Shag bands: jumping on the shag band wagon?

By now, all of you must have heard about the phenemenon that is the ’shag band’. If not, let me give you the cliff notes version. Shag bands, are multi- coloured plastic bands, each colour representing a sexual act. I won’t list them here! Feel free to google them. First made fashionable by Madonna in the ’80s, if a band snaps the wearer must perform whatever act corresponds with that colour. (Yellow=hug). It all seems innocent enough, until the black band breaks…

Is this all child’s play? Well, some parents and teachers will beg to differ.  Some schools in the UK have already banned the bracelets amidst outrageous newspaper headlines (Obviously, The Sun). Also, Carmarthenshire County Council in Wales has already moved to ban the bracelet, which cost as little as 75p a pack. 

Wakefield MP, Mary Creagh has demanded that shag bands be withdrawn from sale in Poundland and has raised the issue with Ed Balls, The Children’s Secretary. “This is the coarsening and cheapening of childhood”, she told The Times Online.  An 8 year-old girl came home to her mother, claiming that if her band snaps “I have to make a baby with a boy.” Crikey.

The media are very clever at sensationalising an issue, creating a moral panic amongst the public. A la, mods and rockers, football hooligans…you get my drift. This wouldn’t be an issue, if the bracelets had not been given a symbol. They could have just been regular, pretty bracelets, a great fashion accessory…but as soon as ’shag’ came into the equation..their symbol and meaning changed and so did the public’s perception. For instance, a few years ago, a hoodie was just a hoodie…we wore it when we went jogging or when we had nothing else to wear etc…but now a hoodie is a young guy out to rob you (or hug you if you’re David Cameron)

I accept that this issue has been hyped up a lot, but there are some serious things to considered. Young children can be easily swayed, they always want to part of the “cool crowd” and sometimes, would do anything to fit in. These days, kids can be harsh and quite brutal. If you’re not dressed a certain way, or if you don’t watch the same television programmes, or listen to the same music…you’re immediately cast out. Kids are growing up FAST these days…television, magazines, are all ways in which children are looking and acting less like children and more like adults.

Emma Citron, a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in child and teen development told The Times Online that the bands should be banned. Bracelets give children a “false sense” of what their peers are doing sexually and will lead some to “go farther than they are comfortable with”, she said. But, in my opinion, by banning these bracelets, children will rebel and gravitate even further towards them.  We know, we were all kids once.

So, shag-bands…a fashion fad blown out of proportion, or a genuine epidemic?