When I cut my hair last summer, I sheared 12 inches of chemically straightened hair from the coarser curls closest to my scalp. I had only an inch of hair in its natural state; at the time, I felt free.

I was working from home for a non-profit, so I didn't think much about how my "big chop" would be received by my co-workers. A few months after the haircut, though, my contract ended and I was on the job market again with a rapidly-sprouting afro. It was the first time in 15 years of professional life that I’d ever interviewed for office positions with my hair in its natural state.

I was wary enough to poll my social media feeds: Should I straighten my afro? Should I get braided extensions that could be styled into a neat, efficient updo? Or should I walk in unapologetically, my hair as free as it was on the day I cut it? Feedback was wide-ranging. One friend admonished me to avoid braids, suggesting I’d only be replacing one stereotype (“militant”) with another (“ghetto”). Others told me I was right to rethink walking in “with a bush.” A blowout was gingerly suggested. Eventually, I sauntered into those interviews with my TWA—teeny weeny afro—in part because I resented that I’d had to deliberate at all. That none of my interviewers mentioned my hair directly afforded me a few sighs of relief, but every time I apply for a new position, I return to those same aesthetic anxieties.

Last week, Allure reminded me of this when it published a feature on afros that entirely erased women of color (“You (Yes, You) Can Get An Afro*” the headline read, with an asterisk: “*even if you have straight hair”). In 2015, only particularly willful ignorance could account for an afro hairstyle magazine spread that treats the afro as a white woman's entitlement. "An Afro is not an introvert’s hairstyle,” they write, apparently uninterested in its political overtones. “This is confident hair.”

I am an introvert, and I owe whatever confidence my afro projects to the women and men of the ’60s and ’70s Black Power movement, who originated the style and provided me a template for how to deal with any backlash I might receive for wearing it.