Nation's moral guardians snap over 'shag bands'
Parents be warned: If you spot your seven-year-old daughter sneaking off to school sporting innocent-looking "cheap coloured plastic bracelets", it means she's actually inviting the opposite sex to snap her "shag bands" in return for sexual favours - part of a "terrifying wave of promiscuous behaviour" which threatens to …
Yes, ban it. The simple, reliable answer to every little problem.
At our school we played 'tig' and that was the closest I came to touching a girl for the first 15 years of my life. Seems 'tig' has gone XXX.
Paris because you don't need a band with her, just a crapload of cash (not that I'm suggesting she's an expensive prostitute or anything).
Firstly, I remember these things being around when I was back at school in the late 90s, has it really taken this long for the sensationalists to notice?
Secondly, has anyone considered that these children are just lying about what they're doing? How many teenagers claim to have had sex when they're just trying to sound big in front of their friends?
This is nothing new, it was happening when I was at school during the '90s. No one ever followed through with any of it, though.
I saw something about this in my local paper too - these wristbands have actually be branded as "evil". How can plastic be evil (unless it's Chucky)?
If only this craze would catch on amongst certain adult females I regularly see on my journey to and from work... Picture it, a crowded tube train, an attractive blonde, a snapped black band.....
AC, in case the girlfriend happens across this page, and questions me on my morality....
"Creagh said she'd written to one of several high street shops punting shag bands, asking it to desist in undermining youth morality, but that it had told her to take a running jump."
Paris, obviously.
As a 23 year old who broke a girl's black shag band when I was 16 I can report that there is nothing new about this kind of behaviour!
More's the pity. ;)
Kids at the local school here are far too busy sacrificing goats and selling their souls to satan...
aaaw! from the mouths of babes
Must make her mothers bossom just swell with pride!
Whatever would happen to one's dear sainted mother collecting the kids from school wearing a full pair of Marigold rubber gloves, fresh from a hard afternoon's washing up...??!!
It's enough to have my dear grandad (God rest his soul) turning in his grave, and the locals at the Stuka and Spitfire spitting feathers into their Spitting Feathers (it's a brewery for those not 'in the know'...)
Gawd help us...
Seriously, it's always Yorkshire.
of Pharm Parties from the US. Where a bunch of people bring all their drugs to a party and dump them into a bowl and then the attendants play lucky dip with the bowl of pills. ie a load of old scaremongering nonsense that no one has any real evidence of existing.
Bugger I wish I had thought this up.
The company has a warehouse full of useless rubber bands which are not selling. They setup a website or two claiming to be children using these bands in some sort of sexual way.
They then phone the press to "anonymously" tip them off about the new trend.
Hay presto millions of pounds of free advertising. Brilliant. Within a month nobody will care and the people with the warehouse will have a warehouse full of cash. Brilliant.
Technically nobody has done anything illegal. Brilliant.
1 = find a behaviour that has supposed to have existed for years
2 = suggest it's a new craze
3 = moral outrage
4 = profit from more paper sales.
Seriously, I remember when the bands round my arms were called shag bands and that was loooong ago. I actually had a wristfull of black ones. Unfortunatly, I ended up snapping a few of them by fidgiting and playing with them. t'was nothing to do but entertain myself :-)
I remember 'shag bands' from when I was at school about 12 years ago. Maybe there's something new about these ones but sounds like pretty old news to me! (never actually owned them myself as I was more in to football stickers!!)
This is another example of moral-outrage eating itself.
My 7-year old daughter has an arm full of them. Bought them from the local shop. As have all her friends. They just like them because they are "colourful fashion bracelets".
Then along come some website, The Sun, and MPs, and tell kids "no! they are not fashion! they are sex-toys. Here, if you go to www.whatever.com, you can read the rules and find out how to do it! Which, of course, you shouldn't! Outrageous!"
If everyone had kept schum, then they would continue to be... harmless colourful bracelets. It's the GROWNUPS (so-called) that are turning them into something more.
You don't need "shag bands" to talk about sex, nor to have kids daring one another. Youngsters are sexually curious, with or without shag bands.
What you need, is decent sex education, not "biological" education. If youngsters were taught about smegma, that men lie, cheat and bully, and sex with an underage teen can have you labelled a paedophile or slag, I think most kids would think twice.
The bands thing is a myth that's been going on for years according to a book a recently read.
Hippo Eats Dwarf by Alex Boese mentions it being a long standing story that repeatedly crops up from time to time in the media.
So , either the Sun doesnt read anything across the pond , where the "Moral Majority" had a little media frenzy of their own about this back when wearing livestrong bands became popular, or this was a really , really slow news day, and the reporter tried to make something interesting out of a niece of nephew coming to visit and telling him how things were going at school.
The ultimate non-story. Queue outrage ,and a Daily Mail campaign.
Where the hell was this sort of thing when I was a lad. 16 years of education and what did have to show for it?
They had these when I was at school.
A decade ago.
This colour-coded jewellery for sexual favours thing is nonsense. It comes up about once every two years when some newspaper has nothing better to say.
They've been touting this nonsense on and off about these plastic arm-bands for almost a decade now. Before that it was "friendship bracelets" which I'm sure anyone of my generation (born late 70s) will remember the girls making from bits of coloured string and giving out.
There was never anything to it then (more's the pity IMHO...) and there's nothing to it now. The fact that an MP has fallen for it speaks volumes.
Why is the reg reporting this ridiculous old hype?
Nice to see the combined headless chickens of the tabloid press and politicians off on a new threat to the kiddies that has only ever been heard about from some anonymous sources on the internet that, because they are on the 'tubes, simply *have* to be true.
If they want some more ideas then Cracked (http://www.cracked.com/article_17040_6-most-insane-moral-panics-in-american-history.html) has a few more they can borrow (Rainbow Parties come in at #5 on that list and I believe #1 has already been dealt with in depth).
They were around when I was at school 10 years ago, but despite snapping as many as possible nothing happened...
For go do your homework?
Or go play football
Or go to bed!
Or that's not music! That's just noise.
When I was young you would get called a sissy for playing with girls!
And as for boys wearing braclets? Well it just wouldn't have happened.
And I think a rainbow party would make a great team building event for our next quarterly meeting, too.
People believe this? Are their incredulity glands not working or something?
Before anyone leaps on that AC, he appears to be a bloke, not an embittered woman misandrist feminazi, 'kay? 'Kay.
Anybody remember Brass Eye ?
I call Bulls***
Where were these when I were a lad!!
I wonder if he'll be using that in his defence.
A member of parliament for Wakefield is advocating a ban on selling plastic bracelets for kids?
Am i missing something?
much like dogging some time back - 'news' leads the behaviour of the sheep.
Damn that internet and the porn fuelled blameless society it has created....
If so it must be sweeping at roughly the same rate as continental drift. Girls had shag bands when I was in year 8 at school, no less than 13 years ago - and I dare say some while before that.
My girlfriend who was in the year below me at school in another part of the country confirms that they had them too. I find this kind of hysteria all very chortlesome.
I'm now 28 and this was the case at schools in Oakham back in my day. Which makes this story at least 14 years old.. probably older
What's the suns next breaking story, kids are chasing each other and if they catch the other they have to kiss...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_party_%28sexuality%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_bracelet
'nuffsed.
This is nothing new and nothing harmless. I remember this about 20 years ago when I was in school. It's not a binding contract!
I used to wear them when I was a teenager [16+ yrs]. The way the bands were used was that when a female kissed a boy she would give the guy a bracelet/band. The number of bands a guy wore indicated how much he scored. It meant that a male had to ask if he could have a band/snog and the girl could refuse. The Bands did not have any other meaning. Breaking the bands does not make sense as you would not have as many trophies to wear casually.
.....at some length last week = hoax.
More media stupidity.
El Reg - c'mon, buck up. You should know better.
Spend all your money on these shag bands and you'll have none left for cheap cider and pot - both of which being far more likely to lead to teenage sex.
want to become moral guardians - simply ban the sun?? given the way the media control the UK government, I'm sure there will be a law passed on this shortly
"Won't somebody please think of the children!!!!!"
That'll definitely get you arrested!!
This or some variant was brought up on Oprah about 5 years ago. Does yellow mean you have to give Lance Armstrong a reach around?
One of the many moral panics that springs up from time to time. Still, jolly good fun to be able to reminisce about the phrase "lickout"...
" Won't somebody please think of the children!!!!! "
I'm sure the Sun will be pleased to tell us that there's lots of people doing so already. And that they're looking for sh@g bands. And that if your kid gets his/her black band snapped by a filthy old perv... well, God help us all.
for the LSD-laced temporary tattoos hoax to circulated again?
