Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Flocking To The Feather Hair Extensions

Jon Widboom, who runs a fly-fishing shop, never thought he would get calls from posh hair salons that line trendy Rodeo Drive in California's Beverly Hills.

But he does -- regularly.

"I get a daily call from a salon somewhere wanting feathers," said Widboom, who owns FlyMasters here.

And not just any feathers. They want the same ones that gained popularity this spring when "American Idol" judge Steven Tyler appeared on the Fox reality show with a mane accented by long feather hair extensions.

Feathers' popularity isn't the only thing increasing. So is the price.

Before the plume boom, a skin containing 400 to 500 rooster feathers would run $80 to $100. Earlier this week, bidding on eBay for a skin of Whiting Farm saddle feathers reached more than $500.

Why are they so special? Known as saddles, the feathers come from roosters bred specifically for the long plumes on their back side; the primary producer is Whiting Farms in Delta, Colo.

Fly-fishers prize Whiting saddles because they have a pliable center shaft and can be wound around fly-fishing lures. When
put in the hair as an extension, the often-colorful feathers can be styled just like hair and last for several weeks.

The trend originated in Colorado, where fly-fishing is popular, spread to California and is moving across the country.

Widboom and sales associates at Wildcat Creek Outfitters in Zionsville, Ind., and Orvis in Carmel, Ind., said they get calls daily from hairstylists across the country searching for saddle feathers.

Unaware of the budding trend, Widboom received his first call about the feathers in March from a fellow fly-fishing shop owner in Orlando, who was wondering if he had been selling a lot of Whiting saddle feathers.

"I said, 'We haven't heard anything,' " Widboom said. "Right after that, a lady walks in and asks, 'Do you have any feathers?' She bought $600 worth. She bought just about everything I had."

That customer was Jaime Zentz, who owns Geneva Hair Salon in Irvington, Ind.

"We are very fortunate," Zentz said, "and have a friend and client who visits Colorado regularly. She tipped us off to the trend."

Lindsey Springer Nierman, an instructor at Circle City Pilates in Indianapolis, likes the extensions' whimsical, summery look and has received compliments from her clients on the turquoise blue-and-tan feathers.

"I like that it's really low maintenance," she said. "You can straighten it and curl it, and it's not permanent."

Feather extensions cost $15 to $50. The feathers are bonded with an extension bead and clamped into hair. They last for six to eight weeks and easily are removed by a professional, adding temporary color to hair.

But the growing demand has quickly outstripped the supply. Because the roosters are euthanized at 18 months old to harvest their tail feathers, Whiting Farms and the handful of other producers haven't been able to increase the supply yet.

"Our feather company stopped returning our phone calls and our emails," Zentz said. "Their website shut down when the craze hit."

Not everyone is as thrilled with the fad. Animal-rights activists have started to condemn the trend because the roosters are killed for their tail feathers.

And fly-fishing enthusiasts are complaining about the dwindling supply and increasing cost of the feathers they use to make lures.

Mike Exl, store manager of Wildcat Creek Outfitters, said he gets about three calls a day from hairstylists across the country searching for saddle feathers. He doesn't turn down their requests, but he's talked to other shop owners who hide their stock of saddle feathers behind the counter -- reserving it for fly-fishermen.

"I'm hoping it will definitely be a fad," Exl said. "Our main goal is serving the fly-fishing customer. When we have a loyal customer and he can't get what he wants, it's frustrating."

Monday, June 20, 2011

Feather Hair Extensions Show No Compassion

Feather hair extensions are roosting upon manes across the nation. A trend popularized by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, adding plumage to one’s coiffure is now such a coveted fashion statement that one internet company even sells feather extensions for dogs. But, where do these lovely feathers come from? Before feathering your own locks (or your dog’s!), please consider the thousands of innocent lives which are taken to produce these plumes.

If you know fly fishing paraphernalia, and thought that these silky bits in people’s’ hair seemed strangely familiar… well, you’re onto something. The feathers used for hair extensions, are the same ones used by fly fisherman as lures, and feather-craving fashionistas everywhere are now snatching them up at hundreds of dollars above the market price. According to an article on Bloomberg Businessweek, “A package of the most popular fly tying hackle for feather hair extensions, a black and white striped feather called grizzly saddle, would normally retail anywhere from $40 to $60. It sold for $480 on eBay last month after 31 bids.” At the most, these feather hair extensions can be worn for three months.
Thousands of beautiful roosters lose their lives every week due to the increased demand for feather hair extensnions.

Thousands of beautiful roosters are killed every week due to the increased demand for feather hair extensions.

So, why pay so much for these feathers? Well, the roosters in question have been specifically bred to produce unnaturally long and strikingly beautiful saddle feathers (the ones on the bird’s backside), which are considered more desirable for fly fishing — and now, for fashion. Naturally, this price inflation has become a major annoyance to fly fishermen, but whether for bait or coiffure accessorizing, to take the lives of sentient beings for such fleeting and trivial purposes is troubling in itself.

Whiting Farms in western Colorado is the world’s largest producer of fly tying feathers. There, the roosters are given only a year to live while their saddle feathers grow as long as possible. (Research varies, but when they aren’t killed for their plumage, roosters can naturally live to be 10-15 years old.) Once the feathers are deemed satisfactory, the rooster is slaughtered, and his feathers plucked. His lifeless body is then thrown out for compost; Thomas Whiting, the company founder (via the Orange County Register), claims that, ”They aren’t good for anything else.” The Whiting Farms website boasts that “over 125,000 total birds (were) harvested in 2000.” According to the Orange County Register article, Whiting Farms now ships out 65,000 bird hides per week as it tries to meet the aggressive demands of salon owners and stylists, as well as its classic fly fishing clientele. Needless to say, that is quite a haunting increase in rooster death… all for a faddish, temporary hair accessory, produced in a manner that screams disconnect.

As “supply” (here, meaning animal slaughter) levels respond to demand, it is within our collective power as consumers to dictate what is worth buying. Do you want to feed your money and image into this bloody phenomenon? Fashion trends come and go, but compassion is always cool. (source)

Friday, June 17, 2011

Feather Hair Extension Fad Popular in Knoxville

You wouldn't think fishermen and hairstylists have a lot to fight about, but that's not the case. A material both of them need is coming up short.

Nearly 100 clients are coming in per month at Belleza Salon in Turkey Creek asking for feather hair extensions.

"We looked into it, and we ordered a few just to see how the clients would react to it and it took off," said E. C. Crippen, a hair stylist at Belleza. "It's the hottest thing right now, absolutely."

But people who want hair feathers are buying up the supply fishermen use.

"I mean, they just buy them all. They buy everything in sight. Our shelves are empty," said Dave Carson, a fisherman and employee at Orvis in Sevierville.

"There's a lot of fishermen that are not happy because we use these feathers to make flies. There are some fishermen that are upset because they figure what it will do is raise the price when they come back," Carson said.

The average price for a package of rooster feathers goes for about $25 at tackle shops, but for just one feather at the salon, it's $15.

Prices aside, the rooster feathers will not be available for a year. That's how long it takes for manufactures to restock.

"Their roosters are too young to be able to harvest to get the necks," Carson said.

For some people, it's fashion. For others, it's sport.

For now, Carson is hanging on to all the feathers he can. "My daughter is a hairdresser, and I have to hide my feathers from her. She doesn't know where I keep them," he said.

Right now, the fly fishing store Orvis is still receiving daily shipments of feathers, but the store is bracing for bare shelves in the coming months.

Feather Hair Extensions Hit Knoxville

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Feather Hair Extensions: A New Twist

Rooster feathers, or hackles, are used by anglers to tie into lightweight lures that are snatched up by eager fish.

But with an exploding trend in the beauty industry -- feather hair extensions -- hair stylists might be getting to the feathers faster than the fish.

The Merle Norman hair studio in Marysville has offered feather extensions for a month and a half, and stylists said the trend already is more popular than colored hair extensions.

Stacey Frederick and Jennifer Long, both stylists at Merle Norman, sport feather extensions themselves.

"It's just thinking outside the box in the hair industry," Frederick said.

Adding brightly-colored streaks to hair could potentially damage it during bleaching and dying processes, Long said, and many women are turned away from using colored hair extensions because they aren't natural-looking.

The procedure is simple: In less than five minutes, a stylist can take the feathers of your choice and loop them to several strands of hair using a small silicone bead. Options range from dyed rooster hackles in a variety of colors to long, white ostrich feathers -- two feathers for $15 or three for $25.

The extensions last up to four months and can be washed and styled with a blow dryer, flat iron or curling iron.

Buying feathers from wherever they can find them, Frederick and Long said they rely heavily on eBay. Frederick said she even has acquired a stash from a fisherman friend of hers.

Kathy Bielecki of Imlay City exhibits her jewelry at art shows around Southeast Michigan. This summer, she's started offering feathered hair extensions for a low price to visitors to her booth after seeing the trend explode in area salons. While hair salons in Birmingham offer hair feather extensions at prices upward of $30 per feather, Bielecki charges $12 per feather or $20 for two.

"The feathers are the hardest thing to find," she said.

Finefeatherheads.com -- a site the local Merle Norman stylists said they visit frequently -- is currently out of stock of all of its six-feather bundles.

On Monday, "hair feather" was a top trend on eBay.com with about 8,600 search results. Even searching "fly fishing feathers" on eBay yielded about 638 results advertising to fly fishermen and hair stylists.

Dan Finstad of the Michigan Fly Fishing Club in Livonia said fly fishing shops are making "outrageous premiums" by selling feathers to hair salons. One rooster hackle could yield four to five flies, Finstad said.

"Owners are reluctant to sell their entire inventory to beauty stylists," Finstad said, noting fly fishing stores are afraid of falling victim to the fad as well. "At the end of the day, they're still trying to make a profit."

John and Veronica Pinto, owners of Lakeside Fishing Shop in St. Clair Shores, said they've capitalized on the high demand for the feathers by selling their personal stock -- and they've all gone to beauticians.

"We've sold quite a few and not one of them to a fly fisherman," Veronica Pinto said. "I don't know how long that's going to last."

Several years ago, the store was flooded with demands from crafters for fishing tackle to make into jewelry.

Stylists point to Steven Tyler's May appearance on American Idol with nearly foot-long feathers in his hair as the beginning of the feather explosion.

Young celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha all have been spotted sporting feather hair extensions in their hair, but the trend isn't popular just among young women. From school-aged girls to older women looking to stand out in a crowd, Long said the trend really has taken flight

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Feather Hair Extensions Highlight Rooster Butts

Once, after a column in which I pointed out that mascara is made from bat guano, I got several letters from women who were livid that I would say such a thing. Of course, I apologized up, down, and sideways, and promised never to make that mistake again. And I haven’t. Well, not often, anyway.But the truth is that I didn’t make that up.
Bat guano really is one of the main ingredients in mascara, and that won’t change whether I write about it or not. So, if you happen to be a woman of the female gender, and you’re offended by this column, I hope you’ll be somewhat comforted by the fact that I am not making any of this one up, either. This story was sent to me, or at least posted on Facebook, by the editor of Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, who happens to be, her very self, a female type person. And a darn good guitar picker and singer, to boot.According to this story, that evidently started with the Seattle Times and is sweeping the country, there seems to be a national shortage of hackles.
Now, hackles, in case you don’t waste large sectors of your time tying flies, are feathers used in fly-tying. I have gleaned, from my extensive research on the subject, that these particular feathers come from a certain part of a chicken, known technically as the ‘butt.’ Actually, I figured that out from reading the article Louie Bond posted, but that’s what passes for extensive research in my office.For years flyfishers have been using hackles for their flies. Fishing flies only need maybe a couple of small pieces of feather each, so even with lots of people tying their own flies we’ve been able to get by for years without taxing the nation’s chickens too heavily. Sure, there have probably been some birds walking around with bare backsides at times, but then, sacrifices must be made. And if those sacrifices have to be made by chickens, I’m OK with that.But now things have changed.
Women, en masse, have started using hackles as hair accessories. As I understand it, this involves something called ‘hair extensions,’ which would probably be a good name for a rock band. But then, so would butt feathers.Hair extentions, though, are a little out of my area of expertise. I always thought there were basically just two choices if you wanted longer hair – you could either let it grow out, or wear a wig. So I asked my wife about hair extensions, and learned that it involves weaving other peoples’ hair into your own, to make your hair longer. And, apparently, some women like to weave feathers in there, too, for decoration. Why not?If you buy a hackle at a fly shop it will run you maybe five bucks.
The same hackle at a hairdresser joint might set you back a C note. So we’re talking a lot of difference in price, for the exact same feather.Plus, it turns out, you can’t just pull the hackles and let the bird keep pecking. The unique roosters that grow these feathers are specially raised, and have to be whacked to harvest the hackles. But the main problem is that it takes a year for them to get big enough to grow proper butt feathers.So the U.S. supply of hackles is being seriously depleted by women who want to pay big bucks to put feather hair extensions in their hair.
It’s getting so fly shops can’t keep the feathers, and fly fishers are having a hard time finding the hackles they need. No one is necessarily happy about this situation, and as far as I know, the roosters haven’t even been consulted yet.Something has to be done, and quick. Women are going into fly shops and buying out an entire season’s worth of hackles at once, sometimes paying far more than the going price. In some places women are being banned from these shops, or if not banned, the owners won’t sell to them, which is further escalating the problem.One rooster farm in Colorado, which raises the special roosters, told the Seattle Times they are killing over 1,500 roosters a week now, and they still can’t keep up with the demand from hair salons. That’s just wrong.And it may not stop at feathers. Any woman who would put a chicken’s butt feather in her hair may decide to throw in a lead weight or two, and maybe a handful of plastic worms.
Before you know it there may be a shortage of topwaters or shiners or jigs. The entire pro bass fishing circuit could be shut down to keep the country’s women in disgusting hairstyles. We could end up shipping in boatloads of angling supplies from China or the OPEC nations. And you think oil is a problem. The black market on colored feathers could easily outstrip the drug trade in terms of law enforcement man-hours involved.If we don’t deal with this problem it’s liable to do us in, and Congress does nothing.
Maybe when women start raising their own bats to keep themselves in mascara, our leaders will decide to intervene. In the meantime, keep your chickens in the coop, and your tacklebox locked up in your gun safe . . .(Source)

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

PETA Finally Weighs In On Feather Hair Extensions

The following article was written by Keegan Baur.

Would you support the slaughter of thousands of animals each week just so that you could jump on board with the latest fashion trend? That's exactly what girls are doing when they purchase feather hair extensions for their locks.

Upon first glance, feather hair extensions might seem innocent enough, but they are in fact the reason that many roosters lose their lives. Roosters used to make these extensions are bred and genetically altered to produce long, luxurious saddle feathers (the ones on their backsides, which take years to grow) before they are killed and de-feathered for their precious plumage. What costs these animals their lives in turn costs anywhere from $40 to $500 per saddle and can only be worn by the consumer for a scant two or three months.

Fortunately, you don't need blood on your hands in order to strut your stuff like a peacock: Stay tuned for our DIY ribbon version of these accessories! (Source: PETA)

Vegan Joshua Katcher Speaks On Feather Hair Extensions. Who?

Joshua Katcher launched The Discerning Brute in 2008 as a resource for“Fashion, Food & Etiquette for the Ethically Handsome Man”.
With a focus on sustainability, social justice and animal rights, Katcher deconstructs the mainstream understanding of masculinity and offers a vision of men that are protectors, defenders, and heroes for animals and the environment.
His lecture “Fashion & Animals: Decoding and Harnessing the Dialect of Fashion Culture to Help Animals” has taken Katcher to Paris, Boston, Parsons University in New York, and in June, Washington DC. He will be teaching a course on the subject in NYC this spring with Guilded, and at the American University of Paris in Spring of 2012.
Joshua is on the verge of launching his online men’s lifestyle store, Brave GentleMan, that will feature a highly curated selection of “Principled Attire & Smart Supplies”, including exclusive items and exciting collaborations with some of the most sought-after, high-quality artists and designers. His own line of sustainable, vegan menswear is in development and production. Katcher also launched the initiative,PINNACLE: Reinvent The Icon last year which provides a platform for fashion industry professionals to creatively express their opposition to the fur industry. Joshua lives in New York city where he is a video producer, artist, self-taught chef and a rescued Chihuahua named Enzo’s dad.
On top of all that, Joshua is smart, a good writer, a fan of Battlestar Galactica and nice enough to agree to an interview.
Do you see vegan consumerism as the lesser of two evils, with your site being a way to channel destructive modern materialism in a less destructive direction? Or would you say that once someone goes the vegan fair trade route, consumerism becomes a positive thing and the more things they buy that fit vegan ethics, the better?
The former. It’s unfortunate that consumerism and materialism are so pervasive, but it’s also understandable why this is so; it’s sensually exciting, visually appealing, and it strokes our individual egos to think “this is made for me”. I believe that there isn’t anything wrong with the accumulation of objects that serve a function in a mostly-local model - even if that function is purely aesthetic. Even Prehistoric peoples accumulated objects - if they hadn’t, anthropologists would hardly have been able to discover anything about the way they lived.
That being said, there is a glaring difference between a throw-away, built-for-the-dump, cheap-crap, more-for-the-sake-of-more consumption pattern that is reinforced by our current culture (with dire consequences across a spectrum of concern beyond just animal cruelty), as opposed to a business model that takes into consideration how this product is affecting others at each step of the production process.
I include ecosystems and animals as “others” in this equation, as well as workers, laborers and “consumers”. Isn’t it scary that Americans are referred to as “consumers” now as opposed to “civilians” or “citizens”? I think that was an intentional distinction, and we could go on for hours about the problems inherent in a consumer culture. My biggest objection to a consumer economy is that mainstream economists are delusional. Our economic model functions on the false-assumption that infinite resources exist and infinite growth is possible, yet we can see and prove that this planet and it’s “resources” are finite.
My other major objections are that “natural” or “organic” or “fair trade” products are more expensive. This also speaks to the failure of our economic model to provide worth to well-being and cost to detriment. This is so backwards. Why should organic products have to be labeled ‘this isn’t toxic’? Imagine if it were the other way around and toxic crap had a label that said ‘this is toxic crap’? 
The third major objection I’ll highlight is that there is no accountability. Corporations function like a body with no brain. In a recent episode of This American Life, they discuss how criminal psychopaths share many traits with functional, and successful, business leaders. They are able to do terrible things on a massive scale without the effects of empathy or the consequences of accountability. Factory farming is the perfect example of this. Or sweatshops.
And then there is the cognitive dissonance that consumers have who give the benefit of the doubt to the businesses and assume that precautions are taken to ensure that things are in accordance with the values most of us share. I imagine they say to themselves, “If it really were that bad, they wouldn’t be selling it”, and then then business says “If people were really opposed to this, they wouldn’t be buying it”. They’ve got the blinders on, and are living in a perpetual state of infantile self-gratification, as David Orr suggests in Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse.
Like many of my approaches to activism, I see consumerism as a dialect through which to speak to the majority of people who wouldn’t necessarily seek out an academic paper on the failures of consumer capitalism. Ethical fashion is the Trojan Horse in which I hope some other messages can ride in on. I’ll never claim to be doing the flawless thing. My interest is not — and has never been — in puritanism, and I cannot deny that fashion culture has a huge influence on many people doing the most amounts of ecological damage, albeit unwittingly and irreverently.
Is it better to be a vegan shopper, giving money to companies that cater to vegans, than to be a freegan who attempts to have as little impact as possible?
Better in what sense? This is an incredibly complex question. In the sense of having as minimal impact as possible, the least amount of “new” stuff is better for everyone, without argument. Extracting resources always has an ecological cost. Unfortunately, there is a very inconvenient feature to the culture we live in now, and that is the magnification of influence on a global scale, and the appropriation of subculture aesthetics by mainstream businesses. I just saw on the news how Steven Tyler’s rooster feather hair extensions has resulted in such a huge demand for hair-feather extensions that the industry cannot keep up. This affects animals, regardless of where Mr. Tyler got his.
So my next question, as shallow as it sounds, would be about the freegan’s appeal to the mainstream culture. As we know, there is an incredible desire to consume and showcase subculture and authentic individuality in fashion, and what better place to get that inspiration than from an anarchist freegan? You can see the effects of this everywhere in fashion. In fact, it is rumored that the massive fox tail keychain trend is thanks to some freegans who ate roadkill and wore the tails of the roadkill as a symbol of having done so. Someone saw it and thought it looked cool, next thing you know, it’s on Gucci bags.
You can see a similar pattern with the aesthetics of indigenous peoples - the American Indian aesthetic has been totally exploited again and again in fashion, and is really big right now largely in part to Avatar. What is left out, of course, is the context of that aesthetic. As pack animals with a prehistoric legacy of egalitarianism (for the most part), historian Dr. Gwynne Dyer points out that we are driven by what the group is doing, and we seek peer approval. This aspect of our nature has been exploited massively by businesses. And the modern day translation? Keeping up with the Joneses. No subculture is safe from being appropriated, regardless of their intentions or earnestness. In this light, I can’t say one is better than the other. They are both doing good when held up against the current problems we face.
As a vegan, myself, I approach it by embracing the idea of influence magnification, in hopes that values associated with veganism will be magnified, by making sure that THE main features to magnify are appealing versions of social, environmental and ethical empathy. I think many activists who live in communities that are a bit more isolated have the freedom to reject all of mainstream culture. And it’s important to have functioning models that are more consistent like these, but it’s also crucial to have people participating within the mainstream culture who understand its dialects, trying to make change from within as well. I’ll always side with a multi-platform approach as opposed to saying one is good or bad.
Adam at the H.E.A.L.T.H. blog recently wrote an entry critiquing vegan consumerism. One of his points is that he believes vegan consumerism supports the system that he thinks is the true culprit in oppression — capitalism. He criticizes mainstream veganism for falling prey to “self-righteousness, identity politics, militancy, colonialism, classism, and privileged consumerism.” How would you respond to Adam’s objections?
Adam is very intelligent. I agree with his point that veganism is “a valuable means, but not an end.” In fact I agree with most of his points, set aside the popular “privilege” grievance. It would be amazing if Vandana Shiva’s “food democracy” would come to pass. However, I believe it is entirely possible to have visionary ideals like a food democracy, but to also compromise those ideals to an extent while working within the context of what the mainstream culture is doing in order to be relatable and influential. This is the biggest failure of modern activism - an inability to be relatable or appealing to the masses. This is a moot point, because if it were relatable and appealing to the everyone, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
There are millions of excuses and rationalizations for why the mainstream doesn’t do an about-face when the “truth” is readily available, but one sad aspect of this is that most activist organizations, as correct and earnest as their positions and critiques are, have an abhorrent PR approach and are so far removed from the aesthetics of popular culture - they so reject all of pop-culture - that they become almost invisible. This is why so many activists hate PETA and The HSUS. They compromise perfection for good PR and of course it’s not flawless - but that’s not the intention.
Getting rid of consumer capitalism would be the sane thing to do, but realistically, how can this be achieved given the circumstances we are faced with? Instead, I’d ask, what are the steps we can take to communicate these values in a way that people are attracted to? The extent to which we compromise our values is a personal choice which I have no interest in attempting to define for the sake of it not being a dictum or religious law.
I will point out that “‘falling prey to self-righteousness, identity politics, militancy, colonialism, classism, and privileged consumerism” sounds great in a doctoral defense or in an academic critique, but unless someone has a plan to get everyone to turn the system on its head, I think that “vegan consumerism” is a step in right direction, a “means, but not an end” as Adam says. I’ll also say, and I’ll probably take slack for saying it, that there are some activists who place an enormous amount of value on their counter-culture identities and academic debate skills (even more than the values they claim to stand for), and this sometimes forms a roadblock to embracing any mainstream change or adaptations of their values - therefore they must reject it because then they would no longer be counter-culture.
I also have a major problem with the “privilege” grievance. I think it has been disproven, considering the financial and resource costs associated with livestock. Feeding and watering livestock is more expensive a “luxury” than growing plants. The subsidies are the problem that Adam might want to point out. Furthermore, you can make the argument that good-health in general is a luxury - access to doctors in America and access to non-toxic communities and food are often exclusive. There is also the failure to recognize the value of desirability within Western culture (those doing the majority of animal product consumption). The appeal of luxury status can be an important tool while at the same time making affordable foods like rice and beans or fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc available. No one is expecting underprivileged people to wear furs and live on foie gras or caviar either, yet I could make the same claim that certain animal products have an exclusivity that is alluring.
Overall I think Adam makes great points that are worth considering.
You’ve said that you see veganism as a social justice issue. However, I often see vegans worrying more about the problems they face as vegans (not having enough vegan options, being ridiculed for their lifestyle, getting upset that ex-vegan celebrities are making vegans look bad) than they worry about the animals. This was obvious during the VegNews meat photo scandal — vegans were outraged that they had been salivating over animal products presented as vegan foods, and were almost ready to burn VegNews to the ground, even though the use of stock photos was not harming animals. In other words, veganism often seems to be about the vegans and not the animals. Are you able to avoid this trap?
You’ve pointed out a rift in the seemingly unified vegan community. Some people who identify as vegan approach it from a religious, puritanical perspective, as in, “How can I limit animal products in my life as much as possible at any cost?” While others approach it from a social justice perspective, as in, “What is the best thing with the most leverage that I can do to help animals?” Most, however, fall somewhere in between. That’s all I’ll say for fear of waking the giant.
In your interview with MindBodyGreen, you said, “I truly believe that in order to wear fur you have to be either ignorant or a sociopath. It is so incredibly cruel and unnecessary.” Would you say that this is true of all animal product consumption, or does this apply to fur in particular? Why should fur be singled out?
Fur should be singled out because of the cultural context. It is visually loud, and makes a bold and clear symbolic statement that is popularly accepted as “status, wealth, sex, power”, the things that most people are drawn to in mainstream culture. Its intention is to be seen. Something like wool or leather, on the other hand, is ubiquitous to point of being nearly invisible. Fur production is an issue that more people can relate to objectively. Silk worms are boiled alive, but it’s difficult for people to empathize with an animal that doesn’t cry out or make facial expressions similar to their own. This doesn’t mean that the suffering of an individual silk worm is invalid - to them as individuals it must be the most painful thing, indeed, and it kills them.
I think inter-species empathy is like a door. When it’s closed, it’s closed. But if you can get it to open, even a little, with someone who is easy to empathize with — someone who looks like your own dog or cat, someone who makes it clear that they are suffering — then it’s so much easier to take the next steps that might end up with an advanced sense of empathy for a silk worm, if not just the principal of acknowledging that a silk worm is a subject of perception, as David Abrams refers to entities, with a will to live and an ability to experience pain.
You said in an interview that veganism is a moral obligation, rather than a personal choice. What gives us this moral obligation?
It is not a personal choice because it isn’t just about “you and your desires”. Consider this analogy of a dog abuser. Imagine if an abuser said, “What I do to my dog is a personal choice. I respect that you don’t want to hit your dog, but don’t tell me I can’t hit mine”. The glaring flaw here is that the abuser has invalidated the dog’s interests and perspective.  When we talk about less familiar animals and the products they are turned into, it could only be a “personal choice issue” if they did not have a valid perspective. Science has proven that animals have a perspective, and complex emotional lives, to boot. In that sense, we have a moral obligation to this reality that they are subjects of perception who experience pain and suffering. Animals voice dissent of their treatment and we invalidate it in order to accommodate our pleasure.
I wouldn’t say veganism per se is a moral obligation so much as validating animals’ perspectives is.
In another interview, you said, “Some might argue that placing any limitations on the pursuit of pleasure, joy or fulfillment is a compromise, but what I’ve found is that when you indulge in anything - from a perfect cappuccino to a cozy and handsome coat, the pleasure is heightened in the knowledge that those things were created in an ethical manner, where more than just self or convenience is considered.”
But in the comments to one of your entries, you pointed out that it was impossible to be a perfect vegan, citing the ecological harm from mining coltan for computers as one reason that it was naive to think that someone could ever run a truly vegan magazine. Is the heightened pleasure that vegan products provide by not containing animal products somewhat of a delusion, given that most of our purchases harm animals and the environment whether they are vegan or not?
I think this ties into the earlier question about consumerism in general. What I am intending to say is that perfection is not a possibility. A vision of an ideal future is a possibility, though, and we can work towards that. The universe is both perfect and imperfect at once because there is nothing else by which to measure it. It is practical to take steps and work toward ideals. Coltan in the Congo is an enormous problem that our culture has yet to highlight in any real way. The African AIDS crisis is beyond critical. The mass extinction event we are experiencing now is another. Because we are pleasure-driven animals, it is important that part of these solutions are not just correct, but desirable and alluring.
As activists, it is our responsibility to make it alluring. It is also practical to consider that we are so far from a mass societal paradigm shift that small steps are simply seeds that are planted. They are showing people that there is a possibility to enjoy life and work while moving toward an ethical society. So no, it is not a delusion that products that are made more ethically can be more pleasurable.
In legal discourse, ignorance of the law is no excuse to break the law. But vegans tend to be more forgiving of animal users who are ignorant of the immorality of their purchases, compared to those who have been exposed to factory farm footage and keep eating meat or wearing fur anyway. Is it okay to be an animal user if you don’t know that it’s wrong?
I’m not sure the question can be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Knowing something is wrong and thinking something is wrong are different. If you do not agree that it is wrong, then do you not “know” it is wrong? Wrongness is also not an absolute, it has to have context. For me, eating animals is wrong when a) I know that animals are individuals with their own interests who suffer emotionally and physically in food production, and b) I have other options to sustain myself healthfully. I don’t think there are many vegans who would say that if there’s no other option you should just starve to death. The distinction is, again, context. Civilization vs. Wild Nature. Doing something for survival changes the context and the relationship drastically. It doesn’t make it any better for the prey, but I believe survival is a defensible argument for killing wild animals when we are on a level playing field and there are not other options, but confining animals in factory farms or the like is indefensible.
I am not opposed to death, per se. I am not in denial of nature and predators and prey and the food web. But as human beings, for the most part, we have removed ourselves from many of the laws of natural order. Our niche is global, not local. And I believe that the choice is between a sustainable civilization which requires careful consideration of every action, or moving on to being with wild nature once again. But even within the context of a “return to nature” scenario, there is still the potential to consume an entirely plant-based diet like our ancestor, Ardi.
Part of carefully considering our actions to be a sustainable civilization is considering the impacts of our choices ethically and environmentally. Most of us in the developed world have the ability to choose what we eat, and the impacts of what we eat are vast. Americans make up 5 percent of the world population, but consume 26 percent of the world’s energy. Validating an animal as an individual who makes it clear (by crying out and struggling) that they do not want to be hurt, and having other options — but still choosing to confine, kill, and consume that animal — is not defensible. It is doable, quite clearly, but not defensible. The pleasure one experiences from the taste of animals only outweighs the suffering endured by the animals insofar as we invalidate the animals’ perspectives. If we truly validated them, most of us who are not socio or psychopathic would choose to eat something else.
You see a move toward veganism as an integral part of maintaining a sustainable civilization, with the alternative being a return of humans back to the wild. A lot of people who oppose vegan morality see that same dichotomy as well (though some of them would say that eventually even vegan civilization is unsustainable), but prefer a return to the wild or to a pastoral type of society with far fewer people. Why do you choose vegan civilization over a return to nature?
I don’t. I was born in this civilization, so I don’t really have a choice. Me personally “returning to nature” wouldn’t solve any problems, if my interest is bringing about large-scale change. This is not to invalidate those who do lead a pastoral life. It’s so important that there are people who still know how to grow food and start a fire, you know?
Again, it has to be a spectral approach. There is no one correct solution. And I doubt there would be a way to convince everyone from every country with a multitude of cherished beliefs to abandon those beliefs and civilization. We can’t even convince every nation to consider “democracy”, never mind a voluntary post-civilization pastoral life with a planned birthrate decrease. We can try to bring about a “soft landing”, as Derrick Jensen calls it, to the crash that many experts like Jared Diamond claim is coming one way or the other. On the other hand there is the green-technological utopian ideal where biomimicry, “lab-meat”, and a sophisticated approach to energy and food allows us to maintain many of the luxuries of civilization without damaging habitats faster than they can recover.
Of course this is all speculation and science fiction, but it’s important that we at least articulate a few versions of an ideal future to work toward. I mean, if you really want to get existential, the sun will envelop the Earth eventually so why bother, right? Unless, of course, we build a fleet of space ships and leave. I Imagine a pastoral people would not be capable of building those space ships, so if the preservation of our own species is the goal, a technological people would be better suited to take on that challenge however many millions of years down the road that is, if humans are able to last that long. But then what? It’s both terrifying and exciting to think about. These speculations have a million possibilities and avenues. I’ll leave the rest to the science fiction visionaries.
Getting back to the present, what I do know is that raising animals for food is usually cruel, usually unnecessary, and almost always terrible as far as habitat destruction and resource consumption are concerned. Human beings can thrive on a plant-based diet like many other animals and many of us can grow some of our own food instead of lawns if we wanted. Veganism is one of the few things we can do right now that takes on the most pressing problems at once in an easily manageable way (as opposed to convincing the world to tear down cities). If there is to be a compassionate future, veganism is a good place to start turning this ship in another direction. But no, it is not an end, and no, it is not flawless. Conversations like this one need to happen often, and an emphasis on remaining non-religious about it is paramount.
Would a future vegan civilization ultimately have to lead to a separatism between humans and other animals?
Not as far as I see it. There is always the interaction with animals on their terms, in their spaces, where we can interact. They are our fellow Earthlings, and we are animals just like them. It is amazing and awe-inspiring to see animals in their element. Nothing would stop us from interacting with them on a multitude of levels. Dogs, for instance, domesticated themselves by choosing to be around us, scavenging our scraps. They became our companions on their terms. Puppy mills and pure-breeds are a far and perverted cry from that, but I believe that having companions that are other Earthlings is crucial to our well-being, whether that is on a real physical level or a spiritual level.
We share this planet, and in that truth, we will always be coming face-to-face with other Earthlings, sometimes on our terms, sometimes on their terms. The crucial question is, will we continue to terrorize them and exploit them as mere resources or will we honor them as intelligent life forms worthy of our respect?
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Are Feather Hair Extensions Fashion or Murder?

Feather Hair Extensions are still a hot topic in Hollywood but as I correctly predicted in my little feather hair extensions note, it would not be until the 1st week in June that we would begi
Feather Hair Extensions
n to hear more about the moral outrage of killing roosters than would about how cool the fashion trend actually was.
It really wasn't a fair fight because those must upset are not the animal rights activists, but the fly fisherman who need to kill roosters for hobby as opposed to fashion. Yes it's true that the activists will eventually kill the Feather Hair Extension craze but at the moment the debate boils down to nothing more than supply and demand economics than the welfare of a bunch of "cocks".
It turns out that teenagers and hairstylists are rushing every fly fishing outpost in America trying to get their hands on the few remaining rooster saddles left in order to either jam them in someones head or sell wholesale them to the beauty industry. Stars like Jennifer Love Hewitt, Selena Gomez and the lovely Steven Tyler have brought the feather hair extension craze into the mainstream but I doubt they have any idea what needs to happen in order to get these feathers from bird to head.
It takes about a year for a rooster to grow the feathers which can only be harvested by slaughtering the bird. It's no worse really than what they do at KFC but the fact that it is being done in the name of fashion has raised the interest of animal lovers everywhere. The fisherman are perhaps better suited recipients of the feathers because they consume them with much less frequency and have done so for decades without much fuss but the simple fact that they can no longer find sufficient feathers to practice their craft as summer fly fishing season kicks in is what really has gotten them angry.
Some feather hair extensions are selling to dopey teens on Ebay for several hundred dollars and the suppliers, although nearly completely devoid of inventory, have to walk a fine line between short term riches and long term sustainability. After all, we are dealing with a fashion trend here and when it dies, angry fishermen will be the only customer base for these cock farmers.
So it appears that as the animal rights activists bring attention to the slaughtering of birds for vanity, they will actually be helping the cause of the fisherman who need to slaughter the birds so they can slaughter some fish for hobby. Hmmmm!

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Kei$ha Responds To Feather Hair Extensions Controversy

Feather Hair Extensions Feather Hair Extensions
Ke$ha at a Wango Tango concert in L.A. on May 14, and performing on the 'Today' show in New York on Aug. 13.
Photo: Getty Images
Ke$ha can take FULL credit for becoming one of the leaders of the feather hair extension craze that's been sweeping through salons like wildfire, but should people peg her as the source for roosters that die after their plumage is plucked? Ke$ha doesn't think so! While stylists scour their nearest fish bait shops for these specific hard-to-find feathers (the long, skinny black-and-white striped feathers called "grizzly saddle"), farmers can't keep up with demand. One farm harvests about 1,500 birds a week and can barely keep up with its current orders, boosting the price of the plumes up to nearly $500! (One grizzly saddle feather sold for $480 on eBay after 31 bids.) Because the demand is high, more roosters are being euthanized after their saddle feathers are plucked just to make Feather Hair Extensions.
Yesterday Ke$ha defended herself against this fowl play (heh) explaining that there are other ways to go about rockin' this hair trend without killing roosters. She pointed her fans to Fauxotale, a pair of designers who only use recycled feathers.
Feather Hair Extensions (5 Double)

Friday, June 10, 2011

Feather Hair Extensions Debate Heating Up

It seems that more Feather Hair Extensions articles are coming about the fisherman than the fashion trend. Let's read this one.

Fly shop manager Jim Bernstein was warned that hair stylists would come banging on his door, but he didn't listen.

Sure enough, less than 24 hours later, a woman walked into the Eldredge Bros. Fly Shop in Maine and made a beeline toward a display of hackles — the long, skinny rooster feathers fishermen use to make lures.

"She brought a bunch up to the counter and asked if I could get them in pink," he said. "That's when I knew."

Fly-fishing shops nationwide, he learned, are at the center of the latest hair trend: Feather extensions. Supplies at stores from the coasts of Maine to landlocked Idaho are running out and some feathers sold online are fetching hundreds of dollars more than the usual prices.


Singer Ke wears feathers in her hair. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

"I'm looking around the shop thinking hmmm, what else can they put in their hair?" Bernstein said.

Fly fishermen are not happy, bemoaning the trend in online message boards and sneering at so-called "feather ladies." Some also blame "American Idol" judge and rocker Steven Tyler, who began wearing the feathers in his long hair.

"It takes years and years and years to develop these chickens to grow these feathers. And now, instead of ending up on a fly, it's going into women's hair," said Matt Brower, a guide and assistant manager at Idaho Angler in Boise.

"I think that's the reason a lot of people are a little peeved about it," he said.

The feathers are not easy to come by in the first place.

They come from roosters that are genetically bred and raised for their plumage. In most cases, the birds do not survive the plucking.

At Whiting Farms Inc., in western Colorado, one of the world's largest producers of fly tying feathers, the roosters live about a year while their saddle feathers — the ones on the bird's backside and the most popular for hair extensions — grow as long as possible. Then the animal is euthanized.

As hair extensions, the feathers can be brushed, blow dried, straightened and curled once they are snapped into place. Most salons sell the feather strands for $5 to $10 a piece. The trend has become so popular a company online even sells feather extensions for dogs.

The craze has also left hairstylists scrambling to find rooster saddle feathers, as fly shops hold onto a select few for their regular customers. The businesses will now ask if the feathers are for hairdressing, said Shelley Ambroz, who owns MiraBella Salon and Spa in Boise.

"If you go in and you're a woman, they won't sell to you," said Ambroz, who started to eye her husband's fly-fishing gear after stores ran out.

"He told me to stay out of his feathers," she said.

Whiting Farms is harvesting about 1,500 birds a week for their feathers and still can't keep up with its current orders, said owner and founder Tom Whiting, a poultry geneticist. The company has stopped taking on new accounts.

"I've tried to withhold some for the fly-fishing world because when the fashion trend goes away, which it will, I've still got to make a living," he said.

The company was the one that told Bernstein in Maine several months ago that rooster saddle feathers had somehow become the latest coveted hair accessory. Bernstein said he scoffed at the notion that it could reach his shop along the coast of Southern Maine.

"This is Maine, it's not California. We're a little behind the trends here," he said. "I screwed up. I should have said: 'Send me everything you've got."'

Bernstein's inventory of rooster saddle feathers has long been depleted. About three weeks ago, he dusted off a rooster neck with feathers that had been set aside for fly tying classes at the shop. The neck would have normally cost $29.95, but the shop sold it for $360.

It's not uncommon to find a package of rooster saddle feathers that would have cost around $60 at a fly shop now priced from $200 to $400.

A package of the most popular fly tying hackle for hair extensions, a black and white striped feather called grizzly saddle, would normally retail anywhere from $40 to $60. It sold for $480 on eBay last month after 31 bids.

At the Boise salon, Ambroz has stowed away enough feathers to last about six months.

On a recent Tuesday evening, Emilee Rivers, 16, sifted through a pile of rooster saddle feathers looking for the perfect strands to frame her face. She picked out four and handed them to the stylist, who bonded them together with hot glue before clipping them into Rivers' blond hair.

Brandi Wheeler, 16, was next. There's only one other girl at Borah High School in Boise who has the feather extensions, the teenagers said.

Now, they were joining the select few.

"I've wanted to get them for quite a while," Rivers said.

She went to the salon with her mom, Kristi, who totally gets it.

"My dad on the other hand, he's so confused," Rivers said. "I told him what I was doing and he said: 'Why would you get feathers in your hair?"' (source)

Feather Hair Extensions Getting Mocked

I'm not sure what Feather Hair Extensions is doing at the center of this article but I thought it was rather dumb.

I'm so relieved — somebody finally agrees with me that feather hair extensions are not only as pervasive as a flesh-eating bacteria, but they're even more hazardous to the very foundation of this country than we could have ever imagined.

Racked has gone so far as to (sort of) claim spell-bound women are descending upon bait-and-tackle shops nationwide, wiping blood from their mouths while they ransack fly shops, knocking down anything in their wake, searching for anything they could possibly add pink food coloring to and hang from their scalps. Writer Danica Lo even asks such hard-hitting questions like if this can positively affect the ever-growing number of American vegetarians (sort of) and how the ridiculosity will inevitably force our economy to crumble, leaving us to fall victim to North Korean occupation.

New Trend: Straight Ends

"Will this coiffure craze result in a nationwide shortage of hackles? Will fly fishermen be forced to source their skinny feather things on the black market once the world's supply is decimated? Will the feather hair-extension craze decimate entire populations of specially-bred roosters? Hm, yes, probably, there's a very good chance."

On a more serious note, this trend is makes me throw up. Straight vomit. Not only do they make you appear 12 years old (something I, at 23-years-old, still struggle with), but they resemble something I would invariable see in a Ke$ha music video, and if there's anything I learned this past year, it's to dress the exact opposite of Ke$ha.

For some reason, in weeks past I've seen nothing but positive reviews on the "hot new must-have" and I feel it's my duty to the public to expose and uphold the truth. For this, you're welcome. (source)