“Brad Mondo Reacts to EPIC Bleach Fail (3 parts, 1 girl!)” by Brad Mondo on YouTube

Short Cut

“The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.”

    - Annie Savoy, Bull Durham

As a child, my best friend Cameron—Cami, for short, and we both were—had a buzz cut. He became so synonymous with this haircut to me—me, someone who’d had thick, wavy brown hair short or shaggy around my ears ever since I’d grown out of the first year or so of towheaded curls—that that’s what I began to call it: a Cami cut. I’d insist for the week or so leading up to my next haircut that this time I would do it, this time I would get the fated “Cami cut,” but I never did. I was afraid—what if I looked different? I don’t even think I knew the look was properly called a buzz cut, or, really, a crew cut, until I moved away.

When we reunited years later, after we’d both moved away from our home town, his hair was long—well, longer. It was barely to his ears. He was almost unrecognizable to me, though I’m sure the passage of ten years hadn’t helped.There it was, the death of the Cami cut, my hair having been no shorter than a few inches my whole life, and now, neither was his.

The Cami of my early adulthood was named Brad. Brad—more properly, Brad Mondo—is a hairstylist who regularly posts styling tutorials and “reactions”—videos where he “reacts” to others attempting at-home haircuts, dye jobs, etc.—to his YouTube channel with more than eight million subscribers. Brad has a different hairstyle in every, or nearly every, video and, without fail, praises people for whatever look they attempt. Not whatever look they achieve, but whatever look they attempt.

I was drawn to Mondo’s videos by clickbait-y video titles—“Hairdresser Reacts to Horrible DIY Highlight Disasters,” “Hairdresser Reacts to Crazy Color Transformations,” “Hairdresser Reacts to At Home Perm Fails”—that targeted me as a frequent watcher of makeup tutorials. (I did not wear makeup, either.) It was a small leap, a YouTube algorithm correctly guessing that someone who watched mostly music videos, Drag Race lip syncs, and makeup tutorials would enjoy a young man with a burnished face ooh-ing and aah-ing at people leaving color in for far too long or trimming their bangs two inches shy of a normal length. What kept me interested, though, was Mondo’s personality. Above the tell-tale signs of influencer self-absorption—the royal “we,” frequent glances at himself in the monitor, facial filler—he was nice. He was always happy for them, the people at home. It did not seem like he was pretending to love their endeavors, but that he was truly excited for them, perhaps because he switched up his own look enough and knew the thrill they would get doing the same. He criticized without being too critical, and was certainly much less critical than me.

Despite my love for Brad Mondo’s videos, after watching them for years—reactions and tutorials, promotions for his own haircare and hair dye lines, collaborations with sweepstaked girls and corpse-less plastic heads—I suffered from one persistent idea: the man had no idea what he was talking about. As is usual with me, though, my conclusion was overly rash, and with time became less of a conclusion and more of a jumping-off point. Clearly, he knows about hair. He’s a licensed hairstylist, as was his father. He grew up in a salon and manufactures his own hair products. Even more, his tutorials, whether it be on a real woman or a mannequin, always end up successful, even beautiful.

But what about his “reactions”? Each video is like laying a path one stone at a time, carefully placing the next one only as you stand atop the most recently laid: looking back, is the path straight? Each panelist, housed in their little screen-within-a-screen, announces their intention, which is normally chosen for the theme of the video: at-home perms, bleach jobs, “butterfly cuts,” etc. Many of these goals, often described by the perpetrator in the pseudo-expert tone of the youthful and excitedly optimistic, are inarguably bad: a couple dying their hair candy-apple red together, despite him having a strawberry blonde buzz cut and her having ink black, pre-colored, shoulder-length hair; or a woman with thick, pin straight hair to her waist aiming to achieve a “Linda Cardellini on the stand in Legally Blonde” look all on her own.

Mondo has a talent for “seeing” it for them, their vision. He even talks himself into it, sometimes starting off dubious of the goal look, and then, within the span of ten seconds, convincing himself that she’s going to rock it. In the beginning of my viewership, I assumed whatever he said was right, or at least had credence to it. If he says this rather frumpy woman settling into middle age a little early will “slay” her sapphire bob, then why shouldn’t she? As she goes, though, his predictions change: no longer will the bob “slay,” as it’s been cut too short on the left. The blue has gone too dark at the root and will have to be replaced with black—which she, of course, always wanted anyway! The hair is cut shorter, the new layer of dye placed on top, and an acceptable level of success is achieved, although not according to what was intended. The woman dying for a blue bob, it seems, is no longer in the room. This woman absolutely loves her black pixie cut with choppy layers! And what’s better, Brad loves it for her, too.

I watch these videos—sometimes as bleach settles into my own hair (which I, of course, did myself), sometimes with a goatee and a skin fade, other times with a beard and hair grown out to show off my numerous cow licks, sometimes with barely more hair than an army recruit—and think. More than anything, what the videos show is pride—pride in achieving a look, pride in doing it oneself, pride for Mondo in watching and playing along. All in all, it’s a rather self-congratulatory process. And here I am, watching the videos-within-a-video spiral into near baldness or, not uncommonly, success, congratulating myself that not only am I not doing what they’re doing, but that I can clearly see where the process is going better than they can, than even Mondo can.

Once hair is dyed, it’s dyed—a realization I’ve had in my own mirror. A straight path from A to B (auburn to blue, aqua to black) is easy to ideate, but the path to success is paved with failures—failures, and bleach-stained towels. What the path avoids isn’t what’s undesirable—in fact, it often targets undesirability with an almost magnetic force—but what’s out of reach of one’s capability. The limit settles in like water over a riverbed, flattening across the top and concealing the crags below, and the fish, the amateurs with box dye and a cell phone suction-cupped to their bathroom mirrors, swim happily within, unable to access what’s above, whether or not they are even aware of it.

What I was aware of as a child, though I couldn’t put the words to it, was how noticeable my friend Cami’s hair was: a bristle brush wrapped around the top of his tiny, pale head. God, it was simple—just get up and go, something I, with my cowlicks, envied—but, perhaps mostly to me, it was attention-grabbing in its pragmatism. Paradoxically, was it not simpler to be more complicated? I was aware, always, of his hair, and aware when I sat in the salon chair and saw my reflection as it was, picturing what I might look like with that same crop, that it might not look good on me. And then what? My child brain couldn’t comprehend this. There was no “and then what”—only black, a road of new discovery, something I was too nervous to want. I looked in the mirror and thought Well, what I see is what they see. And I know this will do. Will do what?

In truth, there is a delicious lack of satisfaction in these videos. A lack of satisfaction with what is. Because that is what it is, not a desire to achieve a goal but to have faith that something good will come out of the attempt, to literally put on the rubber gloves and go, damn it all to hell. That ink-black pixie cut is what she wanted the whole time; all she wanted was to change. Perhaps that is what drives Brad Mondo as well, as he films himself reacting to others attempting his avowed trade without any real know-how—not to predict, or to react, but to change these predictions and reactions as he goes, and they go, so as to share in the joy of the “change at all.” And perhaps that is why I watch, too.

Nowadays, it’s very easy to reinvent oneself and obliterate all traces of the past, especially as an influencer—archive all posts, delete videos, cleanse followers and followings. But Mondo’s YouTube page is a graveyard of past looks going back to 2016, with his first video teaching viewers how to style a braided man bun. Perhaps it’s because these videos make him money (the Hairdresser Reacts series is significantly successful), or perhaps it’s because, growing up in a salon, he understands that though it’s important to take oneself seriously if you want others to do the same, much like with a change in hair style, prizing seriousness over the fun of it all just gets in the way of the final look. Hair is about having fun, and, as Mondo demonstrates, social media should be, too. The point is not just to love your look now (which will eventually get old, too) but love how you looked then, and love the you who loved it, too—they’re the reason you’re here. This was my fear as a child sitting in the salon chair, not that I would make a mistake, but that I would have to learn to love the version of myself who’d made it, and I, at age five, just wasn’t ready for that. Five years old is a bit young to find pride in the “change at all.”

When I worked up the nerve to buzz my hair at age twenty-one (yes, it took that long), I sent a picture to my family, prefacing it with, “You guys are not going to believe this!” They had been there for my years of coveting the Cami cut, and it had finally happened. I’d grown my hair out long before—growing it, an act of inaction, was much easier for me to stomach—but never cut it short. Overall, they did not feel the thrill I felt. My proclamation of surprise—You’re not going to believe this!—made them think I had gotten a tattoo or pierced myself (both of which I did later), not just acquired perhaps the most common male haircut in the world. But to me, it was huge. I rubbed my hands on my head all day, brushed my skull up and down against headrests and seat backs, lived and relived the literal buzz.

Today, I am aware that my hair is longer than I usually wear it, and that the brown roots are likely just as long as the blonde, and that, for some reason, it shows no sign of wave despite its length. I’m aware that I shaved off my mustache this morning on a whim and saw my top lip fully for the first time in four years—I forgot how small it is. I am aware, after twenty-five years, that Cami likely got stuck with a buzz cut by matter-of-fact parents who did not want to spend time styling his hair. It is a very unique thing for your body to produce something all by itself. Perhaps it is a very nice marriage to join in on the fun.