From Orange Foam to Balenciaga ‘Ear Jewels’: How Self-Care-Obsessed Gen Zers Are Making Ear Plugs 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 everyone.

The 49-year-old suffers from tinnitus, as a result of being a regular concertgoer.

“Now that I’m older, I don’t need to be up front and in the pit,” Fishburn, a nurse in Pennsylvania whose first Heart gig at age 9, told The Post. “But when you were younger, you always wanted to be up front, next to the speakers and everything.”

She never bothered to wear earplugs in her heyday – back then, they were social suicide.

“Ear plugs back then were the neon orange ones that were foam,” recalls Fishburn, who still forgets his ears despite attending shows. “Nobody wants to be seen with those in your ears.”

Times, however, have changed.

Now, her music-loving daughter Kass Adams, 23, is joining a whole new breed of concert-goers who are taking care of their hearing — and making earplugs fun, too.

“She probably tells me about all her concert days and how she still has hearing damage from it,” the Philadelphia hairstylist, a chronic migraine sufferer, told The Post of Fishburn’s hearing fortunes, adding that she herself is “someone who likes to camp. go out, barricade, be very close.”

So, before Charli xcx and Troye Sivan Sweat’s tour last month — to soften the effects of bass and screaming crowds on her eardrums — Adams bought a pair of earplugs, which she said “made such a difference big”.

She’s part of a growing group of Gen Zers and young millennials who are making the once-in-a-lifetime gear not just normal, but the must-have accessory of the year.

Much of it stems from witnessing the effects of loud noises on their parents’ — and their own — ears.

And for the power-hungry, hyper-online generation like Adams’ age, they’re not using your average clinical, ugly foam tampons.

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 mother lose her hearing, the 28-year-old doesn’t leave the house without them.

“I was embarrassed because I thought it might be kind of bleak,” Brooklynite Kiefer, who works as a product designer and wedding photographer, told The Post.

“[But] my hearing is more important than what other people perceive me to be.”

Some crafty makers have concocted DIY jewelry to hold earplugs, and while Kiefer made her own earrings to hold her own, dozens of sellers on Etsy sell them as well.

Balenciaga makes a pair of silver “ball ear jewels” for $450, and brands like Loop — which saw a whopping 1,191% increase in sales from 2020 to 2023 — have designed metal studs to resemble the jewelry to tailored to the younger and trendier audience at a time where earplugs are not “cool”.

“There was a taboo around wearing ear protection — like, why would you go out and dress up and put these ugly plugs or Christmas trees in your ears?” Loop CEO Maarten Bodewes told The Post.

He compared the company’s elegant invention to the plight of sunglasses: once seen as a clinical device to protect the eyes from the sun, but now a necessity.

And the prominent figures have had a domino effect on the general public, Bodewes noted.

Last month, music producer and singer Jack Antonoff, 40, revealed that he wears earplugs in most loud environments – from airplanes to concerts and even while sleeping – after fans spotted him wearing them on MTV Video Music Awards.

“The stigma with hearing loss has always been that it’s something older people experience and no one wants to look older than they are,” Victoria Zambrano, an audiologist at Miracle Ear, told The Post.

But the deafening noises have become too much for people like Camila Savinon, 27, who started wearing earplugs recently after experiencing pain and ringing after concerts.

“Everybody wears them now,” she said, noting that they carry less of a “stigma.”

Savinon’s friends have been wearing them “for a while,” and New Yorker Lily Kim says a “huge majority” of hers sport ears in the circle.

“There’s a pretty wide spectrum of the types of ears that everybody wears,” the 27-year-old, who keeps her ear plugs on her key chain, told The Post.

“Some of them have invested in nicer ones, like custom-fit ones that fit your ear specifically.”

Zambrano warned that high volumes for long periods of time can cause significant — and irreversible — damage to the ear and hearing, which is the result of prolonged nerve overstimulation. Distinctive symptoms include mental and physical fatigue, headaches and tinnitus.

“We can be exposed to 85 decibels of noise for an eight-hour period where it really won’t cause any harm,” she said.

“But as the decibel level increases by five decibels after that point, our exposure to sound should be halved.”

Most concerts and venues with loud music or sounds average around 110 to 120 dB – meaning those environments should only be tolerated without earplugs for 15 to 30 minutes without risking damage.

“I know a lot of times, like for the visuals, you want to be closer to the stage so you can see everything, but usually that means you’re next to the speakers,” Stephanie Rodriguez, a 27-year-old. senior production manager based in NYC, told The Post.

She uses traditional foam earplugs in clubs and concerts after seeing how loud noises damaged the hearing of her father, who “used to be in the New York music scene” as a professional dancer and later “became partially deaf deaf in one ear”.

“It’s always been important to me,” said Rodriguez, “because I’m not going to take my ears out forever just to have a fun night at a concert.”