Middle school 'Boobies' bracelet battle makes news

Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2013-10-31 01:50

Article here. Sounds like a headline from The Onion, but a lot are like that these days. Anyway, imagine if kids in a school were wearing "Nuts" bracelets and the school tried to nix it. Would there be a concerted push-back or a collective agreement that indeed, such was positively lewd? Well, we'll probably never know since the likelihood of school kids taking up the cause of testicular or prostate cancer research is pretty slim. After all-- men just ain't as important. Excerpt:

'EASTON, PA. — A free-speech case involving a Pennsylvania middle school principal, Breast Cancer Awareness Day and a pair of rubber "I (heart) Boobies!" bracelets may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Easton, Pa., school board late Tuesday voted to challenge a federal court's decision saying the bracelets aren't lewd material.
...
The case started in 2010 when two girls, then ages 12 and 13, challenged the school's ban on the bracelets, which are designed to promote breast cancer awareness among young people. The students, Brianna Hawk and Kayla Martinez, said they merely hoped to foster knowledge of the disease at their middle school. They filed suit when they were suspended for defying the ban on Breast Cancer Awareness Day.

Kimmy McAtee, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Keep A Breast Foundation of California, which distributed the bracelets, said the items are "a great conversation starter and ... that the school should have created a conversation about breast health vs. banning them."'

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well, there was a story recently about Mr. Balls, or Senior testicles (or something like that) from Brazil... but that's a different culture. How likely it would be seen in a more western school is to be seen

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Submitted by Kratch on Thu, 2013-10-31 06:16

So there's hope. I've noticed (or so I think) that So. American cultural norms are a bit different-- a bit less "uptight" about a number of things. It's easy to forget that in the view of a lot of people who have visited or come to live in the U.S., many have one common observation, even from Europeans, is that despite Americans' reputation for informality and a generalized distaste for class snobbery, we still have a tendency to be a bit more "uptight" in a lot of ways, and I am not just referring to political correctness run amok or discomfort with girls wearing "Daisy Dukes" in high school. Has more to do with the a narrower sense of humor, a tendency for Americans to see humor in relatively limited contexts and ways.

This is just my impression of my own countrymen and how they may be perceived outside the country. I've traveled some, though admittedly not as much as others, and even in countries with a reputation for formality (such as Japan), I perceived they had a broader range of humor opportunities on a daily basis even than Americans. But to live in the U.S. today, I do think one is well-served by having a flexible sense of humor. I mean, really. Just the last 4 months of news out of D.C. requires a pretty good sense of the ironic in order to keep from either crying yourself to sleep or losing sleep over the sheer momentousness of the head-shake-inducing reports emanating therefrom.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2013-11-01 02:59