From orange foam to Balenciaga ‘ear jewels’: How self-care-obsessed Gen Zers are making earplugs cool
Jennifer Fishburn grew up constantly going to concerts in the ’90s, from Lollapalooza to Woodstock ’99, and she kept an unexpected — and unwanted — souvenir from all of them.
The 49-year-old suffers from tinnitus, or “ringing in the ears,” a result of being a concert regular.
“Now that I’m older, I don’t need to be up front and in the pit,” Fishburn, a Pennsylvania nurse whose first concert was Heart at age 9, told The Post. “But when you were younger, you always wanted to be right up front, right by the speakers and everything.”
She never bothered to wear earplugs in her pit heyday —?at the time, they were social suicide.
“The earplugs way back then were those neon orange ones that were foam,” recalled Fishburn, who still forgoes earplugs despite frequenting shows. “Nobody wants to be seen with those in your ears.”
The times, however, have changed.
Now, her music-loving daughter, Kass Adams, 23, is joining a whole new breed of concertgoers who care about their hearing — and are making earplugs cool, too.
“She definitely tells me about all of her concert days and how she still has hearing damage from it,” the Philadelphia hairstylist, a chronic migraine sufferer, told The Post about Fishburn’s auditory fate, adding that she herself is “someone that likes to camp out, get barricade, be very close.”
So, ahead of Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat tour last month — to mitigate the impacts of the thumping bass and screaming crowds on her eardrums —?Adams bought a pair of earplugs, which she said “made such a big difference.”
She’s part of a growing cohort of Gen Zers and young millennials making the once-uncool devices not only normal but into the must-have accessory of the year.
Much of it stems from witnessing the effects of loud noises on their parents’ ears — and their own.
And for the clout-seeking, hyper-online generation like Adams’ age, they’re not using your average clinical and unsightly foam earplugs.
Until recently, Row Kiefer thought earplugs were, frankly, “ugly.” She couldn’t imagine ever using the “not cool” item herself — but now, after seeing her mom’s hearing loss, the 28-year-old doesn’t leave the house without them.
“I was embarrassed because I thought it might be kind of dorky,” Brooklynite Kiefer, who works as a product designer and wedding photographer, told The Post.
“[But] my hearing is more important than how other people perceive me.”
Some crafty creators have concocted DIY jewelry to hold their earplugs, and while Kiefer made her own earrings to carry hers, dozens of vendors on Etsy sell them, too.
Balenciaga hawks a pair of silver “ball ear jewels” for $450, and brands like Loop?—?which saw a whopping 1,191% sales jump from 2020 to 2023 —?have designed metallic earplugs to resemble jewelry to?cater to younger, trendier audiences in a time where earplugs aren’t “cool.”
“There was a taboo around wearing ear protection — like, why would you go out, dress up and put these ugly plugs or Christmas trees into your ears?” Loop CEO Maarten Bodewes told The Post.
He likened the company’s stylish invention to the plight of sunglasses:?once seen as a clinical device to shield the eyes from the sun but now a must-have.
And prominent figures have had a domino effect on the general public, Bodewes noted.
Last month, music producer and singer Jack Antonoff, 40, revealed he wears earplugs in most loud environments — from airplanes to concerts and even when he sleeps —?after fans noticed that he wore them at the MTV Video Music Awards.
“The stigma with hearing loss has always been that it’s something that old people experience and nobody wants to look older than they are,” Victoria Zambrano, a Miracle-Ear audiologist, told The Post.
But the deafening noises have grown too much for people like Camila Savinon, 27, who started wearing earplugs recently after experiencing pain and ringing after concerts.
“Everyone’s wearing them now,” she said, noting they carry less of a “stigma.”
Savinon’s friends have been wearing them “for a while,” and New Yorker Lily Kim says a “large majority” of her circle sports earplugs, too.
“There’s a pretty wide spectrum of the kinds of earplugs everyone wears,” the 27-year-old, who keeps her earplugs on her key chain, told The Post.
“Some of them have invested in nicer ones, like the custom-fit ones that fit your ear specifically.”
Zambrano warned that loud volumes for extended periods of time can cause significant — and irreparable — ear and hearing damage, which is a result of prolonged nerve overstimulation. Hallmark symptoms include mental and physical fatigue, headaches and tinnitus.
“We can be exposed to 85 decibels of noise for a period of eight hours where it’s really not going to cause any damage,” she said.
“But once the decibel level increases by five decibels after that point, our exposure to sound should be limited by half.”
Most concerts and places with loud music or sounds average about 110?to 120?dB — meaning those environments should only be tolerated without earplugs for 15 to 30 minutes without running the risk of damage.
“I know a lot of the time, like for visuals, you want to be closer to the stage so you can see everything, but usually that typically means you’re right next to the speakers,” Stephanie Rodriguez, a 27-year-old production manager based in NYC, told The Post.
She uses traditional foam earplugs at clubs and concerts after seeing how loud noises deteriorated the hearing of her father, who “used to be in the New York music scene” as a professional dancer and later “became partially deaf in one ear.”
“For me, it was always important,” Rodriguez said, “because I’m not about to blow out my ears forever just to have one fun night out at a concert.”
