Long locks used to be the most coveted trait of princesses everywhere, but it seems like Tifa Lockhart, Cloud Strife’s beloved friend Final Fantasy 7, took that ideal and punched it into a million pieces.
The hashtag at the weekend #TifaShort Hair started a trend on Twitter where fans of Square Enix’s classic JRPG fan art and renders of Tifa with short hair posted. Usually her hair is long – like really long – and hangs well above her hips before it is gathered into a ribbon. Now these pictures show her with a variety of haircuts and styles for short hair, even bobs.
The hashtag started out as an artist Strawderryst posed a challenge to people to post Tifa with short hair and post their own attitude. Strawderryst told Polygon that she brought up the challenge because she loves Tifa as a character. “As an artist and a person who likes to imagine, I have a lot of ideas and head canons and her short hair was one of them,” she told Polygon on Twitter.
Her art of Tifa with short hair went viral and sparked a long series of posts from others showing their own interpretations of trimmed Tifa. Many of the contributions adapt Tifa’s design from the newer version of her game. Final Fantasy 7 remake.
Now all sorts of people are posting their short haired Tifa fan art. Be it a digital drawing, a fan rendering, or even a watercolor.
Here’s a shot of Tifa also wearing Cloud’s clothes and his iconic Buster sword.
I really like this one because it mimics the concept art style of the original Final Fantasy 7 Released in 1997.
Cosplayers have also picked up the trend to share their opinion on Tifa’s short hair.
Now one modder has responded to the trend by simply bringing Tifa with short hair straight into the game so fans can play as them.
It’s not that we never get female characters with short hair, it’s just that a lot of women in games tend to embody the feminine ideals of the male gaze, which tends to encompass long hair. So when we see – or in this case, imagine – something new, it is exciting for many. Similarly, the short-haired Zelda sparked excitement among fans when it was first shown in the original trailer for the sequel The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Dressing up characters and trying on new skins is also a huge aspect of increasing the joy of playing. Doing fan art is almost an alternate way of getting that feeling – and it’s especially fun for a character as popular as Tifa.
