McCandless Project

McCandless Project

For my experiment, I curled my hair with and I went through Monday and Tuesday with my hair curly. Usually I wouldn’t do anything to my hair except blow dry it straight, which is how it normally looks. The reactions I received were mostly nice compliments, and some people asked me questions like how long it took to style my hair. Some people didn’t notice my hair on Monday, but they did on Tuesday or vice versa. Overall nothing really out of the ordinary was said about my hair. During the experiment, I felt as if everyone I walked past was looking at me because my hair looked different, but that was just me just being paranoid since I’ve never curled my hair just for school before. Since I’m not one to dress up for school unless I absolutely have to, I did feel awkward having it all fancy so I decided to wear a nicer top than I usually would. Honestly the responses I saw weren’t terribly surprising, although one person complimented my shirt but didn’t take notice to my hair at all. I found it funny because the shirt wasn’t part of the experiment but apparently it was untypical enough for me to be wearing it to get comments. Am I free not to conform? I think everyone is, but some people are just too scared to be so different. I on the other hand feel like I’m free not to conform because I was actually excited about doing something different. I wouldn’t do anything super life-changing like becoming a vagrant, but the right changes are healthy and everyone needs it in order to experience new things. But I definitely would not take nonconformity as far as Chris McCandless did.