Mentor Text Analysis -Anastasia Ortiz

Mentor text: The Unexpected Beauty of Co-vid Hair (New Yorker Magazine)

Hook – Elinor Carucci starts off her essay by using a short anecdote of a woman’s reasoning for constantly dying her hair before, why the pandemic has forced her to stop getting it done, and how much joy and confidence she now feels while showing off her grey.

Research – Throughout her essay she was able to compare the color of womens hair to animals or objects. And talked on how cultural stigma and societal pressure forced these women to feel the need to dye their hair.

Storytelling – This entire essay is basically story telling. She used the stories of multiple women to show how pandemic forced the grey to come out and how much those women are empowered by it.

Imagery- She included pictures of women whose roots have grown out grey and the ends remain stained from previous dye jobs.

Length – The entire essay was about seven pages, half of them containing the actual picture themselves. She used about 500 words not including the captions used under photos.

Audience- I believe the audience is women who want to go grey but may have some fear about it. This essay shares women in that same dilemma and how happy they feel about their grey now.

Closure – While coming to a close Carucci includes many photos women showing their grey and captions of the subjects motivating quotes of why they love their hair.

Message – The overall message of this photo essay is to encourage women to show off their grey hair and not feel pressured by family, friends, or cultural norms to dye it.

Emulate – Aspects I plan to emulate are definitely the use of captions and direct quotes from the subjects.

Avoid – Aspects Ill avoid or will not be able to include, will be my own personal photography. I like to think that i’m pretty good with a camera but due to covid, time(pre pandemic photos), and distance most of the pictures I use would come from the subjects themselves.