sexuality
29 Sep 2009
Are They REALLY Doing It?
Kids have always been fascinated with that icky thing called sex, writes Rachel Hills — and the proliferation of "shag bands" in today's schoolyards is just the latest example of that
If you grew up in Australia in the early 1990s, the rubber bracelets to the right probably look familiar.Known as "pash bands" — or "f*ck bands" if you wanted to be really naughty — the idea was that each coloured bracelet symbolised a different sex act. According to an article published in a UK paper last weekend: "Yellow represents a hug, while pink means a love bite and orange or purple for a kiss, before moving through different sex acts until black, which means full sex". Some people would joke that purple actually stood for marriage, being the colour of sexual frustration.
If somebody broke your bracelet, you were supposed to perform the corresponding act on them. Nobody ever actually did it, of course. Even the most sexually precocious kids I went to primary school with didn't do more than attempt an unsatisfying first kiss in the playground after school. (To my knowledge, no pash bands were involved in these incidents.) When I was in high school, they made a brief retro resurgence, and my best friend and I at the time bought the black ones — known as "f*ck bands" — which we vowed to wear until we lost our virginity. We lost the rubber bands long before that happened.
Pash bands — or "shag bands" as they're apparently now known — have always been about harmless fun, about kids playing at being grown-ups. The humour comes from the fact that most primary school kids think sex is icky. Accordingly, it's fun for them to talk about it, and gross their friends out by teasing them that they might partake in it someday.
If you read the Courier-Mail over the weekend, however, they represent a rather more sinister — and "new", which usually seems to correlate with dangerous — trend; "a parent's worst nightmare". According to conservative "feminist" commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist, they "[set] up girls as service stations for boys" and "invite sexual assault". Because nothing invites sexual assault like wearing a coloured bracelet — and nothing says "feminist" like suggesting kids "invite" sexual assault.
Given that most people aged between 25 and 55 having either worn one or parented someone who has, it amazes me that any journalist could find these innocuous pieces of plastic worthy of such fear mongering.
But our readiness to jump on the moral panic train says a lot about our tendency to assume the worst of people younger than us. Even in my own research, which aims to unpack media myths about young adults' sexual behaviours, the 20-somethings I speak to bemoan how much more "out there" today's teens are than they were 10 years ago — conveniently forgetting that the same complaints were made about them less than a decade ago. Talk to some actual teenagers, and you'll get a far more nuanced story.
Tankard-Reist has a new book to promote, about the sexualisation of girls, and if the recent extract on New Matilda is any indication, she has some interesting and relevant arguments to make on the subject. It's hard to muster up the enthusiasm to listen to them though when she, and others like her, persist in discrediting themselves by participating in this kind of shrill — and factually incorrect — hysteria.
The sexualisation of children is a real issue, but as UQ academic Karen Brooks showed in her 2008 book Consuming Innocence, it's about a lot more than sex. It's certainly about a lot more than kids having sex — which, by the way, most of them aren't. And I'll tell you one thing: it's got very little to do with the humble pash band.
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In the late sixties and early seventies similar things were said about various coloured Indian glass bracelets worn by the girls in the primary school playground where I partook of my little lunch. The more things change….
Melinda Tankard-Reist is not a feminist. She has been at the forefront of the assault on reproductive rights by opposing moves to decriminalise abortion. Everything she writes about the sexualisation of kids should be read in the context of her history of campaigning against full reproductive rights for women.
She was instrumental in instituting the (only recently repealed) ban on RU486 as a key advisor to conservative Senator Brian Harradine.
Yeah, what Prax said. You’re not a feminist if you don’t believe women are autonomous human beings with the right to determine what we do and don’t do with our bodies.
This seems like a case of an international media fad rather than a fashion fad, to me. Suddenly newspapers in the US, the UK, and now Australia discover "shag bands"? (and since when did Australians who weren’t satirising English Hooray henry types refer to it as "shagging", anyway?) I doubt that journos are picking this up from playground interviews and research…they’re just getting it from the web and then giving it a local twist. The Guardian piece on this had my favourite line - paraphrased, it said that the real issue with shag bands wasn’t the sexualisation of children - it was that people take Madonna much too seriously…
i can honestly say, i really don’t think much of that melinda tankard-resit and her ‘femminist’ arguments. thanks rachel for a great article!
Shag bands - was expecting an article about music :)
This whole idea is just crazy, i cant believe some of this. The sun said kids as young as 7!!!
Sexualisation of children???
Thinking back to my own childhood I seem to remember being far more damaged by the confusion, embarassment and missunderstanding caused by DE-sexualisation. Adults refusing to talk about sex, making me feel ashamed of my body as though it was ‘dirty’, and generally imparting me with a whole mess of hang ups.
Children are (or at least are in the early stages of becomming) sexual. There is only a problem where ADULTS see children as sex objects (which is not normal regardless of how ‘sexualised’ children become -people who see kids in that way are just wrong in the head). Children innocently exploring their emerging sexuality amongst thenselves, in contrast, is a good and healthy thing. They will grow up much better adjusted for it. As the author notes, it’s not like kinds are actually having intercourse with one another, except perhaps in very rare cases. If people are concerned about kids engaging in unsafe or otherwise ‘undesirable’ behaviours, proper sex education is surely the solution to that (so they can, you know, actually learn about what normal, safe and healthy sexual behaviour is).
I never heard of these things. What else did I miss at school?
who knows…maybe if they were shagging they would end up
better off. the last 2000 years of suppressing sex has worked out wonderfully for women so far
Surprise or not - they are actually doing it. Unless there is "immaculate conception", that is. As a GP in a small country town I certainly can tell that teenagers do have sex just by the number of kids knocking on my door asking for emergency contraception or termination of pregnancy - or treatment for sexually acquired infections.
Interestingly most pregnant teens seem to fall into on of two categories: either from very strict (usually religious) upbringing, or from broken families with dysfunctional parents (or no parents present in their life at all). I rarely see kids from a healthy family background with tolerant parents in such circumstances.
I wonder whether all that fuzz about teenager sex some adults rise is the first sign of dementia - have these people not been teens themselves once, did they already forget how it was? I am happy to admit that I enjoyed my teenage sexual experiences very much, they laid the foundation for my 30 years of successful and fulfilling partnership with my wife. I am also happy for my 4 children to enjoy similar experiences at similar age in a safe and consensual manner with their age peers.
hherb illustrates how a very poor education system results in needless health costs.
Let us treat the abortion and STD rate like the road toll and produce figures of incidence and cost against previous years until we empty doctors surgeries of these self-inflicted problems.
"Shag bands" are for light-weights! the real action is in ‘lipstick parties’ where guys have to get different coloured lipstick on their boyhood and the guy with the most colours wins. Where are these parties? and why haven’t I been invited?