By Claire DeFrancisci and Blake Dykes

Walking down the hallway, students often see styles such as feather hair extensions, gauging their ears and earrings for males. These trends have greatly expanded over the past few months.Feather hair extensions are put in by combining a strand of hair and a feather, then attaching them together with a bead. This summer the feathers became a usual sight to see on girls of all ages. The feathers come in colors from a subtle natural color, to bright neon stripes these feathers are now a popular hair accessory.

There are many different opinions about theses trends.

“I got them because I thought that they were cute,” said sophomore Mallory Grantz. Grantz purchased her extensions at Hair Concepts, a hair salon in Greenville, for 10 to 15 dollars per feather.

On the othere hand  sophmore Garret Glass has a different perspective.

“No one is unique ; they just get them because everyone else does,” said Glass.

Freshman Asa Dempster says that  she wouldn’t get feathers. She doesn’t follow trends, she  starts her on style.

“It’s like why everybody wears Ugg boots, it’s just the thing to do,” said sophomore Sydney Baumann.

Another style that has been spreading through out guys of all grades our pieced ears. This  trend, males having pierced ears is not as new as the feather hair extensions, but they are still popular.

Junior Zach Nichols has his ears pierced and his parents are okay with the piercing.

“They didn’t like them at first, but now they’re used to them,” said Nichols.

Some parents would not be as thrilled with the piercing as Nichols’.

“My dad said he’d never do anything for me if I got my ears pierced,” said freshman Ben Banet.

In Banet’s opinion, earrings are meant for girls.

“If you look at Claire’s they are directly meant for girls, earrings should be kept to the female gender,” said Banet.

However, freshman Jamie Hensley got his ears pierced at Claire’s for $35. He got the piercing because his friends told him he should.

Another form of piercing that has gotten popular recently are gauged ears.

Gauging  ears is a  dramatic twist on ear piercings that has become more popular in teenagers in the past couple of years.

Gauges are a special ear piercing used to gradually stretch ears until a desired stretch or hole in the ear is created.

“I saw them on people a long time ago and I thought that it was interesting because it’s so different. It’s just another way to express yourself,” said sophomore Leah Holsclaw.

Gauges are an eye-catching trend that can be a controversial topic for parents. This is because if a person has stretched their ears to a certain size, the hole in the ear will not close naturally.

“The first time I asked my mom for permission she didn’t let me, but I did it any way. After I had them for a while I told them and they wanted me to take them out, but now they’re okay with it. They’d still prefer I don’t have them, though. They think that they’re ugly, especially my mom,” said Holsclaw.