Culturs TV spoke with Shayla Montero, a multicultural poet, about her journey through her spiritual awakening and the discovery of her inner beauty.

Montero’s poem “Awaken” describes the different experiences that molded her personality and transformed her into the person she is today. By expressing this spiritual journey in the form of poetry, Montero says she regained her confidence. This journey, however, didn’t begin by pure chance.

Montero and her hair as a prized possession

Montero says a woman’s prized possession is her hair; at least, that’s what she has been taught throughout her life. In her culture, how a woman takes care of her hair greatly defines her beauty.

“A lot of my culture is about maintaining that,” she says.

Writing the poem “helped me reflect on who I was scared to be and why I was scared to be that person,” she says. “I think a lot of the attention I received was because of my hair.”

As a matter of fact, when she decided to cut her long, curly hair, a transformation occurred.

I think a lot of the attention I received was because of my hair.

The “big chop” was something Montero had been thinking about for a long time. In other words, it’s the process of cutting the majority of a person’s hair to “relax” or return back to its natural state. In addition, it gave her the push she needed to begin to focus on her internal beauty rather than her external beauty. She called this her “transformation.”

Why have long, curly hair?

After watching a documentary that explores beauty standards in our society today, Montero started questioning why she had to hide behind her long, curly hair. In that light, the second part of this three-part series features her transformation through cutting her hair.

Culturs TV programs are presented on dptv.denverpost.com through a partnership with The Denver Post. Ramproductions in the Department of Journalism and Media Communications at Colorado State University produced the video.

Click below to watch the video on XOTV.me.

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