The result appeared on October 13, 2003, starting with a firecracker of a lede: “Raymond Andrews had no idea that the bracelets his sixth-grade daughter purchased this summer were related to sex.” Haberlin went on to detail a local school system in turmoil over the sudden appearance of the bracelets, and cited reports of their causing controversy in both Central and South Florida.Īt Fort McCoy School, the bracelets had been banned after administrators “ their meaning,” Haberlin wrote, and a school board member was calling on parents to step in. “So I started talking to anyone who would talk.” “My editors loved it, since it was juicy,” Haberlin says. What he can remember is this: In 2003, a concerned mother called to tip him off that a note had been found on a school bus at a local middle school, “listing the different colors of bracelets and their meaning.” Having left journalism for a career teaching in the education department at Wesleyan College, Haberlin now admits that the origins of his big scoop are fuzzy. As part of the job, he spoke regularly with parents-“usually angry,” he says-principals, and teachers (who “were often fearful to talk”) he lunched with the superintendent and he dropped by school board meetings. The same fall that Saucier learned about sex bracelets from parents at Hot Topic, Steve Haberlin was working as an education reporter at the Ocala Star-Banner in Central Florida. “I do not miss working with the public one bit,” says Saucier, who has long since left retail and now works in marketing. Jelly bracelets weren’t the first time that adult misunderstanding of youth behavior precipitated a full-blown moral panic, but years before dubious TikTok challenges would become fodder for the evening news, they represented one of the first cases in which a fad fed by the internet gave rise to a mainstream freakout wildly disproportionate to what was actually going on. Nearly two decades on from the jelly bracelet hysteria, the frenzy of school bans, media coverage, and parental outrage in 20 stands as a testament to what can happen when grown-ups misunderstand jokes made by young people-especially ones that take root online.

These were no mere jelly bracelets, the parents said-they were sex bracelets. Different colors corresponded to different R-rated acts, with teens across the nation’s middle and high schools brazenly using them to signal their willingness to perform a litany of unspeakable deeds. They were part of a secret code, they said. He didn’t, but the parents quickly filled him in. “‘Don’t you know what kids are doing with these?’” “‘I can’t believe you carry this,’” Saucier remembers them scolding him on multiple occasions. But the parents coming into the store didn’t like the bracelets at all. Even Saucier, a college student whose tastes tended toward electronic acts like VNV Nation, had taken to wearing a few of the colorful adornments. Some would wear them halfway up their arm, like a gauntlet of bracelets.”Ī bundle cost only a few bucks, making the bracelets a hit with kids weaned on the Warped Tour who made regular pilgrimages to the store.

“Among the sort of alt-rock, metal, goth kids, it was a big trend.

“I definitely remember that being a big seller at the time,” Saucier says.

He would be in the middle of his shift at the Meriden Mall in Connecticut, a bustling suburban hub halfway between New Haven and Hartford, when a parent would march up to him and point furiously at the racks of colorful silicone bracelets propped near the register. Late in 2003, something strange started happening to Jason Saucier at Hot Topic. Grab your Telecasters and Manic Panic and join us in the Black Parade. Welcome to Emo Week, where we’ll explore the scene’s roots, its evolution to the modern-day Fifth Wave, and some of the ephemera around the genre. In case you haven’t heard, emo is back, baby! In honor of its return to prominence-plus the 20th anniversary of the first MCR album-The Ringer is following Emo Wendy’s lead and tapping into that nostalgia. My Chemical Romance is touring again, Paramore and Jimmy Eat World are headlining a major festival this fall, and there’s a skinny, tattooed white dude with a guitar dominating the charts.

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