Why the Trope of Rebellious Asian Women With Colorful Hair Is Problematic

In this op-ed, Rae Chen explores the problematic trope of portraying Asian women with colorful hair as rebellious.

One of my favorite movies of the early 2010s was Pacific Rim, a Guillermo del Toro film about giant fighting robots. (What? It's an accurate description.) But there was one thing about the movie that didn't sit quite right, and it was the blue streaks they put in Rinko Kikuchi's hair so that she could play the "rebellious" Mako Mori.

Because, you know. The viewer isn't going to be able to tell that Mako is an independent thinker without that bit of blue.

Aspiring young animator Anne Shi previously brought up this Hollywood hair trend on Twitter. The Asian hair streak is such a prevalent phenomenon that it has its own page on TV Tropes, and it's a pretty simple one to follow. In order to let the audience know that the East Asian supporting female character in their movie is American levels of "cool and rebellious," Hollywood ensures that she has a few choice streaks of either red, blue, or purple in her hair.

When contrasted against dark brown or black hair, these streaks of color are coded to read as rebellious, independent, and unique — something to set these characters apart from the rest of their race. The same color of highlights can read very differently depending on who's wearing them, and how that look has been culturally coded. Lavender streaks, for instance, might be portrayed as rebellious in black hair, but mermaid-y in blonde hair.

And these streaks of color aren't just popping up in live action films, either. Animated characters like Nikki Wong from 6teen, Miko Nakadai from Transformers Prime, and GoGo Tomago in Big Hero 6 all have streaks of color in their hair, too. So what's behind the streak? Twitter seems to have a pretty good idea...

Here's the problem with giving Asian women a hair streak to let us know that they're cool: It only works if you assume that the majority of Asian women are meek and submissive. By saying, "this hair streak makes independent thinkers identifiable, and shows us that they're different from 'regular' Asian women," you're implying that any Asian woman who still has her natural hair color is part of an almost hive-like submission — and that simply isn't true.

I have yet to meet a single Asian woman in the real world who didn't have a rich internal life, and that's one of the many things that makes this trend so problematic. It suggests that these writers probably don't have a lot of dynamic Asian women in their lives; they're working off of a stereotype, and they assume that the rest of us will be, too.

If you're going to give us a rebellious Asian woman on the screen, that's great! But don't shoehorn in a hair streak so that the audience will be able to intuit her entire personality from it. Show us that she's an independent thinker. Show us that Asian women are just as diverse a group as any other, and use the words, actions, and interactions of your characters to make that obvious.

America is ready for diverse, thoughtful Asian characters. It's time for Hollywood to catch up.

Related: Why Telling Someone They Have “Exotic” Beauty Isn’t Really a Compliment