If you've followed Maya Jama for a while now, you'll know her glam squad are pretty well-trained in lip gloss applying, hair curling, and makeup setting on the move. And no, I don't just mean dashing around for the presenter's crazy schedule, I mean literally on the move while Maya performs a one-woman show on Instagram stories singing and dancing — we'd expect nothing less from a Leo X DJ combination.
But now the most agile glam squad in TV have taken it to the next level, as hair stylist Jay Amir-Nazemi Afshar, who goes by Jay Birmingham on Insta, just cut Maya's hair as she was grooving to Bryson Tiller's 'Outside'. And this man was totally unfazed in the face of such peril. Jay must have played a tonne of Operation as a kid because how anyone has such steady dexterity is beyond me – and I do winged liquid eyeliner on the Piccadilly line.
At first, the trimming was done around some light bopping and singing and I thought, wow, that's a risky game to play. But as the music took over Maya's spirit and she really got into it, I was watching through my fingers (though realistically, if it all went wrong it probably wouldn't be on Insta stories.)
For those wondering if Maya will be debuting a chunk missing any time soon, here she is presenting Aftersun shortly after the dancing snip and her hair looks flawless as always.
So, why can't my hairdresser get it right even when I'm sat still?
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Elena Chabo is Cosmopolitan UK's former beauty writer, working on everything from buzzy celeb news and trending beauty, to sincere first-person reviews and engaging video content for social media. She also creates meatier features and expert-led how-to guides, for print and online. Her passion for Black beauty, textured hair, and the ways beauty interacts with culture, society, identity and relationships, quickly took over her writing career and led her into beauty journalism. Following an MA in Magazine Journalism in 2017, she cut her teeth across various roles at Stylist Magazine, before taking on a Digital Writer role at Good Housekeeping. It was here that beauty took centre stage and she launched and ran the site's first stand-alone beauty section. Remaining at Hearst, she joined the Cosmo beauty team in 2022. Find her on LinkedIn.
