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Pressure growing to ban sex bands
PRESSURE is growing for a ban on a sexually explicit children's fashion craze sweeping the nation - after The Star highlighted the playground trend that has horrified parents.
National newspapers in the UK and around the world have followed-up The Star's story on so-called 'shag bands' - bendy plastic wrist bangles which look just like innocent friendship bracelets and which are being sold to young children.
The issue has even reached Australia - where one news website said it is feared the "insidious" craze will soon "sweep through Queensland".
In Britain Wakefield MP Mary Creagh has written to the Children's Secretary and Business Secretary, raising concerns that the sale of shag bands should be banned to under-16s.
Ms Creagh said: "What we have here is the commercialisation of childhood. We are bringing sexual language and activity into the playground and I think mums and dads are absolutely right to be worried."
Calling for shops to withdraw the bracelets, she added: "What we have to be doing is looking at restricting the sale of these products to people who are over 16."
And Donna Heaton, aged 33, from Rotherham, who is a media manager for parenting website netmums.com, says she has confiscated the bands from her son Sam, eight.
"It's not just the idea of young children hearing things they're not ready for concerns me," she said. "It's also the thought they might be bullied into doing some of the things the bands symbolise."
The idea is the wearer twists two of them together - and then jokingly agrees to sleep with whoever gets close enough to snap the bands apart.
Parents have been outraged that young children can buy the bands - sold at pocket money prices - without full understanding of their supposed sexual meanings.
Mum Shannel Johnson, aged 32, from Totley, Sheffield, first highlighted the issue after being outraged when her eight-year-old daughter Harleigh picked up the bands for just 1.
The mum-of-three said: "Not in a million years would I have allowed my daughter to buy them had I known what they symbolise.
"Harleigh said, 'If they snap, I have to make a baby with a boy'. I was stunned and immediately sat Harleigh down.
"I said that was something adults did, not little girls. When I Googled them, I discovered a site selling them and giving explicit detail about what each colour represents.
"There's also a Facebook group asking people which colour is their favourite and why. Most comments are from under-18s which worries me.
"The rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK is one of the highest in Europe - is it any wonder with influences like this?"
Australian social commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist said shag bands set young girls up for "sexual consumption".
"It's damaging to girls and their worth," she added.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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