Basic Trope: The longer the hair, the more feminine the character.
- Straight: Among the eponymous Legends of Troperia, Alice the gentle and girly White Magician Girl has waist-length blonde hair; the rough and tough Boudica (no relation) the Barbarian Queen sports a buzzcut; Charlie The Red Mage wears a moptop; while Dmitri The Paladin of Svarog boasts a Bald Head of Toughness.
- Exaggerated: Alice's is The Paragon of feminine behavior and her hair reaches down to her ankles and drags behind her when she walks.
- Downplayed: Alice wears her hair at a practical shoulder length and is moderately feminine.
- Justified: The mean anagen phase
duration for women is magically linked to their physical and psychological health in LoT universe, so long hair makes them incredibly attractive to men. - Inverted: Alice wears a Boyish Short Hair to go with her Tomboy personality.
- Gender Inverted: Long hair is considered a symbol of extreme masculinity, so Alice instead is bald, Boudica wears her hair shoulder-length and wild, Charlie's meager moptop garners comments about his sexuality, while Dmitri's ponytail reaches all the way to the floor.
- Subverted: After setting out on adventure, Alice finds long hair extremely unpractical and cuts it short—despite remaining the girliest member of the team. Boudica, in the meantime, doesn't get a chance to fix her buzzcut and, to her endless irritation, ends up with a luscious dark mane that Alice grows crankily jealous of.
- Double Subverted: Alice learns the Polymorph Hair spell and restores the status quo.
- Parodied: Prince Edmund sees a slender figure at the top of the hill with long blonde hair flowing in the wind. Assuming it must be a lovely lady, Edmund runs up and gives the person a tap on the shoulder, who turns around—it's Frederick the Bard, a scruffy man with long unkempt hair.
- Zig Zagged: Alice isn't particularly masculine or feminine, and doesn't consider her waist-length hair to be a feminine trait. She just likes having long hair.
- Averted: All four protagonists' hair are about the same length.
- Enforced: Hair-length gender coding is enforced upon the developers by the publisher who doesn't want to alienate the focus testers with unusual gender presentation.
- Lampshaded: In a conversation with Charlie, Dmitri describes his ideal wife in terms suspiciously similar to Alice's appearance, going into a particular detail about her hair.
- Invoked: Alice wears her hair long because she wishes to be perceived as a Proper Lady.
- Exploited: When infiltrating an enemy city, the party decides to send in Alice disguised as a peasant girl, judging that her hair makes her look feminine enough to blind the guards to the real danger she poses.
- Defied: After being on the receiving end of the Male Gaze one time too often, Alice cuts her hair to put a stop to it.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- An enemy manages to grab Alice By the Hair, nearly bringing about a Total Party Kill and forcing a realization that there are ways to stay feminine without endangering the rest of the party.
- Long hair is difficult to wash, gives you massive bed head, and is generally a pain in the ass to actually maintain.
- Reconstructed: Alice uses a helmet and a Compressed Hair spell to maintain a hair length she is psychologically comfortable with while avoiding its disadvantages.
- Played For Laughs: Alice's hair is so long, she keeps tripping on it, falling flat on her face as a Running Gag.
- Played For Drama: Alice suffers a Traumatic Haircut at the hands of the villain.
Back to Long Hair Is Feminine.
