Impulsive Bangs: Stories of Beauty Trends and Trauma
Featured in Styling Identities: Hair’s Tangled Histories (Spring ’24, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum)
Featured in Styling Identities: Hair’s Tangled Histories (Spring ’24, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum)
This zine examines the complex marriage between beauty trends and the ways we turn to changing our appearance as a response to trauma. Impulsive Bangs draws on deeply personal stories from the artist’s own family and friends, tracing how acts like cutting bangs, dyeing hair, or adopting new styles emerge in moments of upheaval—after heartbreak, abuse, or major life transitions. These seemingly impulsive choices are revealed as layered expressions of resilience, attempts at self-soothing, and markers of survival. By centering intimate narratives alongside cultural reflection, the zine positions hair as both a site of vulnerability and empowerment, an ever-shifting archive of how individuals carry and transform their lived experiences.
