Wax On, Wax Scream

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Pain is funny. A lot of pain is funnier.

So therefore, to cause a lot of pain, have a man's hair waxed and watch him scream when it's pulled off. This can also be done with a woman who's not used to shaving like this, but it's generally funnier with a man, especially if he screams like a girl.

Examples of Wax On, Wax Scream include:


Advertising

  • There's a soda commercial with a fellow who enters the wrong room at the doctor's office because he sees an open fridge with a soda in it. He didn't look at the sign on the door, or he'd know it said "Bikini Wax." What happens next is given a discretion shot.
  • Another ad implies that a man would submit to a chest wax for an original flavor Klondike bar, or to a bikini wax for a dark chocolate Klondike bar.

Film

  • Happens in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Steve Carell's reaction was genuine.
  • The Hot Chick, although technically it was a girl in a man's body.
  • The screenplay and novelization for Home Alone 2 contained a scene in which Marv grabs a piece of cheesecloth to try to wipe the paint off his face, not knowing Kevin soaked the cloth in superglue; the cheesecloth sticks to Marv's face, and when he rips it off, he ends up tearing his beard and eyebrows off.(In the film the scene is replaced by the famous electrocution scene.)
  • In Miss Congeniality the sequence of Gracie being dolled up includes her screaming off screen and then limping into view. Victor then turns to the other FBI agents and explains "Bikini Wax" causing the two agents to wince.
    • Justified, when you think about it, as Gracie is NOT the type of woman to keep her hedge trimmed.
  • In Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, Scrat's acorn is stuck to his chest with tar. Enter Scratte, who pulls it off, along with a sizable chunk of his hair. Cue scream.
  • Brazilian film Se Eu Fosse Você 2 has this for a woman-in-man's body (though the waxing was made by chroma key...). Particularly funny because the male lead, Tony Ramos, is known in Brazil for his dense body hair, to the point when his name became another word for "hairy male"
  • What Women Want

Live Action TV

  • Friends, in the episode where Chandler, Joey, Monica and Phoebe are trapped in one of the bedrooms by Ross and Rachel's big argument. After Joey and Chandler are summoned across the hall by the sounds of Monica and Phoebe screaming about the wax from across the hall, Joey is persuaded to wax the hair off his arms to prove his pain threshold. It is not as high as he was claiming, although he does just whimper rather than cry out as the girls did.
  • America's Funniest Home Videos once had a challenge to film men getting their chest waxed, one even got invited to the show to use a one of the props to pull a patch of his chest.
  • Host Adam Hills underwent a 'boyzilian' (a male Brazilian waxing) - and had it filmed for the programme - on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight after recieving a gift voucher for the procedure from an audience member as a 'show warming gift' on the first episode. It was hilarious.
  • Chest and nasal waxing were inflicted on Barsky in one episode of Dirty Jobs.

Western Animation

  • In one episode of The Simpsons, they let Sideshow Bob out of jail to catch a man attempting to murder Homer. He must wear a device that acts as a Restraining Bolt. "And don't bother trying to take it off. Because it's duct-taped to your leghairs. And that really hurts!"
  • Johnny Bravo once managed to combine the humor of a woman doing this trope with a man when Johnny found himself temporarily turned into a woman. The first priority was to clean up, and this included waxing.

Real Life

  • A lot of charity stuff.
    • One example is the 'Shave For A Cure' event. Someone got one of their eyebrows waxed off. Ouch.