Basic Trope: If someone is bald, they have (or are assumed to have) a serious illness.
- Straight: Alice is a young woman who is totally bald. She is later revealed to have leukemia.
- Exaggerated: ???
- Downplayed: Alice is diagnosed at the end of the work, and we only see her hair begin to thin/fall out. It is acknowledged that she will soon be bald.
- Justified: Alice is bald due to the chemotherapy.
- Inverted: Bald Head of Toughness
- Subverted:
- Alice is diagnosed with cancer and starts mentally preparing herself to loose her hair. She ends up with a course of treatment other than chemotherapy, and does not loose her hair.
- Alice fears that her treatment will cause hair loss, but the drug used on her barely caused any hair to fall out.
- Double Subverted: Alice's leukemia went into remission years ago. She's bald to make a fashion statement... but that turned out to be a lie she told everyone so they would treat her normally. Her cancer actually returned, and she's bald because of the chemo.
- Parodied:
- Alice's hair spontaneously falls out when she's diagnosed, before she starts chemo.
- Upon learning she has gastritis, Alice shaves her head in despair.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: No bald characters are sick, and vice versa.
- Enforced: Alice initially had shoulder-length wavy hair, but the editor didn't think she had a distinctive enough appearance, and told the artist to make her bald so the audience would remember she's the character with cancer.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Upon learning that she has leukemia, Alice shaves her head to own the look.
- Exploited: Alice is bald for some other reason, but pretends to have cancer so people feel bad for her.
- Defied: Alice refuses therapies that will make her lose her hair.
- Discussed: Alice shaves her head; Bob tells her she looks like a cancer patient.
- Conversed: ???
Back to Baldness Means Sickness.
