Feather extensions: Still a thing on your campus?

Feathering is a hot new fashion trend that has some crying fowl.  Student newspapers nationwide confirm a rising number of female students are adding "shiny, long, speckled," and often colorful feather extensions to their bangs or the bottom layers of their hair.

The process is inexpensive, only takes a few minutes, and is less permanent than a full dye or cut. As an amateur featherer explained to The Minaret at the University of Tampa, "It’s simple.  You put a micro-bead on a threading tool, take a small chunk of hair and thread it through to fasten the bead.  Next, you put the preferred feathers into the bead at the root of the hair, clamp it down so they stay in place, and voila!”

A University of Delaware senior, who started the small business Fab Feathas to capitalize on students' peaking interest in plumage, described the add-ons in The Review student newspaper as "a little flashy and a laid back kind of feel."

Yet, in the same article, a UD professor called feathering a flash in the pan-- one fueled by the press, peer pressure, students' desire to experiment, and America's past flower power era.  In her words, "It probably stemmed from the Navajo hippie-chic trend.  With feathers, it's more modern than putting a flower in your hair."

It is also apparently quite inhumane for the animals involved.  As University of Louisville student Josh Williams asked at the start of an opinion piece last semester in The Louisville Cardinal, "Why exactly did the chicken cross the road?  Due to the latest fashion trend, it would seem as an attempt to escape the intense mob of those who wish to steal its feathers."

In a separate report, The Miami Student at Miami University of Ohio recounted one company's treatment of the roosters plucked for hair and fly-fishing feathers with chilling succinctness: "Whiting Farms harvests the roosters, allows the feathers to grow, then euthanizes the roosters."

More specifically, as a PETA representative told The Daily Titan at California State University, Fullerton, "[R]oosters are typically confined for 30 weeks-- the majority of their short lives-- in tiny, stacked cages inside deafeningly loud barns before they are killed and skinned."

To help combat this practice, some students are advocating synthetic alternatives.  For example, Columbia University student Spencer Wolfe co-founded Fair Feathers.

As he explained in a Q&A with Her Campus at Barnard College, "Fair Feathers is a company devoted to selling animal-friendly feather hair extensions.  Every year, countless roosters are bred and slaughtered for their feathers, a practice that has left the rooster population drastically depleted in the wake of this fashion boom. . . . With this in mind, our mission is clear-- style without slaughter, quality without cruelty."

Beyond the ethical treatment issues involved, students say the key to a quality feather extension is subtlety.  As one UT student mentioned to the Minaret, “It’s cute to have one in your hair just to add something extra to the everyday boring routine, but it is horrifying when people have their whole head covered in feathers."

One offshoot of the feathering craze some find similarly excessive: feather fur extensions.  As Williams writes in the Cardinal, "[O]wners can now opt to have their pets pampered with Puppylocks. While this is definitely on my top ten of the cutest things I have ever seen, this might be taking the trend a little too far."

What do you think?  Is feathering all the rage on your campus or already passé?  What do your friends and classmates think of the poor treatment of the roosters being plucked and the synthetic feather alternatives?  And, most importantly, would you ever get a fur extension for your pet?

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Tampa, where he also advises The Minaret student newspaper. He maintains the student journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.