How The Mac Got Her Fro
Illustration by Ashley May
Everyone always ask, why Macaronifro? Here’s the long story short.
I went natural in 2010, the summer after my freshman year. The Oprah bangs I lived under fell to the ground of the Aveda Institute. This was my personal undoing in the mirror, like when Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) takes off her wig and makeup on How to Get Away With Murder. THE SINGLE GREATEST MOMENT IN BLACK WOMEN TELEVISION HISTORY.
Cutting off so many inches all at once does something to you. In my teeny weeny afro (TWA), I fled to Barnes & Noble, hid in the Black book section, and sat on the floor looking through random books. I called my mom to take me home because I couldn’t be seen this way. In the same breath at 20-years-old, I thought I was bodycon-wearing-to-the-club type of grown and so thirsty to get chosen by a community.
When I returned to school for my sophomore year, I felt validated by so many women who had also made the pilgrimage to natural hair that summer. Everyone was rocking a TWA and signing up for natural hair 101, learning curl patterns, watching Youtube hair tutorials, and providing real-time product reviews in the “ethnic hair” aisle of Target. It was the beginning of a movement. It was the first community I felt a deep sense of belonging. My natural hair even informed the way I saw my future self, a boss lady with a bomb Afro pumping my way to the top of the corporate ladder at ESSENCE magazine.
Zaina dyed my hair a hue of burnt orange, closely resembling a pan of baked macaroni and cheese on Thanksgiving. My hair stood out and proved to be a conversation starter. Junior year, my roommates and I sat in the basement of our apartment doing homework, in a spell of procrastination, we started talking about our Twitter handles. Mine was JGurl2013. J stood for journalism, and 2013 marked the year of my graduation. I knew it was wack, but it worked at the time.
Taharah suggested I change it Macaronifro to celebrate my curl pattern and new hair color. I did hence the inauguration of Macaronifro. Today, the moniker Macaronifro is about authenticity, creating community, and telling our stories.