From feeling the breeze on your neck to a style that actually looks better the more tousled it is, bobs have a certain siren call in summer. The “baby bob” is the latest iteration to have on your radar—and, better still, it looks just as good with a bunch of curls tumbling around your face as it does peaking out of a bandana with a few loose tendrils.
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So what exactly is the baby bob? “Named after the iconic bob worn by Jennifer Grey’s character Baby in the film Dirty Dancing, this cut is a tribute to effortless, natural texture,” says Jaiden Ogden at The Hair Bros salon, who created and christened the cut before putting it on Instagram. “It works beautifully on a wide range of curly hair types, from 2B through to 3C.”
Why is the baby bob trending now?
The baby bob also fits neatly into the current cultural shift we’re seeing this summer where fluffy, springy curls are embraced rather than furiously straightened to beat the heat.
We’ve already seen the “cloud curls” hair trend—characterized by a halo of soft, airy, full-of-volume curls—blow up. Hairstylist Tom Smith, who coined the cloud curls trend, told Glamour at the time that it is “part of a bigger move toward individuality and freedom in how we wear our hair. We’re slowly stepping away from hyper-glossy, over-controlled hair and leaning into something gentler, and more free.”
This soft, free-wheeling vibe is evident in the baby bob, too, and Ogden believes that the haircut’s biggest draw is that it “celebrates the unique movement and volume of curls” rather than conforming to traditional beauty standards.
“I believe the current shift in trends is due to people not wanting to spend the time styling their hair anymore and embracing what they have rather than what a 10-step hair routine can give them,” Ogden notes. “People are more comfortable with fluffiness and don’t see it as something that needs to be corrected,” he continues. “It’s a new age of curly hair that the 2000s hair trauma can’t touch anymore.”
