Not Tropeworthy: Brainy Brunette

This trope essentially boils down to a smart character with brown hair. This sounds like People Sit on Chairs to me. I think it is different from Dumb Blonde and Fiery Redhead, since blonde and red hair are more rare and authors often decide to give their characters these hair colors for a reason. Brown is one of the most common hair colors. I think that many examples could be coincidences.

Edited by GoodNewsEvry1 on Oct 21st 2020 at 7:24:00 AM

Opening, but, ~Good News Evry 1, it'd be nice if we had a Wick Check to demonstrate "Brown is one of the most common hair colors. I think that many examples could be coincidences".

I think this is definitely a trope. This is one of those Seen It A Million Times tropes: in a cast with several female characters, the darkest-haired one (who is usually also the plainer, or less sexualised) will be the smartest. In those cases where she's not, that's often treated as a subversion.

EDIT: Also, while red hair is somewhat rare, blond hair really isn't that rare (depending on your geographic area, of course).

Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Oct 22nd 2020 at 5:36:35 AM

I think this is notable because of how it fits into the Blonde, Brunette, Redhead trio and the stereotypes that fit into each. Blonde has the stereotype of Dumb Blonde, and redhead has the stereotype of Fiery Redhead, so thus brunette gets stuck with a stereotype of its own as a result. Even in cases where the Blonde, Brunette, Redhead trio doesn’t exist, this stereotype still applies.

I think the main difference is that the "dumb blonde" and "fiery readhead" are real-life stereotypes — misguided as they may be — but "brainy brunette" isn't such a common thing, if a thing at all. That's not a stereotype that comes to mind for most people when they see a brown-haired person.

In cases where brunettes fill the "smart one" role, I wonder how much of it is purposeful, how much is coincidental, and how much of it is "well, we have the dumb blonde and the bad-tempered redhead, what role is left for the brunette?"

Maybe this is a trope, but without some more evidence, I'm not convinced that this is a trope and not another meaningless "physical characteristic + character attribute" thing.

and Very good points.

Brown hair=intelligence is not a stereotype I heard about before going on this so yeah it’s not really a common association. I do think it’s a trope but not every character that is brunette and of above average intelligence belongs on the page and it gets muddier when multiple characters are listed. We really need a wick check though.

Edited by MacronNotes on Oct 22nd 2020 at 9:28:38 AM

I disagree, I think there is an association between brown hair and intelligence. Quoth Wikipedia:

I think the wick check really is necessary here. This could be a case like with Badass Gay, which used to be "character is badass and also gay".

Voting on templocking until a wick check is provided.

I think the association is less “brunets are smart” but more “brunets are sensible”; they are less flighty than the blonde and more tempered than the redhead, but seen as less “appealing” than either (thinking specifically of the stereotypical mousy brunette self-insert type of character). The real “smart brunet” stereotypes are probably Black and Nerdy, Asian and Nerdy, and Bollywood Nerd, all minority groups predisposed to dark hair anyway.

That said, this is a huge trope and I don’t want to start hacking away without a wick check as proof. We can say it’s a meaningless association anecdotally, but if a lot of examples have some tropeworthy use we can retool or TLP down the line, that’s better than uninformed cutting.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 22nd 2020 at 4:36:04 PM

I think this is absolutely a real life stereotype, if only in opposition to Dumb Blonde. How many female nerd characters can you name that don’t have dark hair?