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Why Doesn’t Cersei’s Hair Ever Grow?

What’s up with Cersei’s hair? Photo: HBO

Things have been moving very quickly on this season of Game of Thrones. It’s a little baffling how everyone can suddenly zip around the map with such ease, but it’s been a nice change of pace for the show. You can only take so much “and then they walked through the woods for several weeks” before it becomes a little tiresome.

Here’s a question, though — presumably we’re fast-forwarding through several weeks at a time whenever the show lets Jon Snow skip on down to Dragonstone, or when Bran is just crossing over the Wall in one scene and reuniting with Sansa the next. So if so much time is moving so quickly, how come Cersei’s hair is still so short?

Hillary Kelly has touched on this topic in her Game of Thrones questions post, but I think it’s time to do a deeper dive. There are three alternatives here. The first is that Cersei is stuck in some kind of head-related time warp, and while everyone else is allowed to change, her hair is stuck in time. It’s a fantasy show with dragons and zombies, but this possibility seems unlikely.

The next option is that her hair has just stopped growing. In the LA Review of Books, Aaron Bady suggests that Cersei’s hair is stuck the way it is because “we need to be reminded that she is Permanently Scarred By What Happened.” Which makes sense! It was cut off in an incredibly traumatic event, so maybe it just no longer grows, in the same way that people’s hair can suddenly go grey after they experience a shock? Except, if that’s the case, how did it get to its current pixie status?

This leaves us with the third alternative, which is that Cersei, inexplicably, is actually committing to this pixie look. She is arriving down at the in-house King’s Landing salon and requesting that her stylist continue to maintain her current hairstyle. And that is honestly the most baffling alternative of all, because while her shoulder game has been truly on point this season (often literally pointy), and Lena Headey is a stunningly beautiful woman… this hair is not ideal.

Cersei, I do not know what is happening with your hair. Maybe this is a choice you’ve made. Maybe it is cursed. Whatever the case may be, the “Cersei’s hair” section in our list of questions about Game of Thrones is only going to get more and more insistent as the season goes on.

Cersei’s Hair, Why Won’t You Grow?