Discussion Main / NeverBareheaded

She's holding it down onto her head; it's good enough. Illustrating every part of the trope would probably require a collage of one character.

Alright. Fine by me.

I disagree. Not only it's JAFAAC, it's also hard to tell if she's holding it down to her head or removing it, which is the very opposite of what we want to portray here.

We could easily portray it better by showing a character wearing a hat in some kind of situation where they shouldn't (taking a bath, wedding, etc.).

For the record, Beetle Bailey definitely overlaps the "Please Keep Your Hat On (for characters who really don't want to show off whatever is under the hat)" trope. In one strip daily set in the time prior to Beetle joining the army, Beetle's college professor angrily demanded Beetle remove his hat. The resulting sight was enough to make the professor immediately regret and reverse his demand! (Personally, I think the trope inherently adds even more mystique to a character if his/her eyes are never shown because of whatever headgear he/she wears).

P.S.—I think a big subtrope of "Keep Your Hat On" you've overlooked is something that would be named something like "Losing 'his' hat reveals he's a she!". Very often it's an example of "Fighting Joe discovers the enemy he's battling is really a Fighting JANE". I would guess this subtrope is most prominent in the Western genera (for some odd reason, the ambushed hero cowpoke will generally sneak up on "gunman", but instead of instantly dispatching the foe (or even ordering "him" to drop it) like the audience would expect as in just about any other similar scene, the hero will jump on the shooter and then discover in the tussle that the cowpoke is NOT one of the boys), but this also can show up a lot in about any action genera, so I think it deserves its own category. Just a few examples off the top of my head:

-In the comic book Lost in Space, the Space Family Robinson (NO relation to Irwin Allen's TV show) had recently come across some people from the Middle Ages and somehow revived them into the present. They take some knights on their next scouting trip (but they're unaware one of their maidens seeking some excitement swiped Sir Robert's armor while he was in the shower, and took his place). They come upon a ruin of an advanced civilization, but the "dead" structures suddenly come to life when the party members are assaulted by giant rolling balls, and when "Sir Robert" is tripped by one of them, the ball opens up metal tentacles with a pair of feet, two clawed hands, and a literal dish head. When the robot reaches to catch and subdue her, instead the grab at her head only brings away the empty helmet and exposes her blond locks to everyone.

-An actual Middle Age legend, in which a disguised Robin Hood encounters a boy, and there's a standoff which ends in a coming to blows. The result is Robin discovers the "boy" is really his own sweetheart Marian (when he knocks her hat off in some accounts, and in others she stops fighting and strips away her guise when Robin breaks off and identifies himself).

-In one of his comic books, the Batman seeks to learn the identity of a trenchcoated burglar—and when he snatches the concealing men's hat away, he finds "him" to be a woman he met earlier.

-When Sgt. Rock is attacked by a German soldier at the start of one of his adventures, the sergeant's surprise countermove sends his opponent sailing helplessly through the air, and the helmet is clearly parting company with a fraulein as it leaves a long revealing trail of hair in its wake.

-In one Gundum series, the hero rushes out of his school class when earth attacks his space colony. He comes upon a mysterious visitor to his class, and is trying to stop "him" from rushing into danger when they are suddenly buffeted by a nearby explosion. As both open their eyes and gingerly get up, the hero realize his companion's vanished cap had concealed that she was really a girl.

-In one Digimon series, a main character in the earlier Digimon Fusion series, Nene Amano, has returned to earth by the Hunters season and begun an idol career doing concerts and making movies. One of the movies she shoots in Hong Kong has her playing a part of a young kid trying to survive on the streets by hiding under a baggy cap, shirt, and suspendered pants. In one scene of her movie she fights off a gang of toughs, and her crew films the sequence to eventually expose her clipped bang and split long ponytail, through her hat failing to follow Nene's sudden ducking down to avoid a blow.

-When Kirito was fighting the Integrity Knights midway through the current SAO Alicization season, one is devastated when Kirito knocks off his opponent's helmet and exposes her secret.

Of course concealing one's sex is not the only reason for using a hat to hide something. A girl could easily be exposed for having her hair in a terrible tangled mare's nest that she wasn't able to style and brush properly (even some guys could resort to this if their haircut is bad enough), or the head covering could be hiding some other secret. Early in SAO, Asuna hid her status as heir to the actual company bringing out the new virtual game by keeping to herself, and covering her hair and face under a concealing hooded cloak, until it was destroyed in battle. And in the most recent chapter of the holy grail war history in Fate, that TV series of Waver solving mysteries had the lord taking on a local girl as apprentice, who absolutely HATED not wearing a hood to conceal her hair and face, because she had been forced by her people to erase her own features in order to resemble Saber's instead. Or it could be something as simple in RWBY as a robbery leading to one of the bystanders being accosted by the robbers for her non-cooperation, but in yanking down the heroine's hood they find out she was too absorbed by the music in her headphones to pay attention to what was going on in the store!

Like I said, just few examples I'm tossing at the top of my head. I'm sure if you really dive into it, you'll find way too many not to justify its own trope category.