Naturally Aggie is a new organization on campus that values the importance of self and valuing who you are as you are.
Blessings Brinson, a second semester junior music education student, started Naturally Aggie to focus on self value. This summer, her friends and family would reach out to her about their struggles with their natural hair and coming to Brinson for advice and tips. Brinson got the idea of starting something that could reach out to the natural hair students of North Carolina A&T’s campus which would be the majority of campus. She not only wanted to touch on natural hair, but who people are as individuals naturally. “Naturally Aggie is being naturally you along with your hair,” Says Brinson when asked to express the meaning of her new organizations name.
Naturally Aggie is about each person individually being natural and who they are. So of course there are different meanings of this word to everyone. Naturally Aggie had a photoshoot outside of Williams Dining Hall on October 12th to showcase and bring attention to the organization’s presence on campus. “Being natural to me means being free, free minded, free spirited, and everything how you want it to be,” says Kailyn Calloway a junior Journalism and mass communication student and member of Naturally Aggie.
Being naturally aggie is not only apart of being a female, but males also can be apart of this movement. Anjane Claytor, a senior business management student, speaks on the importance of appreciating the black male for who he is. “It’s important for us to embrace black males that wear their natural hair or for men that grow out their hair,” said Claytor. Being a man in today’s society the normalized hairstyle is a haircut. Naturally aggie is all about being who you are. Male students who are embracing their natural selves also have their own definitions of what being natural means to them. Andre Vanderveer a junior music student who is a member of Naturally Aggie says, “Me being natural is really being yourself and more than just the way you look as a person. It is staying true to who you are.”
To be truly natural there’s a certain level of comfortability you have to have within yourself to be yourself. Most people do what they do to look a certain way for a certain somebody where they are male or female. When asking black women is black male appreciation important when finding ways to style your hair many women said that it isn’t the deciding factor for them. Calloway talks more about why this is her mind of thinking, “Why should I care about what anyone thinks is appropriate for me, I care about what I think is appropriate for me.”
Naturally Aggie is all about being who you want to be and not letting anyone determine who you are and what you do.
