Gloria Marable was excited when producers of TLC’s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” show called her a few months ago to film in her Macon wig shop.
The show finally aired Wednesday night and after watching it, Marable’s excitement has given way to anger.
Marable, owner of Shh! It’s a Wig, 2449 Vineville Ave., thought the national exposure from the popular reality show would help her business.The series, a spinoff of TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras,” follows the Thompsons, a Wilkinson County family, with much of the show focusing on mother June’s attempts to enter 6-year-old Alana (aka Honey Boo Boo) into beauty pageants.
Marable said the family and the show’s production crew spent about three hours in the store shooting footage and it was a positive experience.
The episode even included the name of her store -- “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: Shh! It’s a Wig.”
“She was a sweet little girl,” Marable recalled. “A typical 6 year old. It was a pleasant ordeal.”Marable said she didn’t have an issue with most of the episode, just one comment from June caught her ire.
“She said, ‘their wigs were a hot mess,’ ” Marable said sitting in her shop Thursday after speaking with the show’s producer on the phone. “I’m really upset.”
When arranging the shoot, Marable, who opened the shop 16 years ago, said producers told her they Googled wig stores in the area. “They called and said you’re the go-to shop in the area for wigs,” Marable said.
While most of the store’s inventory includes four rooms with “serious” wigs, “this is what they wanted,” said Marable’s daughter Claudia, standing in a room full of costume wigs.
Claudia, who helps her mother run the business, spent the most time working with the family during filming.“They were looking at the mullet wigs, the Afro wigs,” Claudia said. “The producer was pointing to the (costume) wigs saying ‘That’s funny, I want them to try that one, and this one ... ’ They made it look like that’s all we sell.”
While Shh! It’s a Wig’s inventory includes some costume wigs, they have much more. “We have wigs for all occasions,” Marable said. “We’ve fitted men for toupees, women going through chemo, thinning hair. We’ve had clients from around the world.“
And for her to say, ‘their wigs were a hot mess,’ that was not necessary,” Marable said.
From her observations during the production of the popular show, Claudia said the producers aren’t doing the Thompsons any favors.“They’re trying to make them look foolish,” she said, “but don’t make us look foolish at their expense.”
A rerun of “Here Comes Honey Bo Bo: Shh! It’s a Wig” airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday, but Marable said don’t believe June’s assessment of her shop.
