This real-life Rapunzel’s beauty routine is almost as long as her hair.
Ukrainian beauty Alena Kravchenko has been growing out her nearly 6 feet of hair for five years — and washing it takes a full 60 minutes. She cleans her natural blond mane once a week, combs it at least twice a day, and trims the ends twice annually, most recently resulting in her chopping off more than 5 inches.
The 34-year-old has been obsessed with maintaining lengthy locks since childhood, when her mother taught her that sprawling braids are the definition of “true beauty,” Kravchenko tells Jam Press. This is “why my hair is so long, it is the manifestation of my inner world” and part of her soul, she claims.
Kravchenko has taken to documenting her tresses on Instagram, where she’s racked up over 14,000 followers and frequently receives marriage proposals.
“A lot of men admire my hair, want to meet, travel, invite me to visit their country, make offers of hand and heart,” she says, adding that dozens of men have asked for her hand in marriage, on and offline, but “often I don’t answer [their] messages so as not to give a man hope.”
Some of her followers also have stranger, more specific requests: “The most unusual comment [is] a request to sniff my hair.”
Alena Kravchenko has been obsessed with long locks since childhood.Jam PressDespite needing an hour to clean her hair each week, Kravchenko wants it to grow even longer. “I stand out against ordinary women,” she says, claiming she does not experience any discomfort. “[My] body is used to it.”
However, she admits she does occasionally step on it.
Kravchenko isn’t the only nonfiction Rapunzel — Russian-born Aliia Nasyrova boasted 4½ pounds and 90 inches of hair in 2017. Plus a Brazilian 12-year-old made headlines in 2012 for having over 5 feet of hair, and in the US, a Florida woman set a world record with her 55-foot-long dreadlocks — and earned the title “Rasta-Rapunzel” — in 2016.








