While the advice came from their advisors and professors — many of whom were former reporters and producers themselves — Johnson and her classmates couldn’t help but feel offended by it. “I didn’t like the idea of someone telling me what to do with anything that belonged to me,” she says. “If I’m producing quality content and a very accurate report, why does it matter if I have a Deva cut or locs or whatever I chose to have on top of my head?” Johnson notes that some of her classmates went on to stay in the journalism field, and ended up conforming to the standards that their employers requested, whether it was weight loss or a new hairstyle. “I think it goes to show that Black people have to bend and break ourselves just to fulfill our dreams,” she says.