Two-Faced: Characterization in Bad Haircut Anonymous 10th Grade

Tom Perrotta's Bad Haircut is a collection of short stories about Buddy, a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s. In these stories, Perrotta often introduces characters who bear false facades that do not resemble their true selves. Later on in the book, these pretenses are stripped away and the persons’ genuine personalities are revealed. Buddy’s first impressions of Jane, the Weiner Man, and Sharon are very different than their true characters.

Although Jane Pasco appears to be a normal and balanced teen, her home life reveals that she is very overworked and stressed. At the beginning of one story, Buddy sees Jane as a normal girl with an average life. Buddy remarks “The Pascos? They’re the Average American Family?” (Perrotta 174). Buddy sees Jane’s family as the quintessence of ordinary. They literally achieved the title of most average family and everything appears to be splendid. As the story progresses, however, Buddy discovers that Jane’s life is anything but ordinary. After Mike, Jane’s boyfriend, broke up with Jane, he realized his mistake and “started pestering Jane, calling her every night, leaving presents by her locker, and generally making a spectacle of his misery. It turned [Jane] into a nervous wreck,”...