I have a sneaking suspicion Joe Flanigan wouldn't be allowed to change his look either; you have to have permission to get a hair cut these days...
Actually, Flanigan was offered the chance to get to fly in an Air Force jet of some sort (I don't remember now) if he'd cut his hair to regulation length. He was all for it, but had the idea nixed by TPTB. So, yeah, it's not just Momoa.
And given that it was Momoa who wanted the character to have dreads in the first place, you can't exactly claim TPTB decided dreads were equivalent to "alien" and "dangerous", at least to start with, though it may be the case now.
Which says nothing about members of fandom regarding a perfectly normal human hairstyle as alien, non-human, or dangerous.
As an aside, I always figured Teyla's wig was an attempt to make her more exotic, set her apart as not being from standard Earth genetic lines because while she had dark skin, it was not accompanied by "typical" dark and possibly kinky hair as it would be on Earth, suggesting that in the Pegasus, dark skin pigment isn't always accompanied by dark hair. I'm not sure how to feel about this.
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Date: 2008-06-18 06:17 pm (UTC)Actually, Flanigan was offered the chance to get to fly in an Air Force jet of some sort (I don't remember now) if he'd cut his hair to regulation length. He was all for it, but had the idea nixed by TPTB. So, yeah, it's not just Momoa.
And given that it was Momoa who wanted the character to have dreads in the first place, you can't exactly claim TPTB decided dreads were equivalent to "alien" and "dangerous", at least to start with, though it may be the case now.
Which says nothing about members of fandom regarding a perfectly normal human hairstyle as alien, non-human, or dangerous.
As an aside, I always figured Teyla's wig was an attempt to make her more exotic, set her apart as not being from standard Earth genetic lines because while she had dark skin, it was not accompanied by "typical" dark and possibly kinky hair as it would be on Earth, suggesting that in the Pegasus, dark skin pigment isn't always accompanied by dark hair. I'm not sure how to feel about this.