(cache) White Haired Pretty Girl - Television Tropes & Idioms

In Real Life, white hair indicates either age, bleach or albinism. Not so in fiction, where white hair can occur naturally on women of any age. For a given value of "natural", that is: white locks tend to mark their owner as special in some way. Maybe her hair is indicative of some spiritual (or outright magical) qualities, or maybe it's a hint of a nonhuman background. At the most mundane, it suggests wisdom beyond her years. It is a common mark of a Mysterious Waif.

Often this is treated like a variation on blond hair—"platinum blond"—with the character having blue eyes to match. Unless she has red eyes, which would suggest she's an albino (and thus liable to be evil; or not). Or she has dark skin, in which case your guess is as good as ours.

The popularity of this trope probably stems from its status as a borderline-natural hair color: white hair on a young person strikes that delicate balance of being unusual but not blatantly unrealistic. The color also lends itself well towards symbolism (purity or death, take your pick).

Her male counterpart, the White Haired Pretty Boy, is more strongly associated with Japanese media. He lacks the magical connotations and is more likely to be an antagonist or outright evil.

It bears repeating that these are young characters, and their hair color is not indicative of age. For White Haired Pretty Old Ladies, see Foxy Grandma.

Compare and contrast with Hair Of Gold.

Examples

Anime and Manga

The first Reinforce from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, the physial incarnation of a powerful Weapon Of Mass Destruction. Ditto for Reinforce Zwei, her successor/daughter.
- The series also has Cinque, a Combat Cyborg who serves as the older sister to most of her fellow Numbers. Which is kind of funny considering that she's also the Token Loli of the group, with an eyepatch and trenchcoat no less.
Shizuma from Strawberry Panic.
Momo from Ballad of the Shinigami.
Ikki Tousen: Chou'un Shiryuu pretty much fits the bill.
Rozen Maiden: Suigintou.
Zazie Rainyday from Mahou Sensei Negima.
Azmaria in Chrono Crusade, a young girl with the power to heal people when she sings.
Yin from Darker Than Black.
Illya from Fate Stay Night.
Arcueid Brunestud from Tsukihime may count, as flashbacks seem to imply she dyes it blonde.
Tessa from Full Metal Panic, who additionally comes with an Aloof Big Brother. Guess which hair color and alignment he sports...
In Iriya No Sora UFO No Natsu, Iriya's hair gets dyed white against her will.
Fumika from Shigofumi.
Oscar from Rose Of Versailles. When she's not blonde. Blame the artist.
Towa Kannagi from Mermaid Saga
The sensual shot and Dark Action Girl Hibari Ginza from Speed Grapher.
Jiang Lihua aka Empress Tianzi from Code Geass, also a Moe Moe Chinese Girl. Action Girl Viletta Nu almost qualifies as a dark-skinned version.
Sophie Oswald from Kaleido Star. Her older brother Leon was a White Haired Pretty Boy, so it makes sense.
Rally Cheyenne from Silent Moebius, at least in flashbacks, since she's pushing 40 by the time of the main body of the series. (She's still good-looking.)
Kisara of Yu-Gi-Oh
Maestro Delphine of Last Exile is practically the living embodiment of evil, but she does have white hair and is arguably attractive, at least in flashbacks. It seems to be a racial trait, as her 17-year-old brother is a White Haired Pretty Boy, and others of that race all have very pale hair.
Soma Peiris of Gundam 00.
The original Queen Serenity in Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon herself was originally supposed to be white haired when transformed and blonde as Usagi. This was vetoed by Naoko's editor Osa-P. In the manga she does have white hair as Princess Serenity and Neo Queen Serenity, but not in the anime.
In anime adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie ends up as this once her curse is broken.
Urd of Ah! Megami-sama!.
Chii from Chobits.
The hair of all Claymores turns white during their hybridization process.
Sylvie Lumiere from Baccano!, although it doesn't seem to be held as any indication of unusual abilities apart from the most common one in the series.
Sanya and Eila from Strike Witches.
Jo from Bakuretsu Tenshi.
Nico Robin's mother in One Piece, Nico Olivia, had pure white hair. It's unknown how old she was when she died, but she didn't appear too old and Robin herself was only 8.
Sylia Stingray of Bubblegum Crisis 2040. If you can overlook drinking and/or drug problems and a few general mental issues.
The Specialist from Get Backers. Mostly seems to enhance her creepiness.

Comic Books

Marvel Comics:
- X-Men's Ororo "Storm" Munroe is also a Dark Skinned Blond(-ish) with, yes, blue eyes. This was eventually explained as a property she got from her mother's inherently magical people. Her mother was a Kenyan witch, or something like that.
  - Rogue of the X-Men also has this slightly going for her, with the white streak of hair she has.
  - In her early appearences, she was drawn with two white streaks, and they looked like results of aging.
- Spider-Man's Classy Cat Burglar Felicia "Black Cat" Hardy. The recognizable white hair is part of her costume, in some versions.
  - Silver Sable has the same kind of hair. Sometimes Gwen Stacy does as well, but that might just be a coloring mistake.
- Doctor Strange's Clea, ruler of the Dark Dimension, so not exactly human.
- Captain Marvel's Phyla-Vell a.k.a. Quasar, who's Titanian. Titanese? (with a few alien genes thrown in.)
- An extremely fictionalised Virginia Dare is depicted this way in 1602.
  - Considering that she is a version of Alpha Flight member Snowbird, it's not too strange, as Snowbird has this colour (and it carries over in transformations, too)
- Songbird of the Thunderbolts. Though that's not her real hair color (just about all of the Thunderbolts had their faces altered to fit their scheme) and it has a red streak through it.
DC Comics:
- Teen Titans' Rose "Ravager" Wilson, who's been called platinum blonde at least once in a recent issue.
  - Oddly enough, this is supposedly because her father Deathstroke also has white hair, but he only has that color due to his old age. Of course, given that Rose plucked out an eye just to be more like her father, it's not unreasonable to assume she found herself some bleach.
  - Can't be. Rose has had white hair since she was first introduced in the Deathstroke series, before she knew who her father was.
- Ice (Tora Olafsdotter). White hair, blue eyes and she's the princess of a magical northern tribe.
- The first female Dove (Dawn Granger) in DC's Hawk And Dove.
- Dream Girl / Dreamer, Princess Projectra and White Witch from the Legion Of Super Heroes. The latter is (usually) a Heroic Albino.
- Hippolyta (Lyta) Hall, the second Fury, who featured prominently in The Sandman. It's not entirely clear whether this is actually blonde hair drawn as white (since a younger Lyta is shown as a blonde, and one character refers to her as a blonde as an adult), or if it really is white.
- Abby Holland (née Abigail Arcane), Swamp Thing's wife, has snow-white hair with two black streaks running through it.
- Dolphin, frequently seen in Aquaman comics.
Jennifer Morgan, Travis Morgan's daughter and the sorceress supreme of Skartaris in The Warlord. She was originally blonde but her hair turns white as she gains sorcerous power.
Cross Gen's The First had both Ingra and Wyture, neither of them human. Negation had Khlystek the Lizard Lady, a reptilian alien.
Gabrielle from Spawn.
Glory, Probe, Suprema and Avengelyne, as drawn by Rob Liefeld, who, being a fan of the look, also applied it for Dawn Granger, mentioned above.
- In Suprema's case, like Supreme, the white hair is a side effect of exposure to Supremium, the source of their powers.
The comics version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch is like this.

Film

Princess Nuala from Hellboy II.
Final Girl Nancy Thompson of A Nightmare On Elm Street gets a white streak in her hair after one of the titular nightmares.
Kim Obrist of Scanners is prematurely grey.
Ni Chan from The Forbidden Kingdom.

Literature

The Childlike Empress has white hair in The Neverending Story, though sadly not in any of the film adaptations.
In The Stand, Nadine's hair supernaturally turns white due to contact with Randall Flagg.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe novels have a few: Winter Celchu, Leia's aide (first appearance in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy); and Brianna, the Last Handmaiden and Atris the Jedi historian (from Knights of the Old Republic II).
There was a young woman in Thomas M. Disch's The Prisoner novel with white hair. She didn't have any magic powers.
Yvaine from Stardust is white-haired.
The protagonist of Andre Norton's Forerunner: The Second Venture. Dark skin, aquiline features, and white hair.
In Mercedes Lackey's Heralds Of Valdemar books, using Adept-level magic bleaches your hair, so any young female Adepts eventually become examples of this trope.
The current Summer Lady in The Dresden Files has white hair.
- So does the current Winter Lady, Maeve. And the hair of Thomas Raith's girlfriend, Justine, turned white after Thomas fed on her so deeply that she should have died.
The protagonist of the wuxia novel The Bride with White Hair by Liang Yusheng. There is a Film Of The Book too.
Susan Sto-Helit has this, with one black streak; she's also a Magical Nanny and the granddaughter of Death.
- This is possibly a reference to Polgara The Sorceress, who has black hair with one white streak.
- More likely a reference to the bride from the Bride of Frankenstien,who also has black hair with one white streak, as it tends to friz out as if she had been struck by lighting.
In Anne Mc Caffrey's The Rowan the titular character has white hair, which is also inherited by her descendants as a white streak.
Daenerys Targaryen of A Song Of Ice And Fire. Apparently, all the Targeryens are white-haired due to massive inbreeding.
Morgaine in CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle is white-haired due to being half-blooded ancient race. And beautiful.

Live Action TV

Willow briefly had white hair in the finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Abby has white hair in Primeval, but that's bleach and her only power is turning on fanboys.

Tabletop Games

Many Sisters of Battle from War Hammer 40000 have white hair.
- This is heavily implied to be dyed.
- Whether they're actually pretty varies from artist to artist though, with some casting them as your standard pretty Amazon Brigade and some sitting down and thinking about how a life of fighting (often without a helmet) would actually make them look like.
Some members of the Crane clan, both male and females, dye their hair white in honor of their ancestors.

Video Games

The heroine of the Nintendo DS game Another Code: Two Memories (Trace Memory across the pond).
Knights Of The Old Republic II had Jedi Master Atris.
- And Handmaiden/Brianna. With her whole race, the Echani.
The enigmatic Jeane from the Suikoden series.
- Except for Suikoden V, where her hair is pink. This is so she won't be mistaken for Queen Arshtat, the white-haired ruler of Falena.
  - Although Arshtat actually kind of subverts this trope by being a pretty ordinary mom, heritage and True Rune notwithstanding.
The Viera from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (and later, Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics A 2), who regard it as a blessing from the gods. Also Ritz, and subverted in that she hates it (because she gets teased about it constantly, and resents the misery it causes her and her mother), and therefore has it dyed red up to the epilogue.
Amoretta of Grim Grimoire, the Homunculus with the soul of an angel.
The Legend Of Zelda: Zelda's lady-in-waiting, Impa (the 30-something Amazon from Ocarina of Time, natch, not the old lady from the other installments).
One of the main character cards in Phantasy Star Online Episode III.
Sapphire from Disgaea 3 has white hair. More of a dirty white than pure white, though.
Aeka from the game Yume Miru Kusuri (A Drug That Makes You Dream).
Raine Sage of Tales Of Symphonia
Micaiah of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. She's called the Silver-Haired Maiden, and yes, that's a plot point. Several plot points.
- For that matter, there's also Ninian the Dancer from Fire Emblem, and the shaman Diadora and her daughter Julia in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Not quite white in these cases, but close enough.
Shurelia in Ar Tonelico, when we finally get to see what she looks like out of armour.
The female von Einzburns from the Fate series.
Calvina Coulange from Super Robot Wars J'. Granted, a bit darker silver, but otherwise fits.
Avril Vent Fleur from WildARMs 5, as part of her persona of Mysterious Waif.
Nao Mariota Pryderi from the MMORPG Mabinogi.
Ultima, the fallen angel, the final boss of Final Fantasy Tactics.
Touhou Project has several such characters, such as Eirin Yagokoro and Fujiwara no Mokou, although both are Really Seven Hundred Years Old. Sakuya Izayoi, despite being supposedly a normal human, also has such hair, which has lead many fans to speculate that she may not in fact be human at all.
Amanda Evert from Tomb Raider Legend and Underworld.
Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon has several pale-grey-haired women of varying ages. One of them is the mother of a fairly young boy, so she could possibly have come by the color in the usual way, but two of the bachelorettes, who are probably under 25, have the same coloring.
High Inquisitor Whitemane, one of the last bosses of the Scarlet Monastery dungeon in the World of War Craft, has white hair.
Lucia from Luminous Arc.
Lieselotte of Arcana Heart combines this with Elegant Gothic Lolita and Red Eyes Take Warning to make one Creepy Child.
- The sequel also adds up Zenia, which kinda fit this trope that her true origins were completely shrouded by mystery.
Pokejedservo at 69.161.78.85 is surprised nobody has mentioned Christie from the Dead Or Alive series yet.
Vanessa Lewis from the 4th Virtua Fighter game.

Webcomics

Tea, the preteen secondary narrator of Gunnerkrigg Court. Stranger still, she has brown eyes.
Bell in Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi.
Lily in Atland.
Ping from Megatokyo had white hair early on, before her body started changing in response to her character development.
Lei'ella from Inverloch, which marks her as one of the Severed, mortal elves with silver hair and golden eyes.
Velma in I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space has white hair. Most likely does not mean anything magical though.
A woman who hires Buck Godot

Western Animation

Avatar The Last Airbender: Princess Yue's hair color was a plot point.
Charmcaster from Ben10
The Jetsons: Judy Jetson.
Delilah from Gargoyles, though this is from discolouration that occurs with cloning.
Agent K from The Replacements.
Drew Saturday from The Secret Saturdays.
Kida from Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire. White hair seems to be a racial trait of all the Atlanteans, suggestive of their longevity (but not their age—the children have white hair, too).
Mirage from The Incredibles.
Lady Amalthea, the human form of the titular unicorn in The Last Unicorn.
Susan / Ginormica from Monsters Vs Aliens is like this as well.
Evil-Lynn from He Man And The Masters Of The Universe, though she rarely takes off her helmet to display it.