Article originally published on Fantasy Faction, April 2018. Last updated May 2026.

Several years ago, I wrote an article on Fantasy Faction about characters who have “skunk stripes” in their hair. I wanted to find out why these occur both in fiction and in real life, and how plausible “natural” white highlights really are. My investigation led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and while there is a lot of uncertainty and myth surrounding the topic, I emerged with some interesting answers.

All of this came about because I was reading a romantasy novel, Master of Crows by Grace Draven, where one of the characters pushes himself to the limits of his magical abilities and nearly dies. Afterward, he’s left with a streak of white in his long black hair.

I’d seen these “skunk stripes” before in fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories. The X-Men character Rogue is the first that comes to mind, but other film characters such as Sweeney Todd, Bellatrix Lestrange and The Bride of Frankenstein also had white patches of hair, as do quite a few characters from manga, comics, and books.

This got me thinking, is all of this pure invention, or do real people get these? And if they do, do they ever appear suddenly, or for the same reasons they do in stories?

Continue reading →