universe: both Rosethorn (Romeo Laclavar) and, to a lesser extent, Nephandus (Jean-Armand du Chantrain), both of the Bad Seeds, qualify. Romeo is specifically described as being beautiful rather than handsome, and tends to lose his numerous romantic partners when they get tired of him being the pretty one in the relationship.^note He is described as the sort to pick moderately attractive but shy wallflowers, and making them realize that they were Beautiful All Along; once their confidence has been been boosted, they invariably leave him. As for Jay-Arm, the epithet 'evil white-haired pretty boy' is frequently applied to him even by his friends, though these are few as he is The Friend Nobody Likes to most of them.
• It's both stated and demonstrated several times that Penric from the Penric and Desdemona novellas is pretty enough to pass as a high-class courtesan with the right costume, and even without makeup he often gets mistaken for either a woman or much younger than his real age; his long, flowing, platinum-blonde hair explicitly plays a role in this, and both grown women and little girls jump at the chance to brush and braid it.
• Roshaun ke Nelaid of Young Wizards. His descriptions in both books in which he appears stress two things: that he's very, very pretty, and sports a blond ponytail long enough for him to sit on.

Live-Action TV

• In historical or fantasy Chinese Series every man in the cast usually has long hair (Truth in Television for ancient China), and the vast majority are pretty boys.
  • Fan Xian from Joy of Life wears his hair down for the better part of the first season, as do a couple other characters (most notably Yan Bingyun, for fans of The Untamed/Xiao Zhan).
  • Lin Chen in Nirvana in Fire has long flowing hair and a prettily handsome face. His flowing robe-like garments complete the androgynous look. The fact that he wears his hair down is also very unusual since Chinese men in this time period were supposed to always wear their hair up in public after reaching maturity.
• Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights has shoulder-length locks and is referred to as attractive by just about everyone on the show, including his head coach. At the very beginning of the series, he had already slept with half the rally girls and was in a relationship with one of the hottest girls in school. Then, he basically forced her to break up with him, had sex with the head cheerleader and successfully seduced a woman 16 years older than himself. Oh, and that was before he won state and started having threesomes on a weekly basis.
• Game of Thrones: Ser Loras Tyrell has wavy, light brown, shoulder-length hair in Season 1. George R.R. Martin even described the character as "the teen idol of Westeros" in an HBO featurette. Two lowborn Lannister soldiers consider the Knight of Flowers to be prettier than the Queen. Sansa Stark, Jeyne Poole, and Renly Baratheon — among others — like him because of his good looks.
• Julie and the Phantoms has Willie, Alex's ghost skater love interest who's introduced with a slow-motion hair flip and everything.
• Star Trek: Picard: Elnor has long, wavy black hair that almost reaches his waist, and combined with his delicate facial features and svelte frame, he's beautiful and elegant in a feminine way (heck, he's easily the prettiest male character in the franchise, Romulan or otherwise). He serves as a Foil to Narek, who's a short-haired, bearded Romulan Pretty Boy, so the length of Elnor's hair and being clean-shaven give him a more androgynous look than Narek.
• In Trust, J. Paul Getty III is a gorgeous teenager with long red curls. His mother compares him to an angel.
• Versailles: The most notable examples are King Louis XIV, his brother Philippe d'Orléans and the latter's lover the Chevalier de Lorraine, but really it's a whole Court Full of Long-Haired Pretty Boys. All of the noblemen at Versailles have long, wavy or curly hair, and most of the younger males are boyishly beautiful, including the extras with no dialogue such as the guys who are part of Philippe's entourage. (And please note that despite the era, we're talking hair-style hair, not wig-style hair. In real life, King Louis XIV had great hair when he was young. He started wearing wigs after losing his hair during a bout of typhoid fever when he was 20—thus starting the wig trend.)

Manhua

• Universal Love Grocery: Shiye, who keeps his hair tied, is in-universe considered very attractive, although this brings him more unwanted attention than anything else.
• Youth Gone Wild has several, though Lu Kai is most notable, completing the look with Guy Liner and lipstick.

Music

• Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, circa 2004, was very much this, considering his soft facial features and long dyed-black hair. Also counts as Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette.
• Young David Gilmour◊ of Pink Floyd, to the point where even guys swooned over him. He was a male model before pursuing a career in music.
• Queen's Roger Taylor during the '70s◊ who was once described as "With his baby-blond hair and deep blue eyes, Roger Meddows Taylor was almost too beautiful to be male." Unsurprisingly, he pulls off the crossdressing much better than his bandmates in the video for "I Want To Break Free".
• Russell Mael of Sparks had a particularly bushy version of this trope in the early 70's, made particularly evident in the video for "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us".
• Though his hair was nowhere near long by today's standards, famed orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski was seen as this by many in the early parts of the 20th Century. Spotlights would often be rigged over his podium specifically to illuminate his Einstein-like coif.
• Tears for Fears: From the band's inception in 1981 to around the spring of 1985, Curt Smith's long, curly locks were either tied up in thin braids◊ or a ponytail,◊ and combined with his gorgeous, cherubic facial features, he was a popular pop star pin-up. In fact, his androgynous beauty had once propelled him to the #7 spot on the "Most Fanciable Male Human Being" list.◊ Roland Orzabal (his best friend and fellow bandmate) has praised Curt's exceptional good looks, and the former has also divulged that the latter is his lifelong muse. ^note It's highly unusual that the chief source of inspiration for a heterosexual male musician is his (very pretty) male best friend instead of a female lover — Orzabal has never specifically named anyone else as his muse. TFF collaborator Michael Wainwright had genuinely mistaken a photo of Smith for that of an attractive woman.
  Wainwright: I just clicked on this pic because I thought it was a hot girl. It's not. It's a hot Curt. ("pervy" eyes emoji) @curtsmith #woops
• There's a couple of these guys in the video for "Hangin' In" by Tanya Tucker.
• Gackpo/Gakupo of Vocaloid fame, who has such long hair and feminine features that newcomers to the franchise sometimes mistake him for a woman. He's modeled after GACKT during his own years of being this trope, so it's understandable.
• Hair Metal guys from The '80s (e.g. Jon Bon Jovi, Kip Winger, Bret Michaels, Nuno Bettencourt, Jani Lane, Vince Neil, Sebastian Bach, etc.)
  • These men all owe something to David Lee Roth, who with Van Halen was the Hair Metal Trope Maker. His hair became increasingly wild throughout his career, but he introduced himself to the world with flowing blond waves◊.
• And the genre that displaced Hair Metal, Grunge, although created as an antithesis of the aforementioned genre, offered two great, albeit unkempt, examples in Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder (Chris Cornell is an arguable case, given he didn't look boyish).
• All three Hanson brothers during the height of their fame in the late 1990s - particularly Taylor, who was often mistaken for female (his gender-ambiguous name didn't help).
• All four of the Gen-Z rock band Unsung, particularly their guitarist.
• Country music prodigy Jack Barksdale, whose elf-like appearance, coupled with sunglasses and a red snow hat, have become his signature style on stage.

Myths & Religion

• Cu Chulainn of Celtic Mythology is described in the The Cattle Raid of Cooley as as a beautiful young man with long, multi-hued hair that fell past his shoulders.
• Krishna is known for his long hair and his beauty, as is the god Vishnu whom he incarnates from. One of Krishna's names literally translates into "of beautiful hair".

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Benedict is described as unconventionally attractive. Much of the attractive part comes from his luxuriously thick, shoulder-length hair, which he considers one of his best attributes.

Tabletop Games

• In the background material for Blood Bowl, the High Elf Star Catcher Bo Gallanté is thought to be the most handsome player ever to have taken to the Blood Bowl pitch. Sporting long blonde hair, that has won him Lauriel Elflock's Fabulous Follicles Award three years running, Bo is so good-looking that his mere presence is liable to drive his less attractive foes into fits of rage, driving them to fight as hard as possible to spoil his pretty face.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Sigvald the Magnificent is noted for his great beauty and long blonde hair, and once went to war with the High Elves because he'd heard they had prettier hair than him. He's also the champion of Slaanesh, and one of the most vicious, sadistic, and self-centered monsters in a setting where that's a job requirement.

Theatre

• When Dionysus disguises himself as a human in Bacchae, King Pentheus goes on a poetic rant about how beautiful he is, paying particular attention to his long, silky hair, which he then threatens to cut off.
• David Tennant wore hair extensions◊ to achieve this effect when he played the title role in Richard II.
• Tanz Der Vampire
  • Herbert von Krolock. The actor's makeup almost always makes him a pretty boy and in several productions he has long, loose, flowing blonde hair.
  • It's a fair guess to assume that Count von Krolock (Herbert's father) also used to be one of these when he was younger. Even if his face is now heavily lined, he's still really handsome and he has long black hair.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed II: Ezio. His hair is usually in a ponytail, but does reach his shoulders. And over the course of the series he proves himself to be quite the ladies man.
• Brain Dead 13: Computer technician and Idiot Hero Lance Galahad.
• Many Castlevania protagonists when designed by Ayami Kojima, with the most prominent examples being Alucard and his Expy Juste. Trevor and Richter also fall somewhere between this trope and Hunk. The rest have either hair too short to qualify for this trope, or are manly Hunks.
• Chrono Trigger: The boss Flea. The chest padding in the game art doesn't help.
• Corvo in the first Dishonored game, though a bit more rugged compared to most others on this page. It's notable in comparison to other male characters in the game (and even some female), who either have short hair or are completely bald.
• Cookie Run has quite a few of them. These include Rockstar Cookie, Vampire Cookie, Rasberry Mousse Cookie, Yougurt Cream Cookie, Earl Grey Cookie, and Snake Person Tree Cookie.
  • Spin-Off game Cookie Run: Kingdom also has a few of these. There's Madeleine Cookie and Eclair Cookie, and Affogato's hair is long enough for a shot braid.
• In Cyberpunk 2077, there's Johnny Silverhand. He has shoulder-length, voluminous black hair, just like his Ink-Suit Actor, Keanu Reeves. He also has quite a lot of admirers, in- and out-of-universe.
• Elden Ring:
  • Radagon of the Golden Order, insomuch as you can tell from the shattered remains of his face, had very nice, chiseled features and wore his hair in a long red braid that reached to his chest.
  • His son Miquella embodies it even more, as he's forever stuck in a child's body and so has very feminine looks, plus very long blonde hair that if the Shadow of the Erdtree pre-release image is any indication, reaches past his knees.
• Ensemble Stars! has three: Large Ham stage performer Wataru, Samurai fan Souma (who normally keeps his up in a ponytail), and the highly confident and commanding ex-fine member Nagisa. Rei and Kaoru also have shoulder-length hair, though in their case it's highly layered and much more masculine. And though Hajime's hair is much shorter, its bob-shaped style looks so feminine that he's the only one listed here to routinely invoke Viewer Gender Confusion. (On the other hand, the character with the hyper-femme Ambiguous Gender Identity actually has some of the shortest hair in the game.)
• Fatal Fury: Terry and Andy Bogard. Andy is more notorious since he lets his long hair loose while Terry ties it up in a ponytail instead. Terry falls somewhere between both this trope and Hunk. Andy is quite muscular too, but has a more slender and lean physique compared to older of the Bogard brothers. In the Anime, both are long-haired Bishounens.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Lucius from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has long blond hair and is pretty enough that Serra mistakes him for a girl at first.
  • Libra from Fire Emblem: Awakening has long hair that contributes to his feminine appearance and people mistake him for a woman on a regular basis.
  • Takumi from Fire Emblem Fates has long, flowing hair down to his waist, which he keeps in a high ponytail (so it is likely even longer). In an interview, the character designer explicitly noted that he was designed to appeal to the female audience.
  • Subaki from the same game also has long flowing hair worn in a ponytail. It doesn't hurt that he's an Expy of Cordelia, one of the most beautiful women in the previous game.
  • Forrest, also from Fates, is an extreme example. He has long hair in an elaborate curly style, and he's so pretty that several characters (including Elise, some bandits, Dwyer in one of the DLC levels, and apparently a good percent of the army in his Shigure supports) all comment on it.
  • Both Luthier and Leon in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia are long-haired bishonen. Leon in particular seems to be playing it up, since he accentuates his looks with makeup and claims to have a strict routine to keep himself looking pretty.
  • Ferdinand von Aegir, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester and Yuri Leclerc from Fire Emblem: Three Houses all grow their hair out over the five-year timeskip, though Ferdinand reveals he didn't do it to make a fashion statement and is in fact upset people keep assuming so. Rather, he's been so busy with the war that he just keeps neglecting to get it cut.
• While they identify as non-binary, Testament of Guilty Gear stands out for having long black hair and a very feminine looking attire, which has prompted a few characters to comment on their beauty.
  • Ky Kiske starts growing out his hair in Guilty Gear 2: Overture, which is implied to be the result of him gaining gear cells from his relationship with Dizzy. He ties it back into a Slipknot Ponytail in Xrd that comes loose when injured badly enough. Ky himself is depicted at his most androgynous in these games, and has always been noted to be charismatically handsome in-universe.
• .hack//G.U. games: Endrance, crossing into Dude Looks Like a Lady territory. Also, Kuhn.
• Infinite Space: A few male characters (including the main character), most notably Lord Roth, who has waist-length hair.
• Jak and Daxter: Jak has long hair in the second game, and is mentioned by Keira as being handsome after he admits to missing his child self, and she admits he'll grow up to look handsome. He cuts it short in the third game to survive in the desert.
• Kingdom Hearts: Xehanort, Xemnas, "Ansem", Saïx, Marluxia, Riku (until he cut it off in 3D)... Yeah, Kingdom Hearts is the master of Long Haired hotties.
• The King of Fighters: Duo Lon.
  • Benimaru Nikaido has the long hair and the good looks, but his Shock and Awe powers make his hair stand up. He lets his hair down once or twice, though.
• Lies of P: If he has already accrued sufficient humanity before the mid-point of the game, P's hair starts to grow out after speaking to Sophia post-King of Puppets boss fight, with him ending the story with it going to shoulder-length (and potentially gaining Mystical White Hair if a certain choice is made after the first main boss fight at the last location of the game). Being already very pretty in and out-of-universe helps greatly too.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty introduces Raiden, with shoulder-length blonde hair that gets him mistaken for a girl and questioned as to its status as a wig. He irritatedly clarifies that his hair is, in fact, real.
• Mortal Kombat: Raiden doesn't initially come off as this, but take away his hat and cloak, and you're left with a rather pretty man with a glorious mane of white hair◊. Partially lampshaded in Mortal Kombat 9 where, upon learning they are fighting for the safety of Earth, Johnny Cage asks Raiden, "What should we do, besides standing around looking pretty?"
• Many male characters in the mobile RPG Onmyoji, being set in the Heian period and all, but most notably the protagonist Abe no Seimei whose white hair reaches his knees.
  • Also the Hair Eater who takes it further with his hair's trailing on the ground.
  • Even little boys aren't exempt from this rule, examples being Shirodōji and Kurodōji, leading many fans to mistake them for girls. The fact that they sport the Hime Cut doesn't help.
• Super Punch-Out!! features Kabuki dancing boxer Heike Kagero, who has thigh-length hair. He is one of the most feminine and appearance-conscious boxers, and can use his hair as a whip to attack the player.
• Stardew Valley has Elliott, a handsome, long-haired aspiring writer who lives in a shack on the beach in Pelican Town. He's one of the villagers you can marry in the Romance Sidequest.
• Star Ocean: Ioshua Jerand from the first game, and Dias Flac from The Second Story/Second Evolution. Meanwhile, Albel Nox from Till the End of Time has twin rattails that reach past his waist.
• In Star Sweep, Rank is a typical bishonen with long blue hair, and is so attractive Tia immediately asks him out on a date.
• Story of Seasons has been fond of this on marriageable bachelors starting with Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility. Julius (who is so pretty in the Japanese version he wonders if his love interest thinks he's a crossdresser) and Kendall (the resident Hospital Hottie doctor of Tree Of Tranquility and Animal Parade'' come to mind.
• Street Fighter:
  • Vega has long hair that goes past his waist. His default outfit is him shirtless, revealing his muscular physique and wearing a mask to protect his handsome face.
• Tales of Vesperia: Yuri "Pheromone Boy" Lowell. A man even offers him a drink until he realizes he's male.
• Touken Ranbu: Juzumaru Tsunetsugu has the longest hair in the cast, and he's also a delicate-looking Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Twisted Wonderland: Vil Schoenheit is very handsome, pays constant attention to his own beauty, and behaves in a stereotypically feminine way. To emphasize this, he has shoulder-length wavy hair that sometimes gets done up in various styles.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, we have Dunban, a Handicapped Badass with long hair, and who some female fans consider to be the most attractive guy in the game.
• Akira Nishikiyama of Yakuza, which is a series that definitely doesn't tend to have pretty boys or Bishōnen of any type. However, he's notably prettier and more delicate in appearance than most of the other male characters, and has always had long hair. Though he does go from wearing it down around his face to pushing it back in a very Squicky way, namely by smoothing his hair back with the blood of someone he's just killed.
• Several lore characters in the Warcraft games. Certainly Illidan Stormrage, particularly his depiction on the box art for the Legion expansion: and indeed it's practically an Enforced Trope for male Night Elves. Also Anduin Wrynn, Arthas Menethil, and Kael'thas Sunstrider: all deeply emotional characters, known for being kind. Indeed, it's practically a trope for Blizzard Entertainment at this point to have a pretty male blond character go through a Face–Heel Turn and come out with (significantly less pretty) white hair. They did it with Leoric in Diablo too. Can be invoked by the player especially on male humans and elves if they choose to have no facial hair. Trolls and orcs avert the trope due to not really having gendered hairstyles: neither race tends to have very thick hair, so both sexes wear it long and in much the same styles. Tauren and dwarves avert the trope because neither gender particularly looks feminine: although neither race is without beauty. Can't really be invoked on goblins due to there not being many long hair styles for men, nor on draenei because of the extreme sexual dimorphism, nor on gnomes because neither gender particularly looks masculine or feminine. Players can even invoke the white-haired ruined beauty effect on male undead, at least if you choose to have most of the face intact.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Klavier and Kristoph Gavin from Apollo Justice.
  • Nahyuta Sahdmadhi in Spirit of Justice is probably the prettiest male character in Ace Attorney, and definitely has the longest hair. Braided, it reaches at least to his thighs.
• Aoba Seragaki, the protagonist of the Boys' Love game DRAMAtical Murder, is quite pretty and has long hair because it hurts him to touch his hair, let alone cut it. In Koujaku's good ending, Aoba lets Koujaku cut his hair since the sensations in his hair completely disappeared after Toue is defeated.
• Zen in Mystic Messenger has waist-long white hair bound in a low ponytail and is very attractive, so much he admires himself and takes many selfies. He also has many admirers, mostly female. It also helps that Jaehee comments how handsome he is, and Yoosung is jealous of his good looks.
  • Vanderwood also has long hair, reaching down to around his pecs, and if you should so choose to, during V's route, you can tell him that you think he's "good-looking," to which he'll be very surprised and very flustered.
• Arsenik in War: 13th Day. His hair falls past his waist, and he's quite the unwitting heartbreaker. In his route, not only Ambrosia likes him but Wildfire as well. In fact, Wildfire has the world's longest-standing crush on him. She even tries to make him jealous by going out with someone else. Chase also mentions that Arsenik has admirers. And if it couldn't be made any clearer, Brooks says this about him:
  Brooks: I’ve seen that tight blonde you’ve been eyeing. Now, he is fine.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Lie Ren has pretty pink eyes and a slim, feminine facial structure. His body is slender and, while he's just barely taller than most of the female students, he's shorter than most of the men. For the first three volumes, his hair is tied back into a long ponytail with a pink streak that's the same colour as his eyes. In Volume 4, the pink streak is darker, almost purple, and he wears his hair unbound. It's so long it almost reaches his butt and emphasises his slight, feminine appearance.

Webcomics

• Angel Down: Bernard was a Camp Bi when he was young, and wore his hair in a long curly mop.
• A-gnosis:
  • Dionysos is portrayed as this. All the gods are implied to be good-looking, but he's taking it up to eleven, wearing earrings, flowers in his hair, and bracelets.
  • Ganymede, too, is portrayed like this, naturally. After all, Zeus gave him the job as cupbearer of the gods because he was so very pretty. He wears his hair open, and doesn't wear a shirt.
• A Broken Winter: While both Kuroda and Reisen have very long hair, Reisen lets his fly in true pretty-boy style. Kuroda keeps his in a neat tail.
• Avania: The fabulous Agent Valenvarius Narscio and his flowing golden locks.
• El Goonish Shive: Noah has long hair, strongly implied to include long furry antennae in addition to scalp hair, which he keeps in a ponytail. Due to that and his other androgynous traits other characters are unsure of his gender.
• Girl Genius: Maxim, who was originally meant to be nothing more than a joke sketch of a Pretty Boy Jagermonster.
• Lovely Lovecraft: Iranon, who has flowing blond hair adorned with flowers and wears rather feminine robes.
• Madame Outlaw: Heath is a handsome and fine-featured Seminole man who wears his black hair long. It's a plot point: the Montesquieu rivals, the Hahns, easily clock his claim of being a soldier as fake, because a real military man wouldn't have long hair.
• Ménage à 3:
  • Erik is a blond, sunglasses-wearing rich guy who '80s hair-rock fan Zii considers a perfect boyfriend, for his looks and many other reasons.
  • Wrestling trainer Damien also carries off the style in a way that is perhaps not unknown in pro wrestling. He is also habitually flirtatious, and clearly fully aware of the effect he has on some of his female students, using it to keep them paying their membership fees.
  • The spin-off comic, Sticky Dilly Buns, features Angel, who has the hair, who plays in a glam-rock revival band called "Pretty Boyz With Electric Toyz", and who the lead character correctly identifies as a romantic rival on sight. However, it subsequently turns out that Angel is actually "gender fluid" and indeed presenting as a slim, attractive woman on some days.
• Monsterful: Jacob Bottom Button, the Rag doll boy.
• In Moxie, Choco has long brown hair that is pulled back in a ponytail.
• Paradis has angels as this, specifically Gabriel.
• In Stand Still, Stay Silent, Reynir has a braid reaching below his waist and is one of the characters whose gender is the most often mistaken by the readers.
• All the males in Sword Princess Amaltea have hair that go beyond their shoulders. This been because the story's world is a Matriarchy and men have female roles, including being pretty. This makes Prince Ossian Boyish Short Hair more significant and shocking.
• Todd Allison & the Petunia Violet: Meredith has long dark hair, has been the cause of much Viewer Gender Confusion since his first appearance, and was called "impossibly beautiful" by Rolls. Elijah also noted (admittedly out of continuity) how Meredith was more popular with girls when they were younger, partially due to having a more handsome face.
• Unsounded: Emne Toma's latest pretty boy toy is Karl, an attractive man who rarely wears a shirt and has hair cascading to his waist.
• In The Wolf at Weston Court flirtatious dandy Elgin has long flowing red hair.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Azha, who Yokoka mistakes for a girl, and Copycat's initial form, who Mao correctly identifies as "he".

Western Animation

• Ben 10: Kevin Levin, whose black hair falls to his shoulders. He grows up into a tall, muscular young man who's had multiple girls gain a crush on him.
• Castlevania (2017): Alucard's design is based on his classic Symphony of the Night look. He is very attractive and has long, golden hair.
• Gargoyles: Puck, in his real fey form, is perhaps more "cute" than "pretty", but his long white hair and puckish, youthful features still meant that he was considered one of the most attractive characters in this show.
• Jorel's Brother: Jorel is a handsome boy with smooth, amazing long hair, being loved by almost every kid in the town. Inverted with his older brother Nico, who uses his long hair to hide how ugly he is.
• The Legend of Vox Machina:
  • Vax'ildan looks somewhat less elfeminate than Tolkien's elves, because he's a half-elf, because of his rough-and-tumble mercenary lifestyle, and because of his disdain for his racist elven father. Nevertheless, he kept the traditional long hairstyle (even if it visually blends into his fur cloak), and the show's creators emphasized that it was important to them that Vax should get a character design that would make him look young and more emotionally vulnerable than his twin sister (despite being in his late 20s) and to visually convey his supportive, sweet and "innocent" personality, as well as his speedster fighting style. As a result, he is lithe and very handsome, in a "goth twink who can't be bothered with styling" sort of way, and lots of female viewers find him attractive. Gilmore, Keyleth and the goddess of death all agree. And then he gets raven wings.
  • Artagan, the true identity of the satyr Garmelie is a tall, beautiful and clearly male-voiced Archfey with a long mane of wavy red hair, wearing gender-conceiling green robes. This character is seen only very briefly in season 2, but it's obvious that he will become much more important later in the story.
• In Steven Universe, flashbacks of the titular character's dad Greg Universe in his youth showed he was a rather attractive rock "star" and that his pompadour-like hair went past his knees like it does in the present, although he now has a bald spot.
• Sym-Bionic Titan: Lance's black hair goes down to his shoulders, and he is incredibly popular in school, especially with the girls.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Aqualad has long, black hair that runs down to his shoulders, a lean muscular physique and is consider very handsome as both Raven and Starfire get a crush on him the first time they see him.
  • As an adult in an alternate future, Robin is shown to have long hair. This is different from in the comics, where Nightwing has had long hair but it was a mullet instead of standard long hair. Robin is a Chick Magnet as a teenager so it's certain he'd be one as an adult as well.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender, Prince Lotor of the Galra Empire has waist-length white hair and when compared to his father Zarkon, who looks more alien, his fine facial features perfectly stand out, helped by the fact that he's half-Altean on his mother Honerva's (also known as Haggar) side.

Real Life

• It was the norm for practically all men in ancient China to have long hair because cutting one's hair was seen as being extremely disrespectful to one's parents under Confucianism. Only non-Sinicized ethnic minorities, Buddhist monks, and criminals would cut their hair. In the case of criminals, they often had their hair cut as a form of punishment. Confucianism also influenced a masculine ideal among Chinese men known as "scholar masculinity". Most of Chinese history preferred scholar masculinity - a style which emphasized men be beautiful, intelligent, youthful, frail, and pedantic. This Confucian gender role also explains why neighboring Korea and Japan are similarly obsessed with pretty boys.
• Ancient Spartan warriors wore their hair long as it was said to make a handsome man more beautiful and an ugly one more fearsome. It was often braided and wound around the head so as to fit neatly under a helmet.
• Over the course of the 17th century in Europe, long hair on men gradually became more and more fashionable (and longer and longer,) as can be seen in many portraits from the period, such as this portrait◊ of two young British lords or this◊ portrait of Sir Robert Worsley. This is ultimately the origin of the Judicial Wig; as the increasing expectations of how long and curly or wavy hair should be made it simpler to wear wigs instead, until by the end of the century wigs themselves became the fashion of high society (and by extension government officials like judges) instead.
• William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody walked a fine line between this trope and Barbarian Longhair. He earned the nickname "Pahaska" (meaning "long hair") from his Native American friends who were otherwise unaccustomed to seeing a white man with such hair.
• This look defined the skateboarding culture of the 1970s, as exemplified by the likes of Tony Hawk and Stacy Peralta. It has remained common among skateboarders ever since.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in perhaps the largest comeback since the 1960s of boys and younger men growing their hair out, due in large part to hair salon closures and remote school/work, coupled with the continued online availability of hair care products. Forums dedicated to men growing out their hair, such as the subreddit FierceFlow, saw a huge traffic increase in 2020-21. After the pandemic subsided, many decided to keep their long hair.

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