BARE CONFIDENCE

KERI KUBOTA 9/26

The strongest most inspiring people you will ever meet in your life have all experienced something that made them seek a change. Keri is one of those people. When you look in the mirror what do you see? When you see friends after some time what do they notice? How do people's comments about your physical appearance make you feel? Everything we do and say to people in regards to their outward self, evokes a much stronger emotion on one's inner self that we may not realize.

"MORE SMILING, LESS WORRYING. MORE COMPASSION, LESS JUDGEMENT. MORE BLESSED, LESS STRESSED." - Roy T. Bennet

For as long as I've known Keri she has always talked about wanting to chop or shave her hair and donate it. As this last year and a half has gone on, the idea of shaving her head came up more frequently with stronger enthusiasm until the day finally came. It took until she fully explained her thought process, did it make so much more sense and make it so easy for me to support her decision. After she made her decision to do it herself, she asked me to document it and I wanted to share her story.

"Girls normally have long hair..." is how Keri started off explaining the significance of why she chose to shave her head. She continues by saying how most girls really don't like their hair, but growing up as a girl, "...you always think that you have to have long hair; it's your shield, it's what makes you feminine, it's what makes you a woman. It's kind of the defining factor when you first meet somebody is their hair." A girl's hair can make them feel confident because they have it, they can play with it when they're nervous; it's an extension of them. Her hair was with her 24/7, "it holds a lot of energy kind of, so cutting it off was like cutting off all of the negative energy".

She decided to cut and shave her hair herself because having someone else do it would have "defeated the whole purpose of this. ME taking back control. ME wanting to create this change for myself and watch myself go through it."
"DOING IT WAS MORE FUN THAN I THOUGHT...WATCHING MYSELF GO THROUGH THE PROCESS, I COULDN'T TAKE MYSELF SERIOUSLY SO I WAS JUST LAUGHING".

"THE CUTTING, IT WAS JUST A LIBERATING FEELING TO ME. TO BE DOING SOMETHING I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD DO." THEN IT BECAME FUNNY WITH THE MULLET, AND THEN SHE SAW HER TRANSFORMATION, AND SHE LIKED IT.

Brendan MonahanNovember 26, 2017