TavorX, thanks for your input too. I wasn’t aware that people had a problem with Holdo in this movie. She’s not a main character and really exists only to serve Poe’s plot (bringing home that blind heroism isn’t good leadership), and then fill in a few other moments - a leadership position in Leia’s absence, and her heroic sacrifice. So like a lot of characters in the series, she gets little screen time but some key moments from which we can infer a lot about her character - she’s a good leader, she knows a lot about managing heroism, and she’s a hero herself.
Either way, maybe we’re getting distracted from hair colour chat, which I’m still really struggling to understand. I think there’s something fundamental I’m missing here because a few people now have said things like her hair is childish, not suitable for an admiral, annoying, attention seeking; but I don’t know of anywhere in the movies or the EU stuff I have read where people in the Star Wars universe would think things like that about a specific colour of hair or make judgments about people’s abilities based on appearance. Especially when there’s so much tolerated variety in Star Wars with all the aliens, and even other humans with crazy hair like Leia’s buns. Am I nuts or does it feel like a very specific set of assumptions we’re making here?
And even if people in Star Wars think pink hair on humans = less skilled, surely the fact that Holdo’s an admiral goes to prove that they value her abilities higher than even that judgment, like the Empire with Thrawn (“we hate aliens, but damn this one’s a great alien”).
Maybe I’m overthinking this. Though in overthinking this last night I actually was reminded of something I read in the Ralph McQuarrie book which does make sense to me as a reason to not have Holdo have pink hair. And that’s that, from the very beginning, it was an aesthetic principle of Lucas’ that Imperial designs had to use artificial colours (black, grey, white, red) whereas Rebel designs had to use natural colours (brown, off-white, forest green, sky blue). By that argument you could say that pink hair belongs on Imperials (/First Order, etc) which now I think about it I can totally see looking really cool*. But still, nobody’s really making that point against my argument here so I’m still struggling with the idea that some people in the Star Wars universe might think pink hair = unsuitable for an admiral, in an inclusive organisation who desperately oppose space fascists.
(*Ironically, idir_hh, I now have to answer your question of “I mean could you imagine how silly it would look on someone like Tarkin or Hux?” with “Perhaps not Tarkin since he’s such an iconic character, but I can certainly see other artificial colours of hair around an Imperial conference table!”)