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Bunches (hairstyle)

Emissarius

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Hello,

I'm wondering if the word "bunches" is as recognized as other hairstyle names like ponytails and pigtails.

If you have a character whose hair is held high up in two ponytails (or bushy/ unplaited pigtails, which I've read quite a few times in fiction), would it suffice to say "her hair was piled in two bunches?"

I've seen this hairstyle also described as "twin tails" or "dog ears," as well as the aforementioned "bushy pigtails" and "double ponytails."

Which among all of these is the safest bet?
 
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Snitchcat

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IMO, depends on your target audience.

Personally, I'm fine with "bunches", but then again, I'm good with UK vocab.

If your target readership is mostly American, I think "pigtails" might be the safer bet.
 

mrsmig

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I think the issue is with the verb, not the noun.

"Piled in two bunches" makes me visualize two mounds of hair atop the head, like a Princess Leia 'do, only higher up. Maybe "tied in two bunches" would be better...?
 

benbenberi

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When I was a kid I (& many of my peers) wore bunches all the time. Sometimes young adults too. I don't think it's been a popular style since the 70s -- can't remember the last time I saw a kid with bunches.

It was always "bunches." I never heard any of the other suggested terms. And "tied in bunches" is definitely more apt than "piled" -- I'm with mrsmig, "piled" produces an image more like Princess Leia than 10-yr-old me.
 

Maryn

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Oh, dear, my ignorance is showing so plainly! I've never heard the term bunches applied to hair and would not know what you meant by it.

Maryn, who has more hair than vocabulary
 

mrsmig

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I'd never heard it, either, but I'm not from the UK.
 

Harlequin

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Bunches is very British in my experience.

I call them pigtails if braided and just two ponytails but I'm some weird citizen of nowhere with no cultural grounding.

I'm slightly hopeful it's an adult who has this style in yoru book but I'm guessing not >.>
 

AW Admin

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Bunches is very UK; post-WW II slang.

If you use it (and why not?) also describe the way it looks, much as you did here.
 

BethS

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If you have a character whose hair is held high up in two ponytails (or bushy/ unplaited pigtails, which I've read quite a few times in fiction), would it suffice to say "her hair was piled in two bunches?"

Fwiw, I've never heard of bunches, and unless it was described, I would not at all imagine pigtails. I'd imagine something like this or this.

If you really want to convey pigtails, maybe don't describe it as "piled."
 
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onesecondglance

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Fwiw, I've never heard of bunches, and unless it was described, I would not at all imagine pigtails. I'd imagine something like this or this.

If you really want to convey pigtails, maybe don't describe it as "piled."

Your last link is what "bunches" are in the UK. "Pigtails" would be braided.

Sounds like this is one of those "hidden" localisation issues (where neither UK nor US readers realise there's a different implication) so you can either live with the ambiguity or describe around it as AW Admin suggests. I would live with it, personally - unless you're going to make a point of the difference, like having something get caught in a braid, it doesn't strike me as an essential detail.
 

Harlequin

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Tbh I'd just avoid the word braid/plait.* Americans won't know what a plait is and British people get irrationally grumpy over the word 'braid' (or indeed, any term they perceive as overtly American).

**she says, having used "braid" liberally in a MS....
 

Marissa D

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When I was a kid I (& many of my peers) wore bunches all the time. Sometimes young adults too. I don't think it's been a popular style since the 70s -- can't remember the last time I saw a kid with bunches.

It was always "bunches." I never heard any of the other suggested terms. And "tied in bunches" is definitely more apt than "piled" -- I'm with mrsmig, "piled" produces an image more like Princess Leia than 10-yr-old me.

I'm of this vintage as well, and remember wearing my long hair this way in elementary school in the 70s...but we called them "donkey tails." Pigtails would definitely have been braided.
 

BethS

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Tbh I'd just avoid the word braid/plait.* Americans won't know what a plait is and British people get irrationally grumpy over the word 'braid' (or indeed, any term they perceive as overtly American).

Huh. I use them both. Never had anyone object, from either side of the pond.
 

neandermagnon

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Tbh I'd just avoid the word braid/plait.* Americans won't know what a plait is and British people get irrationally grumpy over the word 'braid' (or indeed, any term they perceive as overtly American).

**she says, having used "braid" liberally in a MS....

I'm joking, mostly. Most Brits are very laid back, but some (usually at uni, back in the day) corrected me constantly for anything they perceived as imported dialect.

Agreed! I sometimes accidentally use American expressions... we Brits (most of us, anyway) like to keep our linguistic identity though.

I didn't know "bunches" is a specifically British expression. I have two daughters so I've used the term frequently (though they currently have hair that's too short to wear in bunches).

It's definitely not how Princess Leia wears her hair. Bunches is like Boo from Monsters Inc like two small ponytails worn on either side of the head. If you have two plaits worn like bunches, they'd be called pigtails. One plait is just called a plait, or if platted a particular way, a French plait. Bunches and pigtails are kind of little girlish and can look odd on grown women, though obviously it depends on how you wear them.

Note: Britain has loads of different dialects and all the above may be different in other British dialects.

Going back to the OP, it depends on whether you're writing for a British or American audience. I ialso agree that you don't "pile" hair in bunches. I would say "she wore her hair in bunches" or just "she had bunches" if the context is clear you're talking about hair.
 
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Tazlima

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Fwiw, I've never heard of bunches, and unless it was described, I would not at all imagine pigtails. I'd imagine something like this or this.

If you really want to convey pigtails, maybe don't describe it as "piled."

I think "bunches" would work fine with a different verb. I hadn't heard that particular term before, but if I read that someone's hair was "Pulled into two bunches on either side of her head," I'd have a pretty good idea what was meant.

Other words that might work are "dangled" or "cascaded" (depending on the length of the hair).
- "Her hair dangled in two bunches behind her ears."

Additionally, you could use words that describe how it's tied.

"Her hair, secured in two bunches with green ribbon/ puffy scrunchies/ Winnie-the-Pooh elastics, lightly brushed her shoulders."

Worst-case scenario, though, let's say the reader doesn't know the word? Is it really that big a deal? I've never minded stumbling across new words when reading. That's what dictionaries are for.
 
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neandermagnon

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Worst-case scenario, though, let's say the reader doesn't know the word? Is it really that big a deal? I've never minded stumbling across new words when reading. That's what dictionaries are for.

I read many American books as a child/teen before I managed to figure out what "bangs" meant in relation to hair. It didn't put me off reading. I just took it that it meant some strange American hair thing and carried on reading.
 

Tazlima

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I read many American books as a child/teen before I managed to figure out what "bangs" meant in relation to hair. It didn't put me off reading. I just took it that it meant some strange American hair thing and carried on reading.

Exactly. I read loads of books as a kid, not only from other countries, but from other time periods (those can have some odd and archaic vocabulary of their own). What I couldn't work out from context, I just filed away as "new word that means... something...maybe I'll figure it out later."

I was in college when the Harry Potter books came out, and I remember being appalled to learn that the US releases had been "translated" into American. (Even the freakin TITLE! They figured Americans wouldn't be familiar with the legend of the "philosopher's stone" so they changed it to "sorcerer's stone.")

Frankly, I found it rather insulting. Did publishers think Americans were too stupid to learn a few new words? Too lazy? But let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that they were right, and not one American child would have understood the reference. How was changing it to something completely made up any better? If you're going to learn new vocabulary when reading fantasy anyway (and whatever they called the stone in question, the child reading would learn about a new object with special properties specific to the story itself), why not go with the author's original vision and use the vocabulary that actually means something? This is a story with Quiddich and muggles and countless other made-up words... but real words that happen to be used used elsewhere in the world were deemed too difficult and confusing?

Part of the fun of growing up is discovering that something you believed was completely fictional is actually based in reality. Madeleine L'Engle, in particular, blew my mind with this. I read her works in elementary school, and when I got older, I was like "Holy moly! Tesseracts and mitochondria are real things and not just funny words she invented for her stories?! I should read more about them!"

It's not just books, etiher. When I was in college, I discovered that a lot of people had no idea that the roadrunner wasn't just a fictional bird invented by Warner Bros. As I grew up in the US southwest, where they're common, it became one of my go-to icebreaker topics. I can't count how many times I heard, "Holy crap...roadrunners are REAL?! and they kill SNAKES?!" (This got even odder when I moved to Italy, where those same cartoons, lacking an Italian word for "roadrunner," called the cartoon character a struzzo (ostrich).

I think they stopped with the HP "translations" after the first few books (I'd have to double-check), but the fact that the publisher felt the need to do that in the first place was just bizarre.
 
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Enlightened

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It's definitely not how Princess Leia wears her hair. Bunches is like Boo from Monsters Inc like two small ponytails worn on either side of the head.

Boo, in the US, has pigtails.

Leia wears her hair in buns (not to confuse with bunches). So many fun words with hair. How about tools for hair, such as scrunchies?

When's the beehive hairstyle coming back?
 

cornflake

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Boo, in the US, has pigtails.

Leia wears her hair in buns (not to confuse with bunches). So many fun words with hair. How about tools for hair, such as scrunchies?

When's the beehive hairstyle coming back?

Ponytails.
 

cornflake

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Pigtails are braided; ponytails are not.
 

Enlightened

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Pigtails are anything on the side of the head; ponytails in back. I've never heard of anyone necessitating braiding for pigtails, in America. It may be different in the U.K. A braided ponytail is fine too, at least in the U.S.
 

cornflake

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Pigtails are anything on the side of the head; ponytails in back. I've never heard of anyone necessitating braiding for pigtails, in America. It may be different in the U.K. A braided ponytail is fine too, at least in the U.S.

Well I've never heard the side/back distinction, so there we are. Hence a side pony not a single pigtail.