Asian Hair Streak

Submission 41,321

About

Asian Hair Streak refers to a trend in western cinema and television to show asian characters, particularly in action roles, with a dyed section of color in their hair. The trope was first noticed on Tumblr in the fall of 2014 and discussion surrounding the trope was reignited in 2018 after a Twitter user called out the trope after seeing the character Yukio in Deadpool 2.

Origin

The Asian Hair Streak was first noticed on Tumblr by user extraextraex^[1] on October 5th, 2014, pointing to characters such as Mako from Pacific Rim, Akima Kunimoto from Titan A.E., and GoGo Tomago from Big Hero 6 (shown below). The user made the point that while the trope wasn't necessarily negative, it was overused. The post gained over 82,000 notes.

Spread

Tumblr user shoorm (since deleted) posted about the trope afterwards,^[2] saying:

Yeah, it looks cute, but after seeing this over and over again, it becomes a boring, racist trope. This originated from a variety of possibilities: the creators trying to “Americanize” the East Asian character, make them more “exotic”, or to show how unique this character is. She’s not a giggling schoolgirl or a delicate lotus flower, she’s different! See, she has a streak of purple hair (god forbid she dyes it any other color), look how radical that is, look at our modern Dragon Lady!

The user also posted a picture with a dozen different characters who perpetuate the trope (shown below).

In November of 2014, a page for the trope was added to TV Tropes, who also noted that Rufio from the 1991 film Hook also was an example of the trope.^[3] Discussion about the trend resurfaced in 2017, when Twitter user @heartmush called it out in a tweet that gained over 5,700 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below). This was covered by Buzzfeed.^[4]

Other media outlets to cover the trope include Huffington Post,^[7] Teen Vogue,^[8] and Bustle.^[9]

2018 Resurgence

The issue was discussed again on social media when on May 21st, 2018, when Twitter user @nerdyasians^[5] tweeted about the trope with the addition of the character Yukio in Deadpool 2. The tweet gained over 25,000 retweets and 66,000 likes (shown below).

The ensuing discussion led to the creation of Twitter Moments.^[6] Some Asian commenters stated that the trope is done to show the characters as rebellious, as Asian women with black hair in western media are generally portrayed as more docile (shown below, left). Other Twitter users pointed to other characters, such as Sun Bak from Sense8, who bucks the trope (shown below, right).