Ricky Bee Is Teaching Dads How To Be Men On TikTok

“If your baby mama breastfeeds, she might get a clogged duct once in a while,” Ricky Banzali says directly to the camera. He says he’s going to teach us two ways to solve this problem: “One of them is for boys, and one of them is for men.” He stops for a suspenseful beat, a chunky silver chain glinting over the collar of his buttoned-up henley, before panning to his girlfriend, Rachel, who is laid up in bed with pain she tells him — and us — is 10 out of 10.

And so, in the name of science and good partnership, with Rachel as his bemused model, Banzali shows us a move he calls “burning the candle from both ends.” The maneuver he’s about to demonstrate over Rachel’s T-shirt is indeed an effective intervention for mastitis, which left untreated, is an agonizing breast infection that mimics the flu. Over both of their giggles, and with his full tattoo sleeve visible, Ricky B massages Rachel’s breast tissue with his hands while simultaneously miming sucking her nipple. (In case it’s not clear, this would be the option for men.)

And while you could be forgiven for finding this whole scenario bordering on the sexy, Banzali captions the video, “I really hope yall understand how dead serious i am about this.”

The first video of Ricky that came across my For You page is the one that made him micro-famous, launching his career as a content creator. In the one-minute, 15-second video, his baby, Laguna, is only a few weeks old. He seems tired but content, suspended in that lawless newborn time vortex, wearing only sweat shorts and a du-rag. “You’re going to feel like you’re committing a crime,” he says, referring to swaddling more tightly than feels legal. “You’re going to feel like someone’s going to call CPS on you.”

Ricky Bee, as he’s known, doesn’t have the manic energy I’ve come to expect from other men in the content creation space, like the jittery YouTubers and video game streamers I overhear my kids watching. His dark, coarse hair is cut in a medium fade and he wears a full beard, neatly trimmed. Though he grew up in Las Vegas, his energy is all California-mellow. If his blood pressure was any lower, he’d be dead.

He demonstrates swaddling baby Laguna using what I recognize from the footprint pattern as a standard-issue hospital receiving blanket. After she’s immobilized in the blanket, he double-bags her using one of those burrito-shaped Velcro swaddle products. He calls this “the cleanup swaddle.” In the comments section, self-identified NICU nurses endorse his technique. Applause-hands emojis are abundant.

Though I’m well past the newborn phase for my own children, here was a hot dad mastering a new skill, communicating it for others’ benefit, and with a heavy dose of dark humor? As TikTok commenters sometimes put it: “They really said FOR YOU page.” And I’m not the only one; overnight the video hit 2 million views, and it has since hit 15 million.

There was not a calculated plan for any of this, Ricky tells me over the Zoom his management helped to arrange; he handed the phone to Rachel for the swaddling video and just started talking. “She was dumbfounded,” he recalls.

The virality of that moment opened the door for him to gain visibility educating new parents through the stages of Laguna’s infancy as he experiences them himself for the first time: how to start on solids. How to be a supportive partner to your baby mama, especially if she is a stay-at-home parent like Rachel.

Less than a year out from the swaddling video, Ricky is a whole brand. When he responded to my initial interview request, he let me know I could CC his management “for visual.” There are brand deals and media requests. This is business.

What strikes me most about Ricky’s performance of fatherhood is how much he seems to enjoy it.

Banzali was somewhat active on social media before becoming a dad last September, to the extent that anyone born in 1998 is. He had 5,000 followers on Instagram before Laguna was born. His trademark intro line for an educational-style video is, “Yo, you got one of these things?” with his baby’s gummy smile framed up tightly for the camera. You can always spot a newcomer in the comments, “These THINGS?” They’re offended — they don’t get it yet. Parenting for an online audience opens one up to vicious scrutiny, though the harshest critiques tend to be reserved for moms. Ricky’s comments sections are overwhelmingly adoring — and mostly women. Ricky estimates 67% of his followers are women. Concern from viewers usually comes through in the baby-handling videos. He loves to do acrobatics with Laguna; he can use one hand to swing her from cradled in his arms to perched on his shoulder in a controlled, fluid movement. It’s startling to watch, but Laguna’s giggles throughout reassure the viewer.

What strikes me most about Ricky’s performance of fatherhood is how much he seems to enjoy it. Non-birthing partners in the United States start at a disadvantage in mastering the tasks of baby care from the jump: Pregnancy, birth, and lactation aside, there is no federally protected paid leave for parents after a child is born, and of the men who are able to take time off, the majority take 10 days or fewer.

You could understand a version of events where even the most progressive dad feels his best move is to stay out of the way, but as Ricky’s feed reminds us, doing so robs them of so much. Watching his videos, it’s clear that caregiving is a masculine act, for those man enough to value it.

Ricky describes to me a few categories of men who reach out to him. There are those who feel seen in the content that he creates, saying “amen” to representation of non-clueless dads who don’t shirk as much caregiving responsibility as they can get away with. Then there are those with, as he puts it, an “I’m useless victim mindset” who need to face some tough truths.

What means the most to Ricky, though, are the men who are reaching out before their baby is even born, enthusiastic to meet the standard they are seeing in his videos. “For me to go from not having a dad at all, to inspiring fathers to be present? That’s the biggest turnaround in the world for me,” Ricky says.

Ricky doesn’t know his dad, and his mom, whom he describes as “Superwoman,” had two kids by age 18 that she had to raise alone. Growing up in difficult circumstances seemed to contribute to Ricky’s “all hands on deck” mindset. His mom had to work multiple jobs and late hours to keep them afloat, meaning the kids (eventually there would be four) were responsible for a good amount of household management. He was still a kid when he was learning to change oil in the family’s vehicle from YouTube videos and cooking for his baby sister because dinner needed to happen.

“The only thing I can’t do is push the baby out of me and breastfeed.”

To him, a parent is someone who does everything, because his mom had no choice but to do everything. When Laguna came home from the hospital, the bassinet was on his side of the bed. This just happened to be where they had set it up. Moving it to Rachel’s side felt too symbolic of a shift in accountability. They left it on Ricky’s side.

There is a through line of curiosity and confidence. “The only thing I can’t do is push the baby out of me and breastfeed,” he tells me. He’s not a saint, though. “I grew up hard,” he tells me. There was fighting and petty crime and implied bad behavior with girlfriends. “My emotional intelligence was zero, not hero.”

It may be these rougher qualities that lend Ricky trustworthiness to a certain set of dads-to-be. He is not using trending audio to chase likes, he’s definitely not dancing and pointing to things. “You speak my boyfriend’s language,” a follower said to him. His credibility is in his unpolished presentation and spontaneity.

At 25, Banzali could be considered a baby himself, but you get the sense that meeting Laguna for the first time was something of a religious conversion for him. He makes regular references to her as a pure being of light and innocence that he gets to know and protect. This deity talk concerns me as a parent to older kids: Babies are angelic and delicious, I want to tell him, but toddlers are pure id and school-age kids will humble you into the stone age. (How will Ricky Bee feel the first time Laguna shoves him away?)

But it’s Ricky’s curiosity that sets him apart, and I get the sense he will always try to learn as much as he can about who his daughter really is. Recently, a video of his passed my feed that I clocked as a gender reveal immediately. He and Rachel are seated on a blanket, Ricky is holding Laguna who is not yet 1 year old. There is a small cake between them, the interior of which turns out to be blue. The video is captioned, “Everyone says 2 under 2 is so hard. I wanna find out.” We’re eager to find out along with him.