Barber pole

It means the barber: the shop, the appointment or the cut. The picture is a barber pole, the red-and-white (often red, white and blue, as in the United States and Japan) spiral-striped cylinder mounted by the door of a barbershop, often lit and turning. Barbershops have used it as their trade sign for centuries, so the emoji works like a tiny shop sign.

Most of the time it sits next to a haircut. People send it to say they are at the barber or going soon, caption the photo of a fresh cut, or ask a friend for a recommendation. Barbers use it a lot too: in a bio, a "slots open this week 💈" post, or after a client photo. Beard and grooming posts borrow it as well, since the pole is the classic sign of the barber's cut and shave.

In Japan, where the emoji originally comes from, the pole (there called a sign pole) is a familiar sight outside neighbourhood barbers, and the emoji is read the same way: the barber's, a haircut.

What does it mean when someone sends you 💈?

They mean a haircut or the barber, nothing hidden. "💈 at 3" is an appointment, "💈✂️" means a cut, "💈🪒" a shave or a beard tidy-up. After a photo it is pride in a fresh cut, and a reply of just 💈 to "what are you up to?" means "at the barber's". Sent to you with a question mark, it is usually "want to come?" or "know a good barber?".

It carries no mood of its own. It is not flirty, not an insult, and it has no common slang double meaning in everyday chat.

Why is the barber pole striped?

The stripes remember the days when barbers were also surgeons. In medieval Europe barbers did far more than cut hair: they pulled teeth, cut open boils and performed bloodletting, the widespread treatment of drawing blood from a sick person. In London the barbers and surgeons even shared one guild, the Company of Barber-Surgeons, from 1540 until the surgeons left in 1745.

The sign grew out of that trade, at least in the traditional telling, which historians can't fully document. The pole stands for the staff patients gripped to make their veins stand out; the red stripe for blood, the white for the bandages wound around the pole to dry. Long after the surgeons went their own way, the sign stayed with the barbers, and it still marks their shops today.