NBC's 'Today' attempted a natural hair makeover and failed oh so miserably

On Wednesday, NBC's Today cast a model with natural hair for a "great summer hairstyles" makeover segment. The only problem? The beauty "expert" styling this model's hair seemed to not understand how to work with her curls. Many viewers pointed out the result was, to put it nicely, a fucking mess. 

Deepica Mutyala, the on-air beauty expert, was showing how to get a quick, effortless look in under one minute on models who were Asian, black and white.

It started off well with a rope braid on the Asian model. 

But it quickly turned disastrous when Mutyala put the model with natural hair's 'do into a side pony — or attempted to, at the very least.

Then she touched her bangs — major eek. 

A video of the segment, with over 5 million views and over 46,000 shares, initially went viral when it was posted by photographer Joeline Payton on Facebook. "I need answers," she wrote.

There have been over 7,000 comments on the Facebook video, which range from, "Not every pretty girl can do hair simply through osmosis. Someone needs to tell them it doesn't work that way," to "If you don't know how to work with black hair... leave it alone! She went from beauty to just woke up in five seconds!" 

As commenters noted, just look at how gorgeous her hair was premakeover. 

While many people were laughing or joking about how bad her ponytail and bangs looked, the segment highlighted a widespread issue within the beauty industry: There is simply a lack of hairstylists who are able to work on natural hair. 

For example, model Brandee Brown told Refinery29 in February 2015 that she experienced a situation during New York Fashion Week similar to this model's. "They started picking at my hair like little monkeys, lifting it up and examining it like it was out of this world," she told the outlet. 

"[Hair is] their specialty. So, to show up as a hairstylist and not know how to work with black hair — how is that professional?"

This could've been a great opportunity for Today to show other media outlets exactly how to cater to a diverse audience — and instead, it fell flat. (Pun intended.)

As one Facebook comment read, "No... no... no. Just no. Nope, no, can't."

Watch the full video below: 

Read more: