By the Hair

A close cousin to the Standard Female Grab Area where if whoever it is can't grab ahold of the woman's wrist or upper arm, they'll just grab onto her hair instead. Obviously a lot more realistic than a wrist being the weak point as anyone who has had their hair pulled can vouch for how painful it is. While this typically happens to women with long hair, it can happen with short hair as well. The hair just needs to be long enough to pull. Although it is mostly a female trope, it can happen to men with hair as well though examples are rare.

It can be played both for comedy and seriously, depending on the nature of the scuffle. It will normally happen in a Cat Fight and in that case it will be played up as arousing for male onlookers. If it's happening to a mean girl then it might cause a Hairstyle Malfunction if she's wearing extensions. If the girl happens to be badass then expect her to overcome this problem, sometimes by cutting the hair off at the point where it's being held. See also Life or Limb Decision and Giving Them the Strip.

For the record, while hair pulling is painful, the commonality of the "dragging her around by the hair" bit in film and television is because it's fairly easy to stage and relatively painless. Notice that when the man grabs her by the hair, she immediately grabs onto his wrists. Usually at this point, the puller lets go of the hair, and instead drags the woman around by the arms instead. All the kicking and screaming? She's usually digging her heels into the ground for leverage and trying to help him by making herself lurch ahead. Historical warriors with long hair were common in some cultures like the Celts and Sudanese (nicknamed the "fuzzy-wuzzies") for their massive afros) because hair-pulling is not an effective way to cause injury to someone in armed battlefield combat, though it can be an effective way to grab hold of someone in an unarmed street fight.

Examples of By the Hair include:

Anime and Manga

• In Naruto during the Chuunin Exams, Sakura Haruno had to fend off a competing team of Sound ninja who came to fight an incapacitated Sasuke. One of the ninjas, Kin, grabbed Sakura by the hair and ridiculed her for spending more time keeping it clean than training her skills. Sakura grew some balls and cut it with her kunai, allowing her to escape Kin's grasp, and emerged with a short pixie-ish hairstyle, which she later kept.
• In Fruits Basket episode 26 Akito does this to Tohru when angry with her.
• Fairy Tail: When Lucy is captured by Phantom Lord, Gajeel yanks on her hair to make her scream, thus alerting the Fairy Tail guild members that she was their hostage.
• In My Hero Academia Toga pinned Tsuyu to a tree by throwing a needle into her hair.

Film

• In The Tenth Kingdom when Virgina's hair is cursed to grow fifty feet long, the Huntsman drags her through the forest by it and even uses it to chain her up.
• Matilda: On Matilda's first day at school the Trunchbull grabs a young girl by her pigtails and throws her over the fence. The girl learns her lesson and makes sure the Trunchbull never sees her with pigtails again.
• In one Harry Potter film, Bellatrix grabs Harry by the hair after his face got hit by a spell from Hermione.

Comic Books

• When Batman meets Batwoman for the first time post-Final Crisis, he warns her that having long hair is a liability in a fight, since any Mook could grab it. Batwoman tells him she'll take it under advisement, but the joke's on him since Kate is Genre Savvy enough to know this, and her long hair actually a wig that covers her real hair, which is much shorter, as well as helping disguise her identity. Later on someone actually does try to grab her by the hair and is quite surprised when they pull off her wig instead, giving her time to escape.

Literature

• In Murder At Drumshee Colm apprehends Mahon and Ita by grabbing onto one of Ita's long plaits and holding a knife at her throat.
• In Sisters... No Way! during an argument at the breakfast table, Aishling grabs Cindy by her hair to try and calm her down.
• In The Last Battle the last Tirian sees of Jill is a Calormene soldier dragging her away from the battle by her hair.
• The Zombie Survival Guide warns men and women to cut their hair short to prevent this from happening.
• On Gor a semi-standard way to control a slave girl without using chains is for the man to hold his hand at about waist-height, and the girl places her head there where he grabs her hair and basically pulls her about.
• Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love.

Lazarus Long: Not only does long hair need a lot of timewasting care, it gives your opponent something to grab in close combat and can obscure your view at a critical moment - either one can be fatal.

• In the Vorkosigan Saga novel Cetaganda, a Cetagandan haut-lady is imprisoned by trapping her hair, which works because her culture has strong taboos around hair-cutting, so it's effectively a Life or Limb Decision.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events book "The Wide Window" the person who looks like neither a man nor a woman grabs Violet by her hair, swinging her over his shoulder. Strangely, little reference is made to how painful this must have been, and it doesn't seem to have damaged either her hair or her neck.

Live Action TV

• In a BBC series that modernised fairytales, the episode of Rapunzel had the stepmother grabbing onto her daughter's long hair to stop her from leaving. The daughter grabs the scissors and hacks the ponytail off to escape.
• The Ghost Whisperer episode "Last Execution" Melinda was washing her hair in the sink and a ghost caused it to get caught in the garbage disposal. Jim had to cut it to free her.
• Karen in Coronation Street loved doing this whenever she got into Catfights with Tracy Barlow. The universe gave her some form of comeuppance when her long hair got caught in one of her sewing machines, forcing her to remove her extensions.
• In the Scrubs episode "My Lucky Charm" Elliot and Carla get into a catfight that only ends when Elliot gets her watch caught in Carla's hair, restraining them both from moving.
• Lifetime Movies love this one. If the movie involves an abusive husband (which they oft do), expect to his him drag his wife, kicking and screaming, down the hallway, often to the bedroom.

Professional Wrestling

• It's a common dirty heel tactic in women's wrestling for the heel to throw her opponent across the ring by her hair. Sometimes also happens for extra leverage in a submission hold (a common one in Diva's matches is to stand on their hair while they're on the ground, then pull them up by the arms; shoulder, neck and hair pain all in one shot.) Can sometimes happen to men as well if the hair is long enough.
• It used to be a tactic in intergender tag matches for the man on the team to grab the woman by the hair and slam her down to the mat when she hit the ropes.
• It's now so widely seen for the hair to be grabbed as leverage during a snapmare, it now has a technical name - "hair-mare".

Western Animation

• Rapunzel in Tangled has this happen to her a couple of times, understandable since she has over 70 feet of hair. It even gets used as a gag at one point. She also uses it to subdue other people, notably when she ties Flynn up after he breaks into her tower.
• Jimmy of all people does this to Nazz in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy when he becomes convinced she stole his shampoo.
• During Terra and Raven's mud fight in Teen Titans Terra briefly subdues Raven by grabbing her by the hair.

Other

• The classic "caveman dragging a woman by the hair" bit. The man finds a mate by clubbing her over the head and then dragging her off to his cave by her hair.
• The heroine in Irish mythology Grace O'Malley had long black Rapunzel Hair and her father joked she wouldn't be allowed to become a sailor because the hair would constantly get caught in things. She took the joke a bit too literally and shaved her head before becoming a captain.
• Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to shave their beards so their enemies couldn't use them to grab onto.
• In the early days of Mixed Martial Arts, this was a legal move, used by some fighters to varying degrees of success. At UFC 1, Zane Frazier ripped a clump of Kevin Rozier's hair out; Rozier was unfazed and proceeded to stomp on Frazier's head. The most notorious use came next year at UFC 3, where Royce Gracie, struggling against the gigantic Kimo Leopoldo, pulled Kimo's hair while punching him in the face from bottom position, before eventually going on to submit him by armbar. Royce was unable to continue after this fight, and some say he only won the fight because of hair-pulling and a massive knee to Kimo's groin, which was also legal at the time. Averted at UFC 4, where Guy Mezger and Jason Fairn agreed not to pull each other's hair during the bout, and by the present day rules of the sport, which consider it a foul.
• Happened once to the great British bare-knuckle boxing champion Daniel "The Jew" Mendoza in his bout against John "The Gentleman" Jackson. Jackson, the challenger, was significantly younger, stronger, and bigger than Mendoza, who was only a middleweight, and used his physical advantages to muscle Mendoza into the corner of the ring, where he pulled his hair and pummeled him senseless. Mendoza called out Jackson for his dirty tactics after the fight and demanded a rematch, but Jackson declined and retired to run his successful boxing school. Even without Jackson's dirty fighting, the physical disparity between the fighters meant that Mendoza's chance of victory would have been slim.
• Mark Morton of Lamb of God did this to Randy Blythe during their drunken brawl^[when?] before slamming him into the pavement and knocking him out cold. Ironically, Blythe had much shorter hair than Morton at the time.