Barber Shaves His Head in Support of Customer Battling Cancer
Hair grows back, but human kindness can last a lifetime.
A barber named Danillo Mendonça in Brazil proved this after shaving his own head to show solidarity with a cancer patient who had come in for a haircut after undergoing chemotherapy. The barbershop posted footage of the encounter on Instagram, garnering 2.2 million likes and hundreds of comments.
A barber changes one woman’s life
The video shows Mendonça shaving the head of a customer who appears to be crying. In the caption, the shop wrote, “Nubia came to us very shy, embarrassed, no way to say what was happening. But with a lot of talk, she opened her heart and told us about the difficulty she was going through: CANCER.”
They go on to explain how the Mendonça spent time talking to Nubia about her diagnosis, confessing, “I had no other choice, I would have to cut off all the hair that was starting to fall out due to the treatment,” in reference to Nubia’s chemotherapy. However, an amazing thing happened after he finished cutting her hair.
“In the end, I hugged her and with a lot of certainty in my heart,” they wrote, “began to cut mine too.” In the video, Nubia reacts by telling the barber to stop but immediately breaks down in tears when he commits to shaving his own head, as well.
Miraculously, the woman recovered
The barbershop confirmed that, following Nubia’s diagnosis, she made a full recovery. They wrote, “with a lot of willpower Nubia WINS!!!!!!” According to Instagram, the woman’s name is Núbia de Paula. In one of her posts, she credits her son with helping her through treatment.
On Twitter, the video made its way to the GoodNewsMovement page, where it attracted an additional 300,000 likes and, once again, a string of comments. “It’s the way he holds her and comforts her that does it for me. Truly beautiful,” wrote one commenter with a heart emoji. “This is why we are here. Love, empathy, vulnerability, truth,” wrote another.
The Instagram comments were similarly supportive, with one commenter writing, “Beautiful attitude my brother, only those who know you know how good your heart is, we are all proud of you!”
Mendonça’s act of kindness is doubly meaningful because of how often unrealistic and antiquated beauty standards equate a woman’s hair to her beauty. Losing one’s hair is hard enough, not to mention it being the result of cancer. But simple acts can provide hope and empathy for another human being.
