What do Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and actor Michael Cera have in frequent? For one, they’re each at the moment coping with the repercussions of going blond.
Whereas Cera not too long ago detailed his peroxide regrets on Late Evening with Seth Meyers (“My hair is in a bizarre place proper now,” the actor mentioned), Burrow kicked off NFL coaching camp by proudly debuting a Targaryen-blond buzz lower. It’s a brand new—and already divisive—chapter for the star QB, who started his rookie season in 2020 with a swoopy, dirty-blond pores and skin fade that anointed him because the workforce’s Midwestern Disney prince. Within the intervening years, Burrow’s private type evolution spawned a persona often called Iced-Out Joe Brrr, whose approachable steez impressed native youths to ask their barber for “the Joe Burrow fade” and earned the participant a runway modeling gig at Vogue World earlier this summer season.
However now there’s a brand new Joe Brrr on the town, and his title is “Slim Shiesty.”
Courtesy of the Cincinnati Bengals
When the Bengals’ Instagram account shared photographs on Monday of their star participant sporting a fuchsia T-shirt, tropical-printed shorts, patchwork Ugg slippers, and his uncharacteristically edgy new hair—accompanied by a “Guess who’s again” caption, in reference the bleached buzz lower of Eminem’s Slim Shady days, in addition—followers appeared flabbergasted. The straight males of southern Ohio rejoiced. “Each girl inside a 100 mile radius is in shambles,” a prime remark reads. “My spouse has returned to me,” says one other.
However Darnell Bonner, the Cincinnati Bengals’ unofficial barber and the person behind each Burrow’s beloved pores and skin fade and recent blond buzz, is assured the followers will come round. “A few of the guys, they’re attempting to make themselves just a little bit extra comfy with this,” Bonner joked to GQ, “however I don’t know, as time goes on, if that’s going to be the case.” (This isn’t the primary time Burrow’s gone blond, both; he and his highschool teammates bleached their hair after profitable their regional finals again in 2014.) In spite of everything, the historical past of thirst leans in Burrow’s favor.
“If you’re going to make the leap and do it, embrace it. You bought to embrace a giant change like that,” says Bonner, who maintains a store simply exterior town in close by Florence, Kentucky and has been chopping Burrow’s hair since he arrived on the workforce. The Bengals’ favourite barber gave us the news on the QB’s new lower—and how one can ask for it your self.
GQ: So, whose thought was the blond buzz lower?
Darnell Bonner: Virtually a month earlier than we did the excitement lower, [Burrow] reached out to me and [said], “I need to strive one thing new. Shoot me some concepts.” Now, thoughts you, he all the time has his personal concepts with the haircuts, and this was type of the primary time he put the ball in my court docket. Truly I used to be going to ship him an image of a bleached buzz lower, however I am like, “You already know what? I do know he isn’t speaking this loopy.” So I did not counsel it. I despatched him a pair concepts. We simply did a easy haircut earlier than he flew out to France and Italy for Vogue Week. And he mentioned, “That is for this week, however subsequent week, I believe we’ll go forward and do this buzz lower.” So I am like, “Are you positive? You prepared to do that?” Finally it was his thought.
