I created an Instagram account entitled the Rapunzel Complex (@rapunzelcomplex) to create a communal space for individuals who do not conform to traditional, gendered beauty ideals to find solace and strength in the stories of their peers. To accomplish this, I conducted a series of interviews (similar to the Humans of New York interviews) with individuals whose hairstyles willfully reject gendered expectations of how individuals should style their hair (ex. Women should have long hair and men should have short hair). In turn, this project created a space to educate, share, and normalize rejections of gender and beauty ideals in a radicalizing, feminist world.
In using Instagram as the platform for the interviews, the stories and experiences of real people could be injected into the everyday life of the project’s followers. This project was able to take a visual component of society (beauty) and display images which did not look like the other images which may appear in an Instagram user’s feed.The interview and picture posts were effective in normalizing the content of the project, and in publishing these interviews in a public sphere, these interviews of people who do not conform to gender ideas became a part of everyday discourse, normalizing the subject and showing how these transgressions are acceptable and encouraged.
As indicated by the title of the Instagram, this project was based upon the story of Rapunzel and the importance of her hair within her life. In nearly every variation of the tale which was encountered, Rapunzel is described as a long, fair-haired (i.e. blonde) girl, and it is this image upon which traditional beauty ideals seem bound. This project, through the interviews and pictures of men and women who do not adhere to typical, societal beauty ideals, critiques the idea of gendered beauty constructed through the Rapunzel tale. These participants rejected traditional standards, choosing to instead embrace their natural hair, grow out their hair if they were male, cut or even shave their hair if they were female, or treat their hair in ways which did not align with traditional ideas of beauty presented in Rapunzel.
Works Cited:
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company; Bct edition, 2012. Print.
Into the Woods. Dir. James Lapine. Perf. Bernadette Peters. Image Entertainment, 1989.
Sexton, Anne. “Rapunzel.” Transformations. Boston, Mass. ; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin, 2001, pp. 35-42. Print.
Additional sources can be found in individual posts on the Instagram. These sources are merely the ones which framed the course of the project.
GWS 378 