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Ok, so we’ve asked you about the most expensive haircut you’ve ever received. But what about the worst? Y’all are really lucky I couldn’t find the picture I was going to post of me circa this very haircut. I’m not going to make the rules for you, but I do think childhood shouldn’t count, unless you suffered psychological pain. I mean, yes, I’m sure many of us were subjected to some strain of Dorothy/Mark Hamill wedge (here’s a blueprint if you’d like to recreate the glory), but did we really hurt inside because of it? Prove me wrong.
I’ve definitely had my share of lukewarm, vaguely crowd-pleasing haircuts, but then I have what I call my “high ropes haircuts”–these are character builders–the ones where you walk into a 
place with long hair and violent eyes, or better yet–(this is my own nomination & watershed) go over to your best friend’s house, imbibe something 80 proof, cue Pavement, and hand over whatever you’ve christened as shears. Well la di da, I was twenty, and my friend, bless her heart, entrusted her head to me right after. If you switched the track to KMFDM or even just some GNR, probably Sweet Child O’ Mine, it would pretty much be the best blood sisters ceremony ever. It wasn’t just the not quite honey-you’re-always-pretty response from my father: “Interesting.” And it wasn’t just the disregard I had for the Ann Arbor windchill. That haircut was really just the obvious result of having Elliott Smith as white noise–you bet you’re going to be someone who fights problems with bigger problems. The reactionary haircut, you gotta love it. Okay your turn. Worst haircut.
okay, I realize this is childhood related but read on…
When I was younger, my Grandmother cut my hair because that’s what she did. I never got the haircut I wanted, always what she wanted. Perming…not sure we should go there but her perms NEVER EVER held in my hair.
Luckily for me, a neighbor friend grew up to cut hair and I started going to her in the 8th grade, at which time she permed my hair and it’s been curly ever since. Probably due to puberty changes, but I still say it’s because my grandmother was doing something wrong. (I love you Grandma)
posted by Aimee on 9-20-2007 at 9:03 pm
Okay, this is also childhood related, but I’m only 20, so give me a break.
Back when my metabolism was high and I was thin as a rail, I thought it might be cool to get a buzz cut. When I came home, the first thing my mom said was that I looked like a Holocaust survivor. No joke, that was the very first thing she said.
That comment made me regret that haircut every day I had it and has scared me enough to not even think about cutting anywhere close to the scalp anymore.
posted by InternJason on 9-20-2007 at 9:38 pm
I was a chubby 3rd grade girl with a spiked mullet. Spiked on top, and then straight and shoulder length in back. I was mistaken for a boy all the time. And I thought it was the coolest haircut ever. when I got tired of it, I cut it all off and had an orphan-annie-meets-circus-clown bubble head perm. almost, but not quite, as horrible as the spiked mullet.
posted by Jenny on 9-20-2007 at 9:52 pm
My mom cut my girl side burns too short and goofy in about third grade. I had to wear my hair up in a clip on top of my head. Not a little barrette but one of thoes clips with teeth. Right on top of my head. For about two years.
posted by natalie on 9-20-2007 at 10:04 pm
I once had Jheri curls. Really.
posted by Miss Cellania on 9-20-2007 at 10:45 pm
When I was about 12 (childhood related. deal.) My mom had to cut my hair really short, and ended up giving me a bob that ended at my ears. it would have been alright if only I didn’t have a round face and curly hair to the point of poofy.
A few years ago, I stumbled across a picture of me from that time standing in my living room in a kimono, and my honest-to-god first thought was “Who’s this old lady?” before I realized it was me.
posted by heather on 9-20-2007 at 11:35 pm
I requested that my hair be slightly layered for my curls. *SLIGHTLY*
The haircut began by the stylist putting my hair in a very high ponytail (which should’ve been my first warning sign) and then this psycho comes at me with the scissors and cuts my ponytail.
Taa-daa….that was my haircut!
When she released the pony tail my hair was in CRAZY layers. The shortest one starting above my ears.
I had so many layers that my curly hair was just a ball of non-stop poof.
And it took FORVER to grow out and even out.
And can you believe that I fell for the same hair cut a 2nd time at a different salon!!!!!!!!!
posted by Sweet Pea on 9-21-2007 at 7:17 am
It’s been over 13 years since my last haircut… I think it’s the best decision I ever made.
I have super-thick, straight hair that for the most part refuses to hold a style of any kind. Wearing it geisha-long is just about all I can do with it, and I do it gladly.
As a kid, though, my mum thought she was a beautician. I grew up in the evil 80’s and my hair was worn short with a huge teased-out pompadour. The hugeness lasted less than three hours (even with super-hold Aqua Net), at which point it collapsed into a fallen souffle of styling products and half-hearted ratted curls. On the one pre-adult attempt I made to grow it out and thus spare us all the agony of doing my hair, I allowed it to be “thinned”, which made my hair virtually uncombable. I nearly shaved it off the next year and wore a bowl cut throughout high school.
Long live long hairs! I haven’t had a bad hair day in ages!
posted by Lacerated_tresses on 9-21-2007 at 7:51 am
When I was 12 I let my best friend crimp my hair. She crimped ALL of my hair and put tons of product in it. (We raided her mom’s bathroom) Afterwards she decided that it didn’t look right and tried to brush it out. Bad idea. My hair turned into one giant puffball and looked a lot like that white-girl afro Christina Aguilera rocked a few years back and I had to go to school like that since my mom’s idea of punishment for anything stupid I did with my hair was to make me go out in public with it and not getting it fixed for at least a day.
posted by Marta on 9-21-2007 at 8:20 am
In 7th grade I decided to bleach my hair blonde with some Sun-In. I used too much and it completely fried my hair. It was normally silky and smooth, but it turned dry, brittle, and very frizzy. I got a haircut to get rid of some of the damage, but it turned out looking like a triangle. I was made fun of at school, even my boyfriend. I would burn those photos if my mom would let me.
posted by BP on 9-21-2007 at 8:25 am
My worst haircut wasn’t that bad: curly hair cut short by someone at the Hair Cuttery=mushroom head. However it was done about 2 days before I went to college for the first time. I wish I had a scanner so I could scan my school ID… hilair.
My sister tried to get a Courtney Cox post-Dudley Moore fiasco on Friends cut (as in, not the one Phoebe gave her, but the one her awesome stylists were able to finagle after the fiasco)… brought in a picture and everything. She joked with the haircutter, saying “Don’t make me look like Dudley Moore! Make me look like THIS PICTURE.” The haircutter laughed… and CHOPPED. She (apparently) looked worse than what Phoebe did. I never saw it though, because (after crying for 3 hours) she went out and bought a wig.
posted by Molly on 9-21-2007 at 8:50 am
When I was in middle school everyone was doing the “Rachel hair” short layers in a bob. Well it turns out, it doesn’t look too hot with curly hair. I tried to pull this cut off, but the short layers caused my hair to go completely out of control. I cried for days. I had wear it in a ponytail until it grew out.
posted by Downchez on 9-21-2007 at 9:12 am
again, childhood, but deal. i found out 11 years after the fact about my bad haircut when a friend of mine informed me that people were excited the first day of first grade because they thought i was a new boy in class. nice….oh, i’m a girl, FYI.
posted by mri on 9-21-2007 at 9:38 am
In high school, I got a haircut that I thought, at the time, made me look like I was 30. It was a good haircut (long, curly layers) but hated it so much I actually cried over it. Strangely, one of the best pictures ever taken of me was with that haircut. I have a similar haircut now (11 years later), but it doesn’t look as good. My hair got less curly over the years. It’s a shame.
posted by Molly on 9-21-2007 at 9:57 am
Fortunately I haven’t had too many bad haircuts, mostly because I leave mine long.
There was one summer in college where I worked as a field researcher in a salt marsh. Although I was trying to be careful, the combination of wind, salt, and too much washing left my hair a frizzy, split-ended nightmare by summer’s end, and my hairdresser had to chop a lot of it off. I’d never had short hair like that before and it was very traumatizing, although my friends said I looked ‘okay.’
posted by Katherine on 9-21-2007 at 10:19 am
I’ve been messing with my hair for as long as I can remember, so I’ve had lots of bad cuts. I think the blue-ribbon piece was my second year of college, when I asked a friend if she would try cutting my hair. I made the mistake of thinking any girly-girl can give a guy a basic haircut. It ended up looking so bad, I shaved my head the next day. The only picture of me with the shaved head is right after playing muddy backyard football with my friends.
I looked like a Zombie Army Ranger.
posted by Jack on 9-21-2007 at 10:59 am
Growing up, curly permed hair was the fad, and I had long super straight locks. To save money, my dad was going to give me a perm. He would give my mom her perms (again to save money) - only thing is she has short hair. So this is the only way he knew how to do it. He tried to roll my long hair but decided we should cut it “a little.” I ended up at a salon after that trying to fix the mess he made. Still determined to get that perm though, so this salon did it. Only thing was this lady trying to fix my hair was probably 50 years old. And she cut, permed and styled my hair just like hers. I had a curly microphone head. I looked like a cambell soup kid. It was really bad. And firmly believe this situation is why I get tense getting my hair cut even to this day.
posted by Jill on 9-21-2007 at 12:56 pm
This is not my bad haircut, but my 14 year old son’s. He had shoulder length hair which I didn’t mind but he wanted it shaped. I made the mistake of giving him $10 to go to Supercuts and of course he spent the money on junk food. When I got home from work, I found a HUGE pile of hair on the porch. At first I was a little angry, then I started chuckling to myself and couldn’t wait to see it. I drove to the park he usually hangs out at and his friend had done a pretty good job cutting the front short, but the back was all one layer. Kind of a goofy mullet. I just laughed and asked him where he got his haircut. He still had the nerve to tell me Supercuts. And yes, I made him wear it that way for a while to teach him a lesson.
posted by jewels on 9-21-2007 at 4:39 pm
my worst haircut was this atrocious attempt at a very cute short cut that my mom had. Of course, my mom didn’t have curly hair so I ended up looking like an italian lionel ritchie. not quite understanding the nature of my curly hair, I got THE SAME haircut in high school and looked just as awful. since links are not allowed in comments, you can click my website link to take you to the photo in my flickr photo stream. bathe in the glory of the terrible haircut.
posted by kati on 9-21-2007 at 9:06 pm
My worst is a lot like Becky’s … among the parties involved, it is still referred to as the Infamous Tequila Haircut. You can imagine the circumstances. The perpetrator/stylist, my best friend’s husband, insists to this day that he was not drunk at the time, but given the results, I believe otherwise.
Basically, I wound up looking like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which is unfortunate when you’re, you know, a girl. And not a cartoon character.
The guy I was seeing at the time avoided me for two days after he saw it, then dumped me, possibly also making it the BEST haircut I’ve ever received.
posted by Antisocialite on 9-21-2007 at 10:13 pm
I don’t know how to describe my worst cut except it resembled a 1940’s style. I swear the woman did it because her boss doesn’t like me and the idea was to deter me from coming back.
When I was a kid my grandmother cut my hair. She did the “standard” style that was described in the booklet that came with the electric clippers. I wanted to pretend to have sideburns so she would leave little bits of hair to comb down in front of my ears. It looked like the hairstyle that some lesbians are wearing these days.
Right know, I haven’t had a haircut in 3 years. I look like General George Armstrong Custer with the long wavy hair and goatee.
posted by Tdave on 9-22-2007 at 3:39 am
I have noticed that a lot of these posts are from people who have naturally curly hair. I just couldn’t pass responding to this blog. Unfortunately, I am one of those people also. My story starts out the same, with the parent that thinks they are a hairstylist, and are really a torture warden in disguise It’s very hard to have curly hair in the straight locked-time of 70-80’s. I remember getting the unfortunate Dorothy Hamill haircut of the 70’s. The time that really makes me cringe is when I was trying to grow my hair out from being super short to even a decent length when the torture warden stopped chopping my hair and I went to a professional. I looked like a q-tip for many years. My hair was too short to even wear in a pony tail. My redemption was that by the mid 80’s, I got the length to grow out and people were paying big money to get my hair. To this day, I can’t even trim my own bangs, or color my own hair. I won’t even touch my children’s hair.
I think the torture warden still uses a flow-bee to this day to cut their own hair.
posted by Mom2boys on 9-22-2007 at 7:22 am
My worst haircut was about the time Sinead O’Connor was in the mainstream. I had shoulder-length hair but was in desperate need of a trim. The place I usually went wasn’t open so I tried a new guy. I joked about my hair being such a pain I was tempted to be “Sinead O’Conklin”. He took me at my word and cut my long hair 1/2″ all over my head. When I went back to work (this was on my lunch hour), one of the guys I worked with looked at me and said it made me look younger. I told him I didn’t care to look like an infant. Then I called my husband and warned him. I’m really careful about joking about haircuts now.
posted by T Conklin on 9-22-2007 at 6:44 pm
I have really straight, but pretty thick hair. (it is pretty, but I mean that it’s not incredibly thick, just somewhat thick) It does NOT hold curl. (Despite the fact that I’ve always wanted it to- you curl my hair and by the time you’ve finished with one side, the first side has fallen flat.) It’s really hard to give me a bad hair cut, you can’t really layer it, you can’t thin it out, you can pretty much just cut it straight. Which is why half the time I just cut my own hair.
I didn’t have hair until I was about 2-3 years old. I mean, NO hair. I had peach fuzz, and then stringy wisps of hair from about 2 or so until suddenly, at about 3 I got a full head of hair. When I was about 2 1/2, the daycare that I went to took class/individual photos. My mom put me in a sweater, but told the daycare workers not to pull the sweater off just before the photo was taken, as my hair would get really static-y (as it still does). Well, of course the day care workers just yanked that sweater off and took the photo. I look like a little lion (I have red hair). I think it’s the cutest picture, but my mom hates it!
posted by greenstrawberries on 9-27-2007 at 5:53 am