12 of the Worst ‘90s Hairstyles That Barbers Let Walk Out of Their Shops

Perhaps the most quintessential ‘90s cut of all, this inexplicable look asked, “What if they were about to show a movie on the forehead of a guy with a bowl cut?” Also, this still is from a music video that features Nick Carter wearing a “goofy” wig as a joke, as if he didn‘t look like he‘d just handed a barber a photo of a circumcised penis.

Of course, the Backstreet Boys‘ biggest rivals were doing their own crimes against haircare. Here we see a young Justin Timberlake in the music video for “Thinking of You,” a phrase which, repeated today by someone with this haircut, would earn a restraining order. 

God, don‘t you just want to empty a flavor packet in there and break it up with a fork?

The same music video, which I must emphasize again was basically the most sexually charged four minutes imaginable at the time, also features a very un-timeless look from Chris Kirkpatrick. The biggest cancel-culture crybaby in the world still wouldn‘t advocate for the return of the white man dreadlock. 

Yes, they‘re still around here and there, but I simply cannot overstate the outlandish percentage of white hair that was dreaded back then.

It‘s like a bird shit on somebody‘s head right as they were walking out of a hair salon and it gave them an idea.

Pictured here is current Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay in 2016, still clinging to this disgraced prom-king look. If somebody reads this who knows him, and my ribbing will finally get him to try a matte pomade or clay, please, this is your chance. 

Countless men across this country would, in order to look their best, carefully scoop their bangs into a sharp and stout little unicorn horn, like they were jacking off their forehead with a palm full of max-hold hair gel.

A lot of ‘90s fashion just felt like guys were trying to make themselves look like cars. No one dominated the frosted-tip sphere like Mark McGrath of the band Sugar Ray. Between Sugar Ray and frosted tips, if it sounded like a weird children‘s breakfast cereal, Mark McGrath was involved.

An absolute emo classic, one that rocketed Pete Wentz to the bedroom walls of young emo aficionados across the U.S. The cool thing about this haircut was, if the lights went out, you could just move the hair over and see out of the eye that was already accustomed to the darkness, like a pirate’s eyepatch.

Just in case the massive asymmetrical bangs and rat’s nest behind them wasn’t loud enough, you could dye parts of your hair a color usually reserved for hi-vis work vests. The idea, I believe, was to make your head look like a gunshot in a Dick Tracy cartoon.

Business on the sides, party down the middle. Apparently in the ‘90s, your hair either had to be glaringly asymmetrical, or perfectly symmetrical in the worst way possible. Even worse was how, for whatever reason, balding men made this their bread and butter, as if no one would notice the little fleshy crevasse between the two ‘hawk segments.

“What if you put a wig on wrong” was another apparent source of inspiration for ‘90s hairstylists. What is it about this haircut that makes you look like you have eight big hairs? The vibe it achieved was basically “Tinkerbell doing the walk of shame.” This haircut’s still around, but now is very much claimed by women who use their phone calculators to tip 10 percent.

I swear to god, people used to put on baseball caps and blow-dry their hair up. All in order to make it look like they were carrying a tired hawk to a veterinary hospital on their head. What were they trying to do here? Protect a little field mouse on their shoulder from the rain? Your head looks like someone’s peeling a banana from the bottom up, my guy.

A favorite of girls that just got back from a family vacation to some tropical locale, typically worn with some carcinogenic plastic beads woven in there. Best paired with a virgin piña colada that you think makes you look mature, despite the fact that no one using a real driver’s license has ever ordered a piña colada.