Oil painting on canvas,
88cm x 115cm (h x w).
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This artwork is available as a print.
 
This artwork depicts two golden haired girls plaiting each others hair. It is inspired by the Rapunzel fairytale, although in this version Rapunzel has a friend or sister, and together they are plotting their escape.
 
It is typical in traditional fairy tales for the female protagonist to be separated from other women. She is isolated, lonely and vulnerable and awaiting rescue by a man. In a patriarchal society, fairy tales often set women against other women, like the jealous step mother or an old hag. So in my feminist recreation I show Rapunzel with her sister, as they work together to weave their own golden escape route in the form of a ropes made of hair.
 
Many fictional princesses have long golden hair, going back to the earliest recorded European fairy tales. Golden Hair a Russian fairy-tale and Rapunzel, a German fairy-tale, both feature a girl with long blond hair. In both tales the girl is punished for falling in love by having her hair cut off: Such was the shame of having one’s hair cut off. 
 
Long golden hair has long been associated with female beauty, going all the way back to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. In the middle ages, long, blond hair was idealised as the paragon of female beauty in European culture. Still today many women aspire to have blond hair and therefore dye their hair.