Character Stereotypes: The Ditz

A ditz is someone you can count on not to count on. With synonymous names like flake, space cadet, scatterbrain, and airhead, very few readers would likely want to read a full-length novel about one, but they would make for a colorful secondary character or sidekick.

The ditz is often portrayed in films as a blond, buxom, bubblegum-chewing valley girl. Common examples would be Reese Witherspoon’s role as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde and Alicia Silvertsone as Cher Horowitz in Clueless. An example of a male flake would be Rhys Ifans’s character Spike in Notting Hill (interestingly, also blond).

But surely there is more between the ditz’s ears than air. What’s really going on with them?

Let me boil a ditz down to three traits. Hopefully you’ll see that they are, totally, more than just, like, airheads.

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