Prismatic Strands · 12:00pm Jan 9th, 2020
I have a possibly uncomfortable question for all of you:
How does EqG-humanoid body hair work?
I'll elaborate. Ponies, like actual horses, generally have chromatic distinction between coat and mane, and the skin beneath has been shown to be universally (or at least consistently) pale and untouched by chromelanin.
As seen here.
But the humans of Pedestria function differently. Their skin does contain that magical pigment protein, thus it isn't clear whether their hair makes any distinction between scalp and anywhere else. And while cartoon resolution and the fact that we’re dealing with the less testosteronic gender may render the matter indeterminate, humans still aren't truly naked apes, merely balding ones.
(There's also the question of pony facial hair, but that way lies a madness we aren't pursuing today.)
So why do I bring this up? Because of the people with two or more colors coming out of their heads. How does that translate to the rest of them? Do Twilight's highlights trace faint lines across her body like an Air Nomad's tattoos? Is Bonbon's coloration evenly divided across her whole body? Did Rarity buy Rainbow Dash a set of rainbow-striped leggings one winter holiday so she could maintain her aesthetic after she'd finally shave her legs, for heaven's sake, think of those of us who have to look at the things! 
Ahem. Sorry about that. This can happen when the characters take up residence in your head and can see your mental images.
Now, there are three alternatives that I can see. One is that these gracile specimens—Homo sapiens colorata, perhaps, if you’ll forgive the Google Translate—really are less hairy than we more robust hominids, and the question is moot.
Second is that the heterochromic patterns only apply to the scalp and maybe a few other hirsute areas—you know, like armpits—and body hair takes on a hue that matches the skin, or at least a single color of the scalp. The drapes don't match the wallpaper, as it were. Rainbow Dash's blue eyebrows seem to support this.
Or, of course, there's the possibility that chromelanin behaves similarly on both sides of the mirror...
Discuss. Or curse me for making you think about this. Or both! 
The EqD action figure of Sweetie Drops has two different color legs, if that helps.
I have assumed for the sake of stories that EqD humans have body hair which matches their normal hair, and that their skin color is analogous to a pony's coat color. Perhaps given their evolutionary path, EqD humans don't have much in the way of body hair.
Or perhaps the entire EqD universe is a fever dream by Lyra.
I figure if it ever came up, they would just show the primary mane color for body hair. A highlight streak would only show up for comedic effect, like someone having a lightning streak across some epic chest fluff or something.
As the TF2 Medic put it: "Ah ha ha! I have no idea!" (Since he was responding to someone asking whether it was safe and proceeded to do it anyway, when I use this line it's with the implication that I don't care about the answer)
I'm going to presume that it works very well.
Thank you for giving me an excuse to make the EqG charcters furries.
That's an interesting question but I'm too distracted by
to help.
My think broke. I don't know how to brain
Out-of-universe answer: whatever meets the needs of the story.
Example: I read one fic in which Rainbow was actually MtF trans, and, given her upbringing, didn't know how to do things like shave her legs. Rarity (IIRC) helped teach her how to do it. The story specified that Rainbow's leg hair was rainbow-colored, hence why shaving was so important.
Edit: found the story.
- Equestria Girls
- Slice of Life
Rainbow Dash needs Rarity's help for a rather personal matter. Luckily, Rarity is always willing to help a friend, no matter how awkward the situation.In a setting where the hair itself isn't so important to the story, I would think the hair would be much more subtle. I would be inclined to say that, given the fact we don't really see arm/leg hair in-show, it's probably the same color as the skin. No idea re: armpit hair, pubic hair, etc., but that's a place to start.
Speaking from the out-of-universe perspective, I always figured that the creators made the humans prismatic as a way of tiptoeing around diversity. Phrased less cynically; the creators kept the fantastical skin tones to keep the characters ethnically ambiguous, to help the audience(s) imprint their own ideas onto the characters.
For an in-universe answer, let us compare it to melanin. In humans, melanin is the pigment that causes skin to darken. As a species, we evolved to produce more melanin in geographical areas/climates with more direct sunlight. The darker pigmentation of the skin better absorbs UV radiation, and thus more melanin means more resistance to that radiation.
In the Equestria girls universe, pigmentation also protects against radiation. Instead of mere UV radiation, however, it is magical radiation. Just like in real life, evolutionary pressures selected for different pigmentation in different environments. Different areas, however, have differing types and intensities of magical radiation, resulting in a much wider range of colors.
And just like in real humans, certain parts of the body may have slightly different pigmentation depending on different factors. In Homo sapiens, melanogenesis is a complicated process that can change depending on different parts of the body. This is most commonly seen in people with gray hair: many people have some parts of their hair turn gray, then later others. The same or similar process, then, must be present in Homo sapiens chromaticus.
TL;DR: magic, but also science!
Curse you, FOME... I found myself pondering the question while getting breakfast.
...I had a whole, lengthy blog post written out, but it was al ong way to go for not much information, so I cut it out and started over.
Easiest in-universe explanation: body hair, specifically pubic hair, corresponds to equine tails. Hence, human pubic hair shares the same color scheme as the pony's tail would. Incidentally, this usually means that the carpet matches the drapes, as it were, except in the case of ponies like (adult!) Toola-Roola.
Alternately: I love this particular little comic. [Link] It's more "Human" than "EqG," but, could be read to suggest that
ponieshumans are born with a single shade of hair, but use hair dye as a means of self-expression.Also, I love the idea of Rainbow being a natural redhead.
coloratura, surely
5182988
This reminds me of an adorable detail in Mauroz's Friendship is Magic manga, where (human) Rainbow Dash is introduced with rainbow-colored hair, but a later flashback to her childhood shows that it's naturally a plain blue.
Given I have brown hair, bright red facial hair, and pale blond body hair, I would say that the answer is "whatever you want to do," because Lord knows actual humans can have some fairly broad variance.
5182989
Small point of order: "Coloratura" means "Colored" in Italian, but as most often used, refers to a complex style of singing.
Do you have a link to that manga? Sounds cute!
I've honestly thought about this a few times.
One bit of evidence for the whole "polychromy goes all the way down is Canter Zoom". vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/9/94/Canter_Zoom_ID_EGS2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/150?cb=20170613200659 He's one of the few adult males we see with facial hair, and his beard pattern is similar to his scalp pattern.
H. sapiens ssp. colorata also seem to have little in the way of body hair as well. Among the few adult males we see, there is little evidence of body hair. While the out-of-universe explanation is that the animators didn't want to draw body hair, in-universe, my guess is that H. s. colorata are predisposed to lacking body-hair, but those that do, have the same polychromy all the way down.
As an aside, now you've got me thinking about how this would work for my Splintered Sky universe, and the implications for phoenix-born, because the transformation turns their hair into living flame.
5182995
Yes!
First page (English)
Manga gallery
FOME I’m really impressed. I kept expecting this to devolve into a “does the carpet match the drapes” joke... but it just kept going!
I've always thought that facial hair matched head hair, and body hair was a darker version of their skin color.
5182994
As a redhead with jet-black eyebrows and eyelashes that drive my nearly-lashless mother crazy, I concur.
Well, cutie marks appear by magic, and I'm pretty sure you can't shave those off, so how color is perceived in both universes is probably affected by ambient magic fields. That's why ponies lose their color when hopeless or drained by a villain.
Personally I think it's most likely that most body hair either isn't there or matches skin tone, though my undying loyalty to Wintermist's works will see me die on the hill that at least the carpet matches the drapes. The real question is how does it work for alicorns in an anthro world with EQG-like skin?
Because that might turn Daybreaker into a real act of courage.5182995
Actually, "coloratura" is a noun, and means colouring in Italian. Coloured, on the other hand, translates to one of either "colorato", "colorata", "colorati" or "colorate", depending on the gender and number of the thing(s) coloured.
I love how they gave the humans the same colors as their pony counterparts because Hasbro didn't want to risk controversy by assigning anyone a race... except for Big mac, because they realized that having a giant red man walking around would probably be pretty insensitive to Native Americans, so they just made him a white guy. And on that note, even if the show had continued, you could bet your ass we'd never see Zecora...
The second one. Definitely the second one. For the sake of all our sanity
Although... Thought Prism's theory also makes loads of sense for the Equine half of the equation.
5182966
I just have to point out that your muscle memory has betrayed you; you've written "EqD" (Equestria Daily) instead of "EqG" (Equestria Girls), leading to some amazing sentences:
"Perhaps given their evolutionary path, Equestria Daily humans [so, prereaders?] don't have much in the way of body hair."
Well, of the three options presented we can immediately discard the third. In I'm On A Yacht, Applejack gets sunburned and it alters her coloration. That strongly implies it's chromatic skin rather than fur.
*bangs head on wall*
I NEED TO DO MATH!!!!! NOT THINK ABOUT THIS!!!!!
5183037
I notice you're not saying I'm wrong...
It depends on what universe you're in at the time.
-GM, master of WHY NOT BOTH!?
All of my yes. They have coloured skin and hairs that match the names, for that's too hilarious not to use.
5182988
That's quite a mental image (especially because I started to wonder whether Tree Hugger has dreadlocks there
)
5183050
They're a slippery bunch, those prereaders...
Real-world human scalp and body hair are controlled by separate gene complexes. My decades-old memory of university intro-bio class is hazy on specifics, but facial (and possibly pubic) hair may be controlled by yet other genes—hence folks like Shrinky Frod. As for the seeming lack of body hair, I put that down to the strongly stylized and simplified character designs.
It’s true Big Mac, and Cheerilee for that matter, are lighter-colored than their pony counterparts. I suspect the art and design staff decided sticking to the pony colors in such cases would look jarring on human figures. In Mac’s case, I think they just lightened his body color; for Cheerilee it looks like they swapped her colors.
Early design studies posted on Twitter, particularly of Princess Twi, started from naturalistic skin colorations. (She was quite dark, as I recall.) I’d guess they switched to pony-like colors for ease of character recognition, the ethnic ambiguity mentioned in other comments, and maybe to give the world a little Aesop-like separation from the real world.
5183117
5183023
Actually, everyone's colours are slightly different in EQG. Particularly noticeable with Flash, and even more so with other examples like the ones brought up, but it actually holds true for all the others as well. I suggest looking at videos of EQG and mlp side to side to really see it. Don't trust Derpibooru and its screenshots, the colours are all messed up there most of the time.
5183042
That would require FoME acknowledging that short as anything other than a fever dream.
I'm assuming there isn't an EQG Zecora?
5183153
She exists because EQG Pinkie Pie has mentioned her, but she hasn't been seen. (There's a toy but that's... different.)
I’d do simple equivalence. Mane is hair, pubic hair is tail, beards are beards, and fur is body hair/eyebrows. Skin is it’s own thing separate from, but strongly correlated to, fur color.
In practice this means Big Mac is an exception, and has red body hair on peach skin.
The more important question, what are the ‘official’ names for the skin tones? And do certain hair colors have common nicknames?
I'm gonna have to go with option two.
Also, did you know that some real horses can have moustaches? (It looks pretty weird, though.)
5183167 Ah, but this's Pinkie. Are you sure she wasn't referring to the Zecora on the other side of the mirror?
I do like the light fuzz. Alternatively.
At some point in pony history, a group of ponies came through /a/ portal... right around the time modern man came about pretty much out of nowhere and exploded in population, and bred other hominids into them. The genetic memory of Equestria lead to the myth of Eden, and magic diminished and eventually disappeared. Maybe Earth has a limited field that expresses marks and maybe guides naming (although we've seen that even Equestria's name magic isn't infalliable and ponies change their names sometimes)
5182968
I can't help but imagine Big Mac as having a Robin Williams Carpet of Virility.
5182966
There would be a beautiful poetry in the entire brony fandom being her feverish delusion.
But yeah, I could definitely see Lyra writing tales of a strange land of magic-starved superapes that just so happen to resemble the Bearers of Harmony. Sunset Shimmer is a blatant self-insert post-reformation.
5182968
Pretty sure chest fluff isn't a thing in humans. Usually.
5182971
Huh. I always interpret that as meaning "Let's find out!" And I'm all for doing so; anything that lets me leave this universe and end up somewhere that can comfortably support human life.
5182974
... What have I done?
5182975
It is a striking image, I know. Especially if the pink streaks light up when she
enters the Alicorn Stateponies up.5182976
Mission accomplished!
5182985
I love the idea of chromelanin blocking magical radiation as much as ultraviolet. Not only does it make sense, it also explains why humans tend to be paler than their pony analogues. After all, the magical field is weaker in the human world. As for the color, as you noted, that's clearly region dependent. Mountainous regions tend towards red, coasts are blue, etc.
5182988
You're welcome!
While I do like the idea, the distribution of interesting hair palettes makes me doubt it. I can't see Rarity opting out of a form of self-expression, nor human Twilight adopting it.
5182994
Excellent point. I've found all three in my beard.
5183001
I'd forgotten all about Canter Zoom's beard! Solid evidence for continuity throughout. And now I want to see Bow Hothoof with a beard. Or a handlebar mustache.
It's a bit like the question of gorgons. Just how much of Medusa's hair turned to snakes?
5182978
5183075
This was one of the stories I could never foist upon anyone else to write:
Twilight keeps wondering why Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have such wavy, ethereal hair, while Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna don't. Celestia's resolve finally breaks down under Twilight's relentless inquiries and admits that her other hair does look like that.
5183004
Hey, this is a serious discussion of the biology of an overgrown toy commercial! Besides, other people in the comments have brought up the carpet for me.
5183016
Possible, though there's evidence for shaveable cutie marks in the blog.
5183017
5183042
Beyond Rabe's very salient counterpoint, I'll note that ponies can get sunburned too, at least during musical numbers.
5183044
My apologies/You're welcome/If I have to suffer with the things my mind comes up with, I don't see why the rest of you shouldn't.
(Choose one or more.)
5183069
Very good point. Get a big enough multiverse, and the answer to any vaguely defined question like this is "all of the above, and some stuff you hadn't even thought of."
5183174
Excellent questions, though I was focusing more on the base biology rather than any cultural baggage that gathered around it. Makes me wish MythrilMoth had been able to finish his work on chromism.
5183220
They can?
That is amazing. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
...
5183023 5183153 5183167
I'm going with 5183319's approach. A human Pinkie has mentioned Zecora by name as one of her friends. There is no guarantee she was talking about a human.
(Heck, I'm still not sure how to approach zebra aspects in the Oversaturated World...)
5183387
A compelling possibility. A lingering legacy of pony influence would also explain all the horse puns, and possibly even the noun phrase naming schema.
5183481
WoG is apparently the Sirens ended up coming through just a bit before the films even though they were banished a thousand years ago on the pony side of things.
There's nothing saying that tribal ponies couldn't have ended up on Earth as neolithic societies.
The interesting bit about modern man is that early hominids were actually coming about pretty much everywhere and we're finding more and more and more genetic relatives like the Denisovans that were eventually bred into the line of Homo Sapiens. The bottleneck that reduced us to 5000 breeding pairs in ponyland could have just been Homo Sapiens Caballus appearing en masse.
5183481
Oh, right. That gives me another question, though. Why are manes immune to magic when the hair everywhere else seems to allow it?
5183479
Ponies turning red from sunburn is part of Chromelanin's magical nature, converting to red as part of the healing process for radiation damage.
5183474
No no. The coat origins don't match the region, they're protection. Mountainous regions sourced Ivory and Blue, grasslands source Red and Black (which, in EQG, is a true black like Drow rather than dark brown) and so on.
Uncomfortable thought number...don't know of the day. How does gorgon hair grow? The snakes keep getting longer, until they start narrowing and then actually fall out as a live snake. Then a new snake starts growing as a bud from the follicle, starting with the head. It's a cyclic process, and not for the trypophobic. You're welcome.
5183492
This is the kind of prime nerd content I’m here for.
Around 5000 ponies. That’s a whole small modern town. Of course it’s also about the size of Uruk if I’m remembering right, but ponies have magic and can sustain higher population densities earlier. I wonder what they were running from...
5183495 No, no, the Chromelanin isn't trying to repair damage; it's blushing at the close contact with Princess Celestia!
5183387
I imagined Bulk Bicepts, but either works. But the original idea was Soarin with a little yellow lightning bolt through his, just because that sounded hilarious.
5183469
Wait, does that mean Robin Williams came from Equestria? That explains so much.