History Tropers / Naturalironist

No longer active on TV Tropes. Here is what my bio used to say:

!!Re-written:
* TwoDecadesBehind
* KnightOfCerebus
* SetBehindTheScenes

# '''Music''': Musicians often choose their visual look carefully. But some don't, and musicians' appearances are just what they happen to look like! And even if chosen carefully, musicians' appearances are often just to look cool or different, not convey specific things about characterization. Trope the real people in bands' appearances with caution. {{Music Video}}s are a different story. A highly concise and deliberate visual medium, appearance is often all you get for characters in a music video, rocketing them up to just above the Live Action Film rung.
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[[folder: Funny Afro Rewrite]]
Afros, those curly, bouffant hairdos most commonly sported by people with African ancestry, have a long history in comedy. Since the 19th century, {{Non Ironic Clown}}s have sported large, curly, often brightly-colored afros (a tradition that may have its roots in MinstrelShows), and afro hairstyles continue to play a role in both gag-based and character-based humor.

Definitely an EvolvingTrope, as both styles and attitudes about race have changed over time. In TheSeventies, afros surged in popularity in the United States with the Black Pride movement to become a defining element of SeventiesHair. As such, comedic characters with afros cropped up often as parodies of the then-popular AfroAsskicker trope or as [[UncleTomfoolery wise-cracking Black sterotypes]]. As both the afro hairstyle and this type of [[DiscreditedTrope racial humor]] fell [[DeaderThanDisco out of style]], the role of afro'd characters shifted. Due to its unpopularity, the style became associated with the DiscoDan and other nerdy, uncool ButtMonkey types. In order to avoid UnfortunateImplications and to serve as a joke in itself, afros were increasingly worn by white characters (i.e. the so-called "Jewfro"). In American comedy today, afros tend to be used in one of two ways: to show a character is TheWackyGuy or otherwise weird and kooky, or as a quick gag where characters wear outlandish afro wigs to increase the absurdity of a situation.

The trope is very much alive in Japan, which doesn't have the same taboos about racial humor as the US. Such characters tend to be a FunnyForeigner. As a side note, in Japanese just the ''word'' "afro" is [[InherentlyFunnyWords rather funny]] because it just happens to sounds like "afuro", which rather accurately means "overflowing"; hell, this pun is behind [[Anime/AfroSamurai the title of one show]]. Or, it could sound like "a {{furo|Scene}}" (yes, at least [[Manga/NininGaShinobuden one anime]] has made that very joke).

See also HollywoodNerd, ModernMinstrelsy, SoulBrotha, CurlyHairIsUgly.

When writing examples, [[DontExplainTheJoke be sure to explain the joke.]] There's nothing inherently funny about afros, and examples should explain how the character's hair contributes to the humor.
[[/folder]]

Here because, despite my claims to the contrary, I guess I really did love high school English class. In real life I am a paleontologist. I'm interested in entry-pimping lesser-known works and helping improve appearance tropes. I am most often found in the [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/conversations.php?topic=renames Trope Repair Shop and the left side of the forums.]] One of the last remaining with [[JustForFun/TheArchiveOfBellicoseLexiconEntities FORKS]] leanings.