Beauti: The Mikhayla Interview
When I got to the pageant, I had natural hair. I walked in and was surrounded by people who all looked the same, and then there was me.
At that point, I was so comfortable with my hair. I went natural when I was a junior in high school. I used to have chemically straightened hair and I chopped it all off and started over. So, I was comfortable with my hair, but there were some people who weren’t.
I’ve had a judge say “I think you were fabulous, but you should think about changing your hair.”
I grew up believing that my hair wasn’t “done” until it was long and straight, which I think says a lot more about how black women view their hair in general. There are so many women who will wear sew-ins because they want that long straight hair they have on TV and there is just no representation of a woman with natural hair.
It was definitely just a big step for me to cut it off because it was me saying: