Notice how many shows, when there are more than one woman, will have each one with a different hair colour?
I can think of a couple that did not folow that pattern, but it seems most do.
Do casting directors think we can’t tell women apart except for their hair?
My grandmother sure as hell can’t. Watching TV with her is an exercise in patience.
I can’t think of tv shows or movies, but comic books, comic strips/webcomics, and penthouse forum stories follow this enough.
It’s a trope.
Desperate Housewives, lots of movies I can’t think of the names of right now. heh
I’m not surprised it’s a trope. Everything is.
The First Wives Club comes to mind: redheaded Bette Midler, blonde Goldie Hawn and brunette Diane Keaton.
Sasha Alexander was a brunette on NCIS, but blonde on Rizzoli & Isles (in which she stars alongside Angie Harmon). I kinda wonder if the producers forced the change on the theory that viewers wouldn’t be able to tell two brunettes apart.
There was also the case of Diane Neal, who played the ADA for several seasons on Law & Order: SVU. She started out as a redhead, but went progressively blonder over the time she was on the show. Somewhere I read that the producers made her change because the show’s formula (and its first few seasons) called for the ADA to be blonde.
An alternate theory is that a TV cast must include a blonde if there is an ampersand in the title.
I assume so.
An example of the trope I’m surprised not to see listed on the TV Tropes page is Designing Women, which had Jean Smart as the blonde, Annie Potts as the redhead, and Dixie Carter and Delta Burke as brunette sisters.
As for exceptions to the rule, Downton Abbey has a large cast that includes women with blonde, red, and brown hair, but I don’t believe there’s really a three-color trio. The three daughters of Lord Grantham are two brunettes and a redhead. If you take the three upstairs maids as a group there was often a blonde (Anna), a brunette (O’Brien), and one with reddish hair (Rose/Ethel), but O’Brien was both older and of higher status (lady’s maid instead of housemaid) than the others and didn’t work closely with them.
The three-color trio is perhaps the only cliche not used by Glee*, at least for most of the show’s run. For the first three seasons the glee club had six main female members, and they represented two cliques of three members each: the original performing arts geeks and the cheerleaders who joined later. Neither group consisted of a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. The original choir members were all brunettes, although easily distinguishable because they were different races (white, black, Asian). For the cheerleaders, there were two blondes and a (Hispanic) brunette. But when three new girls joined at the beginning of the fourth season, one had blonde hair, one had reddish-brown hair, and one had black hair.
It’s hard to think of shows where three major male characters all have distinct hair colors. The guys of Friends all had dark brown hair. So did the guys of Seinfeld, and Elaine too for that matter. I guess there’s Modern Family, where of the four adult men there’s one with greying hair, one with dark brown hair, one with lighter brown hair, and one with red hair.
*I see that Glee is listed on the TV Tropes page, but whoever wrote the entry was really reaching. Of the three characters named, only the redheaded guidance counselor is in the main cast. The blonde and brunette were special guest stars. I don’t believe all three were ever even in the same episode.
I believe I read with Charlie’s Angels there were initially going to have each gal with a different hair color, but liked Jacqueline Smith so much that they hired her, thus they had two brunettes and one blonde.
They changed Cynthia Nixon’s hair color to red on Sex in the City so she would be distinct from the lead. I never watched much of the show but I thought she looked fine as a ginger.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if what we considered beautiful didn’t correlate with looking very similar. Have you ever tried one of those tests where they show just the face of a famous person, and leave out any other defining characteristics? Sure, you still figure it out (unless you have some facial blindness), but it’s harder.
Strangely enough, even the Golden Girls follows this pattern. Betty White is a blonde-turning-white, Rue McClanahan is a redhead-turning-white, Bea Arthur is a graying brunette and Estelle Getty was fully white-haired.
I think this is exactly how the movie “Broadcast News” was.
Anyone remember the ending so we can get this man his punchline?
Something about video tape or something…
We geezer remember the formula in Petticoat Junction - and they were supposed to be sisters!
Does *Friends *count? One blonde, one dark haired and one kind of light brown?
It didn’t seem hard at all to me, but then, not many of the pictures were of women. 
I can have trouble if characters have the same color hair and similar hairstyles.
Men are even more difficult, especially if they are wearing suits.
(And black and white movies where all the men are white guys in suits are especially trying.)
Yes. Not that we’re idiots and can’t tell the difference between three women, but because if those people are not known, and you want them to be known, giving them an obvious difference like hair color will help people distinquish them, and being able to identify the characters will make the audience more likely to keep watching. On top of that the practice on TV started before color television and large screens. As a general principle in any cast it helps the audience when the characters are easily distinquished.
And when the audience is multicultural, it’s even more important to give lots of markers. We aren’t all taught the same reference points for identifying people (though I just suck at it and probably would with any set of reference points!)
I don’t think it’s so much an issue of networks thinking viewers can’t tell women with the same hair color apart as it is an issue of wanting to appeal to the most viewer preferences.
Not all women can be dumb sluts, and not all men are cowardly, machiavellian weirdos.