Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter has a new look. The YouTube gaming star shared her new hairstyle in a Dec. 26 Instagram photo, in which she flaunts some freshly cut fringe. “are the bangs bangin?” Hofstetter wrote in the post. “I cut them myself but I’m too afraid to keep trying to fix them LOL I need a professional.” As part of a livestream on Dec. 27, she showed off her new look and revealed at the eight-minute mark that she had given herself the new haircut by following a YouTube tutorial. “I was following a tutorial where I was learning how to cut it, but I didn’t swoop the sides as much as I wanted to, and these aren’t as short as I wanted to be either. Like, I want this to be shorter, but I got scared because right now if I put my hair like this… there’s like… I want the bangs to come down like my chin.”
Additionally, Hofstetter spoke about fans comparing her to actress Jenna Ortega, best known for playing the main character in Netflix’s Wednesday. Several community members commented in the chat that she reminded them of Ortega with her new bangs. “Okay, yeah! The amount of people that said I looked like Jenna. What, Jenna, right? The Wednesday Addams girl. Um… I just want to say… I don’t see it.” According to the content creator, she believed the comparisons to Ortega were simply due to their dark hair and bangs.”But I think it’s because I have dark hair and I got bangs. So I feel like that is enough for me to look like her and, you know, I guess if some people see it… I… it is what it is.”
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A YouTube clip shows Hofstetter discussing cutting her hair much shorter during a stream with fellow broadcaster Miyoung, who cropped her similarly long hair into an ultra-short pixie haircut during the holiday season. Hofstetter immediately responded that she would not but then said she would consider cutting her hair short if she was 75 and had “17 kids, 15 cats, five husbands.” The reason she keeps her hair long, she says, is because of its natural curly and slow-growing nature, “it would be an afro.” With over 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, Hofstetter has become one of the biggest names on the platform. She started livestreaming on Instagram.
