Who knew that getting a haircut for the first time could be this traumatic?
After requesting a simple trim of his mustache, Middle School Principal Walter Russ left Pearl's Curl and Twirl in a snarl. One witness described the scene this way: "Looked like old Walter had a dead squirrel stuck on his face."
There's nothing wrong with women (or men) treating themselves. Getting their nails done, buying a new outfit, going to the movies; hey, you deserve it once in a while, right?
One of the best ways to treat oneself or just use routine maintenance is by going to the salon or hairdresser. It's usually a good, if not relaxing, time and you often look and feel better afterwards, but what if something goes wrong?
Say that your usual stylist is having a bad day, or alternatively, is not available and you instead receive someone else who's distracted, incompetent, evil or just new. Perhaps the prices have skyrocketed due to new management or inflation. Maybe it could be you're just there for a ridiculous amount of time: what should be a 2-3 hour appointment turns into an all-day thing. One possible reason is that the Chatty Hairdresser or Gossipy Hens of fellow patrons (or both) have some real hot buzz or drama that you could be in the middle of. Or your old salon went out of business and you had to go to a new place where all of the above happens, and more. All of this could also occur at the barbershop, for the Spear Counterpart.
Even worse, you'll possibly wind up not only annoyed with the bad service but sporting a Traumatic Haircut (or a Gag Haircut if played for laughs). In the worst case scenario, you could end up maimed or murdered by a barber delivering a Dangerously Close Shave.
Keep in mind that a sucky salon can be either genuinely bad due to the aforementioned reasons or just one's own perspective of the atmosphere/location. It could be just an "off" day, or the client may have a beef with a stylist (or a variety of stylists) that may or may not influence their attitude towards it.
Also keep in mind that just because a man visits a salon (particularly when a straight man visits an LGBTQ one, either on purpose or accidentally) it should not automatically qualify as an example; there has to be several factors involved in why it was a terrible experience. Just trying to add an example over a joke, regardless of the time period the example came out, does not apply, especially if the service they received was considered decent.
This trope can be Played for Laughs or Played for Drama. See also Makeover Fail and Beauty Is Bad. Compare Cosmetic Catastrophe, where someone tries to give themselves a makeover and gets it horribly wrong, Barbershop Episode, where the episode partially or mostly takes place in a barber shop and Miserable Massage, where going to a massage parlour or receiving one altogether makes for an unpleasant experience. It can particularly suck to visit the salon when there is A Spy at the Spa.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Crayon Shin-chan has a strip where Shin-chan and his father, Hiroshi, went to their local salon together due to the mother Misae being absent. As always, Shin whines about getting his hair cut... until he notices the attractive female hairdresser and her two equally-pretty assistants. The usual hijinks ensue, including Shin lying down the wrong way and getting soap into his eyes before running about in panic and bumping into Hiroshi's hairdresser who's in the middle of giving Hiroshi a shave — cue High-Pressure Blood and Hiroshi screaming in agony before leaving with a bandaged cheek.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018):
- In the BNW OVA, Gold City is shown running a walk-in salon as part of the school festival. When Vodka is pressured into visiting by Daiwa Scarlet, the result is a total Makeover Fail, with Vodka caked in makeup and her short hair tied with numerous ribbons. When Gold Ship sees the result, she performs a Spit Take and laughs herself silly.
- A Running Gag in Season 2 involves a woman visiting a hairdresser who inevitably gets distracted watching whatever big race is happening on TV and cuts off way too much of the poor woman's hair. In the finale, while the hairdresser is distracted by Tokai Teio's "miracle run" at the Arima Kinen, the woman decides to get revenge and cuts the hairdresser's hair.
Comic Books
- The Baby-Sitters Club: Just like in the original book Karen's Haircut, Karen convinces her parents to take her to a salon to get her nails done and a nice haircut since she's feeling unpretty because of her missing front teeth. However, the stylist Gloriana cuts Karen's hair much shorter than she wants — into a boy-short cut — while Lisa is out with Andrew for a moment, and Karen cries all the way home and spends the rest of the book trying to glamorize herself to make up for it.
Comic Strips
- One FoxTrot arc plays around with this. Peter has to get a haircut and ends up saddled with a clumsy beautician's school student who utterly mangles the job, which would normally qualify as this trope...except said student is an ex-lingerie model and Peter is a Hormone-Addled Teenager, so he's too busy being Distracted by the Sexy to notice or care how terrible his new haircut is.
Comedy
- Marcello Hernandez has a stand-up bit where he talks about being brought along to his mother's salon appointments as a child. From his perspective, everything about salon treatments is shockingly violent, from hairstyling (done with "chemicals" and "radiation") to Painful Body Waxing.
They grab your mom and they throw her on a surgical table. And then a little goblin comes through some curtains, and she puts honey and duct tape on your mom. And she goes, "I'm gonna count to three, okay? One— [ripping motion] HHYAAAAAAAAH!" And then she holds it up like the head of a soldier that she just killed.
Film — Live-Action
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Bungling Inventor Caractacus Potts builds a haircutting machine and takes it to the local fair. The cutting portion over-does its job on the first customer, leaving the middle section of the top of his head completely bald, the skin quite red and smoking, and the man himself so furious that he chases Potts through a crowd of onlookers, threatening him with bodily harm as they go.
- Parodied in Dumb and Dumber. When getting an old-fashioned shave at the barber, Lloyd's neck suddenly starts gushing blood and he's screaming and carrying on to the horrified barber who then faints. Turns out, he was pretending to be stuck using a hidden razor blade and ketchup packets.
- Monkey Business: Stowaway Chico Marx is pretending to be the ship's barber when a man with a large handlebar moustache come in asking for it to be trimmed. Chico cuts off a little from one end, decides the result is uneven, and cuts a little off the other end. He then decides it is uneven in the other direction and repeats the process until he has removed the moustache entirely.
- In What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), Ike has Tina and the other singers go to a high-class salon to get their hair dyed à la Marilyn Monroe. While there though, one of the stylists' young daughters is involved in the process and accidentally leaves it in too long, resulting in it falling out. It ends up being subverted when Tina sports a wig onstage that he approves of to the point of deciding that the girls will now wear wigs and her collection of wigs were a part of her signature look.
- In Why Did I Get Married?, the mother of Marcus' son, Keisha, comes down to her hair salon to stir up trouble. As the two women fight and he has to break it up, Angela then roughly treats a client's hair while venting to one of her friends over the phone. When the woman protests this, she orders her out of her chair for being "too tender-headed".
- Wish You Were Here: At the beginning, Linda is a careless hairdresser, and makes a terrible job of a lady's hair. While the lady is lamenting her ruined hair, Linda shrugs, and tells her to wear a hat.
Literature
- Mark Twain's About Barbers
is an article about the horrors of a 19th-century barbershop, the long wait with nothing to read but advertisements or old newspapers, the Chatty Hairdresser who aggressively pushes the latest fad hair products and forgets about the customer, and either shaves close enough to leave bumps afterwards or outright cuts the skin.
- Dirty Bertie: In one story, Bertie has to go to the barber, but the only barber available is infamous for only giving crew cuts, and Bertie doesn't want a crew cut. His friend Eugene tries to give Bertie a haircut so he won't have to go to the barber, only to do a terrible job of it. In the end, Bertie's father takes him to the barber, who ends up giving the father a crew cut despite the father not wanting his hair cut at all.
- In the Dorothy L. Sayers short story "The Inspiration of Mr. Budd" a wanted murderer comes into a hairdresser's shop late at night and demands to have his hair colored. Unbeknownst to the murderer, the hairdresser recognizes him and, wanting the reward for his capture, deliberately arranges it so the murderer's hair will turn green in a few hours.
- Jeremy James: In the story "Yellow and Purple", mummy decides it's time for the child Jeremy James to have his hair cut properly at the barber's; and daddy leaves him there. While he is waiting, Jeremy James looks at the other customers, and sees one man having all his hair cut off, and another man having a yellow and purple spiky mohican cut. Jeremy James is terrified that this is going to happen to him, and runs out of the shop in a panic, straight into a policeman, who advises daddy not to leave his son alone in a strange place.
- Ramona Quimby: In Ramona and Her Mother, Beezus is tired of getting haircuts at home and wants to get a beauty salon haircut, which the Quimbys can't afford. She finds a place called Robert's School of Hair Design that offers cheaper haircuts done by hairstyling students. Unfortunately, by the time she schedules an appointment, the stylist she wants has already graduated. The guy who cuts her hair, instead of giving her the cut she wanted, uses too much hairspray and gives her a Beehive Hairdo that makes her look like a middle-aged woman.
- Regarding The...: In Regarding the Fountain, Pearl O. Ster's salon has been suffering because the lack of free-flowing water in the town means she can't style hair even half as well as she used to, so the few customers she does get nowadays tend to come out with bad hairstyles and a lack of interest in visiting her again. Once the water returns, she bounces back and then some.
Live-Action TV
- 9-1-1:
- In "Starting Over", a woman goes to her hairstylist to complain about the extensions he gave her causing her pain, threatening to write a bad Yelp review if he doesn't do something about it right away. The hairstylist ends up fainting in shock when he sees that there are maggots in the woman's scalp, which turn out to be the result of him buying the extensions from a morgue. The horrified woman learns that she'll have to go to the hospital and will probably need to have her hair shaved.
- In "Mixed Feelings", two girls ditch school and go to a salon where the stylist uses fire instead of scissors to cut hair. But one of the girls panics and accidentally knocks the torch into a bin, setting off the sprinklers. Since the girl turns out to be allergic to water, her skin ends up burning and she has to go to the hospital.
- Any Day Now: One episode has M.E. playfully push Rene into a pool, ruining her hair. Going with her to the salon as she receives protracted and painful beauty treatments for the time (the '60s), M.E. gets bored and begins to play with a "cream" that she puts on her face, which she soon learns from the horrified stylists is lye. Thankfully, she was fine and Rene's hair was restyled, but she still had to lie to her mother about where she got the mysterious burns on her face, claiming it was from poison oak.
- Awkwafina is Nora from Queens: At the salon, Nora insists on having Asha, the stylist, dye her hair platinum blond, even though Asha warns her that bleaching virgin Asian hair is "always unpredictable and often unfortunate."). The result? Wavy red hair that Asha says reminds her of Merida.
Asha: (stifling giggles) I only feel like 20% bad about this because I did warn you multiple times.
Nora: What, what even color is this? And the texture! Is that a natural wave? Because I look like a Hot f——— Cheeto right now! - Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction has this Played for Horror as a mistress of a married man tries to kill his wife at her salon in order to have him to herself. Attempting to rig up an old-style hairdryer to kill her, she ends up being killed herself when the ring that her lover gave her sapped the electricity and killed her instead.
- The Big Bang Theory: In "The Werewolf Transformation", when Sheldon has to go to the barber, he only finds his usual barber's nephew working there because the usual barber is hospitalized with a stroke. For Sheldon, with his strict routines, this is an absolute disaster.
Sheldon: The end of the world has come — not with a bang, but with a nephew.
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie: Hugh enters a barber shop to be greeted by Stephen who speaks nonstop in impenetrable Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness while wrapping him in multiple smocks. Eventually he reveals that he has only cut an entire head of hair once before. Hugh gets up to leave in disgust at the realization that Stephen has no idea how the sketch will end. Stephen persuades him to sit back down so he can finish the sketch, and exits to get the necessary equipment ("it's going to be a chain saw," Hugh mutters darkly). After a while, Hugh realizes he isn't coming back.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "Safe House", Rosa goes undercover to question the girlfriend of a suspect, who is a hairstylist. When Nikki doesn't open up at all until the end of the initial haircut, Rosa gets her hair dyed platinum blonde then gets a perm to get more out of her. Rosa is clearly suffering through the whole experience but puts on a fake smile so Nikki is none the wiser. When Jake reacts to her hair at the end of the episode, she tells him the perm saved his life.
- One Cold Open of The Chevy Chase Show had the host receiving a shave from Dan Aykroyd in a barbershop when the former gets his neck nicked accidentally by the latter. While Dan tries not to freak out, Chevy is none the wiser and continues with their conversation.
- One sketch on The Chris Rock Show has a "Make You Wait Salon" which is filled with snobby, distracted and otherwise incompetent hairdressers whose own selfish agendas are determined to have women wait at a salon for a ridiculously long time, including one old woman who had been waiting to be finished since she was a teenager.
- One episode of The Golden Girls had the girls going to a hairdresser recommended by Sophia. While they were initially reluctant, the charismatic stylist sweet-talked them individually and convinced them of his talent. All three of them ended up with overly curly, matted styles much like Sophia.
- In Living Color!:
- A Running Gag in the Groom Room sketches. The one barber, Max, is a cantankerous old man who's awful at his job and is hard of hearing. He also overcharges his clients and screams out when they stiff him "Where's my tip, sucka?"
- One LaShawn sketch has her as a manager at a beauty salon and trying to counsel an incompetent stylist. Aside from the clients having to deal with her snotty attitude, one of the women ends up with blue hair due to him giving her a color rinse.
- Married... with Children:
- In "Requiem for a Dead Barber", after Al's original barber died, he ends up going to a salon. While there, he's (possibly) hit on by two Camp Gay hairstylists, a woman flirts with him and then rejects him after learning that he's not rich and then is overcharged for an ugly, curly hairdo that the family mocks him for to the point that Peg rejects his offer of sex. We then see that his fellow poker buddies all have gotten their hair done there, with similar results.
- In "He Ain't Much, But He's Mine", after Marcy's usual hairstylist gets fired, she ends up with Peg's stylist, who gives her a ridiculous beehive hairdo, which as odd as it looks on Peg, really looks horrible on Marcy to the point that Steve and others mock her for it and she herself hates. She later is seen grabbing the woman, ready to beat her up offscreen.
- Martin (1992): In "Control", Gina is forced to work with Sheneneh as a hairdresser after losing Martin's tickets to a basketball game. Aside from sporting her own silly hairdo, she's clearly out of her element by being unable to properly sand regular client Myra's feet and accidentally takes her hair out after a leave-in conditioner mishap.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: In a memorable sketch, a man enters a barbershop and sits down for a haircut, oblivious to the fact that the barber is actively fighting homicidal urges to murder him. He finally realizes something is amiss when the barber pretends to cut his hair but actually turns on a tape recording of generic barber chatter. The barber breaks down and confesses that he never wanted to be a barber... he'd rather be a lumberjack.
- Mr. Bean: In "Hair by Mr. Bean of London", Mr. Bean goes to a barber shop and ends up posing as the barber when the latter is on the phone. Bean ends up cutting off part of a boy's hair and shaving a large gap in the middle (the boy actually likes it, while his mother isn't pleased), cutting off a man's ponytail, and shaving off a man's toupee. The real barber ends up being blamed for all of this, while Bean sneaks out and hides his face with a calender of King Charles (then Prince of Wales).
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Schisms", Worf gets a haircut from Mot and implores the latter to not to do it like "last time", when Mot apparently went overboard with trimming his long Klingon hair. The current visit sees Worf react with a stony face to an Orphaned Punchline from Mot — then Worf abruptly gets a suppressed Trauma Button pressed by seeing Mot's scissors, which makes him fearfully grab a startled Mot's arm before leaving the barbershop.
- War of the Worlds (1988): A particularly nasty version occurs in "Heal The Leper", when one of the advocates takes ill and needs liquefied human brains to recover. To harvest fresh brains the aliens take over a salon, yanking one woman out of the dryer before it's finished, and as she protests that she hates it and asks what they intend to do with it, she's answered by having an electric saw applied to her skull. The bodies of all the patrons are later found still in the salon, minus their brains.
Music
- The Simpsons Sing the Blues: "Deep Deep Trouble" ends with Bart being dragged to Jake's Barber Shop. Even though he asked for only a little of his hair to be cut off, the barber ends up shaving his entire head bare, something which gets Bart laughed at in the music video.
Theatre
- Sweeney Todd: Exaggerated. It's safe to say that getting murdered by your barber, then having your body sent down a chute to be made into meat pies would be a pretty sucky experience, as happens to all of Sweeney Todd's clients in Act 2 when he goes on a murderous spree.
Video Games
- Brain Dead 13: Lance ends up in a literal sucky salon when he ducks into Vivi's, a vampire who runs a "Funeral Parlor" within Dr. Nerosis castle, to escape from Fritz and she practially forces him to be a customer. The thing is the salon is designed for monsters and her idea of "treatment" will naturally be fatal to Lance if the player doesn't intervene.
- Devilish Hairdresser: You are playing the Devil, and the objective of the game is to ruin the hair of the Angel's clients while she's distracted with things like stirring her coffee or talking on the phone. But if you get caught, it's Angel Prison for you.
- PaRappa the Rapper 2: In stage 5, we learn that the town's hairdresser—Hairdresser Octopus—has suddenly gone crazy and will only give his salon customers afros, to their dismay. It turns out that Octopus is actually Brainwashed and Crazy thanks to the Mind-Control Music being played on a tape deck in the salon. PaRappa is called in to put a stop to it, and Octopus agrees to change everyone's hair back if PaRappa helps him out (in the form of a rap battle, naturally). Once the stage is successfully cleared, the tape deck explodes, freeing Octopus of his brainwashing. The whole thing is actually a scheme by the game's Big Bad, Colonel Noodle, who sports an equally ridiculous afro himself.
- The Sims 2: In the Open for Business expansion, salon chairs can be added to community lots and home businesses. Whenever a Sim does go to get their hair styled at one, there's a chance for a failed routine, based on how much Stat Grinding the stylist has done for their hair styling skill, which will result in an embarassing hair style instead of what was requested. Having this happen on a business you're running will lead to negative customer reviews.
Websites
- Not Always Working: In "Situation Is About To Get Hairy," the OP has really long hair. She goes to a salon and asks for six inches to be taken off. The hairstylist instead cuts almost two feet off so that the OP's hair reaches her shoulders, with the excuse that it looks "better" that way and it will be easier for the OP to take care of. The owner is not impressed, and gives the OP a gift card to her favorite coffee place to make up for it.
Western Animation
- 6teen:
- In "Major Unfaithfulness," Fabris, a world-famous stylist, comes to the mall. Caitlin decides to get a haircut from him, but ends up with a red mullet.
- Zig-zagged in the episode "Girlie Boys". Jonesy is brought to the mall spa to wax his unibrow, and while it's initially a humiliating, painful experience, he quickly catches on how the clientele are almost exclusively female, and soon gets a job at it to pick up girls. He later invites Wyatt and Jude to share the benefits, and while they initially also endure Painful Body Waxings, they soon realize that there are spa treatments that don't hurt and treat themselves to relaxing massages, pedicures, hairdos, and the like. Unfortunately, the expensive maintenance begins to eat into their wallets, leading to an attempt at sneaking in after hours and giving themselves treatments, both of which end in failure and leads to Jonesy getting fired.
- Arthur:
- In "Francine's Bad Hair Day", Muffy takes Francine to her hair stylist in preparation for picture day. It's a terrible experience for Francine who ends up with curly hair which she hates and spending all her allowance because how expensive it was.
- In "D.W. Queen of the Comeback", D.W. goes to a barber shop, where a barber is dressed like a clown. He unintentionally gives her a terrible haircut and the Tibble Twins start to make fun of her.
- Beavis and Butt-Head: Subverted in the episode "Top o'the Mountain", where the duo goes to a hair salon to get up close with the pretty and buxom hairdresser. She ends up scalding Beavis during the shampooing (probably from irritation at their attempts to hit on her), and then her boyfriend Todd shows up. When it's clear that she can't leave with him until their haircuts are finished, he proceeds to hack their hair off down to the scalp before taking her away. But the duo are happy because they got to see boobs up close and Todd actually paid attention to them (sort of).
Butt-Head: Todd's pretty cool but he sucks at cutting hair!
- Big City Greens: “Cricket’s Kapowie” sees Cricket get cast in a commercial. While trying to get his hair just right, he accidentally shaves off a strip down to the scalp. When he goes to a salon to try getting it fixed, the hairdresser winds up completely shaving his head; while he does give Cricket a wig to cover it up, it gets stolen by a squirrel.
- Captain Flamingo: In "Much Ado About a 'Do'", Milo is forced to take a haircut at the barbershop due to both his hair becoming too long and because there is a half-off special on little kids' haircuts. Unfortunately, the barber never seems to cut any people's hair properly, resulting on various kids getting outright miserable experiences as a result of their terrible haircuts, leading to the Captain to find a way to stop him.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Freaky Fred" introduces Fred, Muriel's creepy nephew who works as a barber and has a (for all intents and purposes) shaving fetish, which ruined his life and got him committed to an asylum for insane barbers because he can't resist shaving people (or animals) bald.
- Doug: In "Doug Gets His Ears Lowered", Doug attempts to find a new barber and ends up going to Judy's oddball salon. Aside from literally nearly being attacked by the blaring radio, he's freaked out by several of the potential hairstyles, including highlights, getting his name shaved into his hair and getting an over-the-top mousse treatment to the point of running away shortly after arriving. He does find a reliable barber and Roger ends up getting the "mousse" treatment, complete with moose antlers.
- The Fairly OddParents!: "Hairicane" begins with Mr. Turner taking Timmy to the barber he frequents as opposed to giving his son a haircut himself. Timmy is relieved, as it will avoid him the emergency room visits his dad's haircuts earn him... until it turns out the barber is not only borderline-blind, but he uses a chainsaw instead of scissors. Cut to a bald Timmy with an IV bag arriving at school.
- In Rankin-Bass's Frosty the Snowman when Frosty and the kids march through town a number of people get distracted at the sight of Frosty, including the barber. He's in the middle of trimming a man's moustache, but distractedly cuts off half of it.
- Looney Tunes: Invoked. In Rabbit of Seville, a parody of The Barber of Seville, Bugs, in disguise as said barber, makes sure Elmer Fudd has a miserable barber experience.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Show Stoppers," the Cutie Mark Crusaders try various activities to get their Cutie Marks. They try being mane stylists, but end up being unsuccessful when one customer runs out crying with her mane styled into a rainbow clown wig.
- Rugrats: In "Chuckie's First Haircut", one of the attempts to get Chuckie's hair cut is to take him to the barbershop. He gets on the seat, has the bib put on, then panics when the scissors are pulled. We don't see what happens, but, thanks to Second-Hand Storytelling, we find out that "after he spilled the industrial strength cologne and got into the barrel of hair, he knocked over a tub of lather, ran into a shelf of shampoo, and snapped a cardboard cut-out of Crew Cut the Clown right in half!"
- The Simpsons:
- In "Bart's Haircut", Bart is forced to go to the barber shop when his hair is long. The barber shaves off Bart's hair and he has to find a way to cover it up, so his family won't notice.
- In "Dog of Death", the family has to make budget cuts to pay for a life-saving operation for Santa's Little Helper, resulting in Bart getting a free but terrible haircut at a barber school.
- In "Thank God It's Doomsday", Bart and Lisa go to the barber shop to get haircuts. They soon get into a fight, which ruins their hair. The siblings have to hide from the kids, who are taking pictures for the school paper, to save themselves from embarrassment.
- Woody Woodpecker: In "The Barber of Seville", Woody takes over an empty barbershop and proceeds to manhandle and abuse his customers to the tune of Largo al Factotum.
Real Life
- In her autobiography, Geri Halliwell from The Spice Girls writes that before she was famous, her hairdressing friend Janine asked her to dye a customer's hair. Unfortunately, the brown dye stained the customer's forehead, and could not be washed off, making it look as if his head had been dunked in hot chocolate.