The Zendaya bob haircut from the SAG Awards in 2023 was a hairstyle to remember. When she debuted the style on the red carpet, it was an instant head turner. This fashion beauty knocked this hairstyle out of the park as the old Hollywood look was elegant, classic and yet modern. In this Zendaya bob with bangs haircut tutorial, you’ll learn everything you need to know to recreate this look.

Follow along with the tutorial and transcript below.

Zendaya Bob Haircut Tutorial:

Welcome to the Jatai Academy. Today we’re going to be doing a supermodel bob that Zendaya wore to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I think it’s beautiful. It’s luscious. It’s lovely. It’s elegant, graceful and modern.

Alright, so if we’re looking at uh you know Zendaya’s hair when she wore it to the Screen Actors Guild, this is a very nice elegant one length kind of bob with just some layering around the front and a heavy solid bang with a little bit of curl in it.

And I think this is a beautiful beautiful haircut on her. I think she wears it very well, but the key thing to this haircut that makes it really modern is that she has this heavy bang that’s kind of brushed to the side so you get this kind of bang fill in that they used to do in roller sets, but it’s a much more modern version of that.

So it’s got a little bit of lightness but a little bit of heaviness. And getting that right I think is the key to making this haircut really fit.

Sectioning the Hair

So to start with my bob shape I want to start as neutral as possible. So I’m going to take a center part down to the crown, from the crown straight down to the occipital bone, occipital bone straight to the center of the spine.

Once I got the center part, I’m going to take from the occipital bone, that bump in the back of the head, right to that bump below the ear behind the ear which is called the mastoid process.

So once I got the flat part of the back of the head sectioned out, this is going to be the foundation for me to build the solid bob shape. If the hair is too thick which a lot of times it is, I will separate this in half, following the same section that I had above it keeping my lines parallel.

Once I get everything sectioned out like I want and it’s even on both sides, I’m going to start the section in the middle. Start that right in the center and I determine the size of that section by where the comb is flat against the head.

That way I don’t have to worry about inconsistent graduation because I’m cutting across a curved part of the head and elevating it inconsistently compared to a flat section.

Building the Zendaya Bob Haircut Shape

And then from here I’m going to use my Jatai Kyoto Scissor. It is my sharpest scissor. It also has a nice, weighted blade so it cuts a nice clean solid section no matter how thick the section is.

Comb that clean from the root down. Make sure my fingers are perpendicular to the parting. There is my section. I’m holding that as low elevation as I can. Go through cut that straight across. Make that as blunt as I possibly can.

The sharper the scissor, the better. Comb this down. There’s my angle. That’s the way I’m combing my parting, T to the parting. So I make like a T with the hair with the parting. There’s my guide.

Oops, go through, cut that straight across. I push that a little bit and there’s my little bit right through there. Cut that as clean as you can. Then I’m going to do the same thing on the other side.

Then we’re going to check and see that looks good. It looks nice and even. Now we’re going to continue with the next section. I have my baseline. I’ll start exactly in the middle just like I did the first section. Comb that straight down.

And you’ll notice when I’m combing the teeth of the comb were away from my fingers and then I hook the comb about halfway through, bring into my fingers with no tension, and then just clasp my fingers right there exactly on top of the previously cut guide.

Here we start ending up with where the head is curving. So I have a flat section there, a flat section there, a flat section there.

So this section requires three subsections to cut. There’s my line underneath. Cut directly on top of that. My next line there, comb clean. Cut directly on top of my previously cut guide. Same thing on the other side. I’m taking little flat sections as I work around the head.

Comb that down and through. There’s my line from my previously cut. Cut that through. I want to make sure that I am directly on top of my previously cut guide, not cutting it shorter or longer.

That’s what makes this the hardest haircut to do is you have to mimic that same cut for numerous sections all the way up the head. And it gets more and more difficult to cut it directly on top of your guide.

Now our next section, I followed the same pattern, the same angles of section that I was taking. I just took the next flat section up and I will start exactly the same way that I was doing before, flat section in the middle.

Oops! And then as I work one, two, three. So I’ve got three sections on that side. As we’ll continue to work down.

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I’ll continue on my little flat section. There’s my parting. I comb T to the parting and cut my line parallel to my parting.

Now I’m going through and cutting this as blunt as I can possibly get it because Zendaya has this really solid bob shape and it’s going to be different if I was to point cut it.

I don’t have to be as precise. But with cutting it really blunt I have to really really maintain my precision as I build the shape or it’s going to start to look funky.

This is kind of a key area right here where we’re working over the ear. Now what makes this section so difficult is I have a protruding ear that I have to deal with that can really throw a monkey wrench in my cut line on the bottom, but we’ll show you how to deal with that after I start in the center just like I was doing previously.

Comb clean. Cut everything through. Okay now as I start to get into the section over the ear there’s a lot of different ways that I can deal with this.

I can go through and take a section directly on top of the ear cut half of the section behind the ear and half of the section in front of the ear to leave me a little bit of space there to deal with later.

Or what I tend to do is comb everything smooth with only tension that I generate from the comb. Once I put my fingers in, no tension, I hold very gently and very lightly and then just push the hair under the ear and then cut my line and if I go through, oops, and check that again and I used tension on it, you start to see a little bit of a hiccup there.

That is the hair that is my safety net so that when I blow it dry and clean it up at the end I don’t end up with a hole. Okay tilt down a little bit, continue on until I run out of hair.

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Now to separate the front, I’m using the same methodology of using the flat part. So I have this flat. I have the second flat which goes to this curve of the head where at that point all the hair starts to fall forward.

Usually, the second flat I take that to the top of the ear. When I start my face framing, the smaller the initial section that I take right through here, the quicker that it becomes a frame.

The wider the section that I take as my guide, I get a more heavy bang and then it blends down through and if I look at the photo, it’s this heavy kind of bang and that blends down.

Creating the Heavy Bang

So we’re going to take a pretty wide section right through here, right to the center of the recession. I’m going to elevate off the curvature of the head so that it doesn’t end up being a blunt heavy bang but something that flows.

So it’s got a little bit of layering by me elevating. It’s actually going to have a little bit of graduation. So I’ll pull that forward. I think I’m going to go right to the top of the lip, right through there. Cut that blunt, straight across. Comb the next section into it right next door.

There’s that. The next piece right next door. There’s that. So now as I bring the rest of the hair down, this is the hair that I’m going to use to blend my short piece down to my long piece.

The way that’s going to work is I’ll comb this straight down in natural fall, angle my fingers. Here’s my length I’m cutting to. Here’s my length I’m cutting from and then I’ll softly point cut that to give me a nice blend through.

As long as I don’t cut this piece I’m fine and I’m going to be okay. All the way down to that corner. Same thing on the other side. There we go. Now as I start to comb this we’ll see this heavier kind of bang come in and then we have our blend through the sides.

Blending Bangs with the Sides

Next piece. This is usually the easiest piece because I just want to make sure everything blends over. So all I’ll have is a little bit of hair right there from where it transitions from front to back.

And again, I will comb this in its natural fall. There’s my line from underneath, point cut that down and through. I have to point cut this unless I go through and blow everything dry and flat iron it and then just free form cut it like this because it’s difficult for me to go through and angle my fingers straight enough to cut it blunt.

I take a center section for my layering and I’m only going to layer a little bit around the front here. As I hold my first two flat sections up, you’ll see my fringe fall out. I’ll pull everything else up, take a little bit of that length off cutting it 90° off the head shape.

Next piece 90°. There’s a little bit of length there to cut. Take a small piece as my guide and as I get to the crown I should have very little if any hair that’s going to reach and there’s just that little bit of curvature right there.

Now I’ll take everything on one side. Since I’m doing very little layering it’s just enough to take that edge off around the front. I’ll take the entire left side of the head, pull everything straight up. There is my line. There is the hair that hangs over.

We’re going to continue, come here, continue this straight up. There is my line. Cut that down and through and then on this last section there should be very little hair that reaches if any at all, really.

Comb everything up. Be patient and diligent. Make sure everything’s clean. There’s a little bit right through there. Now we’ll do the same thing on the other side. We got our basic shape here. Everything’s looking pretty good. We got a nice solid bang.

Zendaya Bob Haircut Final Look

Let’s go through and blow it dry. See how it looks. Here’s our end result and uh I think we’re looking pretty good. Curl looks pretty good in it. I think we got the curl pattern right.

Blunt all the way around except for a little bit of layering around the front. So I’m pretty happy with that. So the whole thing about this haircut is just making sure that bang is heavy and not really uh face framed and really wispy and light.

You got to have a heavy bang so that when you brush it back it falls in and fills in nice and solid around the front.

Anyway, let us know what you’d like to see in the future. Check out the Jatai Academy. There are all kinds of great information on there that will make you a better hairstylist and barber. And thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.

Final Thoughts

When we look at Zendaya with short hair or long hair, she knows how to pull off many different looks. From this Zendaya butterfly bob to a Zendaya long bob, she gets it right. But you can recreate these looks as well with some know how and practice. For other bob haircut tutorials, visit Jatai Academy.