Form: This is a new contemporary oral story that makes use of classical structures and familiar characters

Plot: Rapunzel has spent her whole life reading romance novels and growing out her long, luxurious hair, hoping for the day a brave prince might climb her tresses and rescue her from her abusive mother. Her prince does come, but, rather than the elation she planned to feel, Rapunzel must face the emptiness of anticlimactic disillusionment. Does she like men? Does she like women? Does she like anyone? Did she grow her hair for nothing, or is her hair a testament to her resilience, resourcefulness, and inherent agency? Ultimately, Rupunzel leaves the prince (an amicable split), cuts her hair, and builds herself a house out of felled logs bound together with her former mane where she can safely begin the process of rejoining society after decades of isolation.

Theme of Hair and Intersection With Themes of Gender and Sexuality:

This piece takes a story that is often used to reinforce societal norms surrounding performance of heterosexuality and troubles underlying assumptions of that story by extending tit past its standard terminus. The long hair that is so often associated with cis-heterofeminine attractiveness succeeds in the joint goals of helping Rapunzel escape an abusive household and finding her a cis male romantic partner, but it cannot change Rapunzel's not-yet-explored aro/ace identity. This story is meant to give comfort to those who had to rely on hetero and allo-normative stories to get out of bad situations only to discover that those same stories that saved their lives would never fully apply to them.