Gel bracelets, or jelly bracelets are an inexpensive type of wristband

Wristband

Wristbands are encircling strips worn on the wrist, made from a variety of materials depending on the purpose. The term can be used to refer to the bracelet-like band of a wristwatch, to the cuff or other part of a sleeve that covers the wrist, or to decorative or functional bands worn on the wrist...

. They come in a variety of colors, and several can be worn on each arm. They have been popular in waves throughout the Western world

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

 and elsewhere since the 1980s. One style of these wristbands, known as "awareness bracelets", carry debossed messages demonstrating the wearer's support of a cause

Social movement

Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....

 or charitable organization

Charitable organization

A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...

.

Charity awareness bracelets

Awareness bracelets gained in popularity in 2004 when the Lance Armstrong Foundation

Lance Armstrong Foundation

The Lance Armstrong Foundation is a United States 501 nonprofit organization that provides support for people affected by cancer, founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong. The LAF states that its mission is 'to inspire and empower' cancer sufferers and their families...

 introduced its trademark yellow silicone

Silicone

Silicones are inert, synthetic compounds with a variety of forms and uses. Typically heat-resistant and rubber-like, they are used in sealants, adhesives, lubricants, medical applications , cookware, and insulation....

 Livestrong wristband

Livestrong wristband

The LIVESTRONG Bracelet is a blue silicone gel bracelet launched in May 2004 as a fund-raising item for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, founded by cyclist and pnumonia survivor Lance Armstrong. The bracelet itself was developed by Nike and their ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.-Purpose:The bracelet is...

 to raise support for cancer research

Cancer research

Cancer research is basic research into cancer in order to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatments and cure....

. By early 2005, silicone wristbands became popular with many charities

Charitable organization

A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...

, such as Make Poverty History

Make Poverty History

Make Poverty History is the name of a campaign that exists in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark , Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and Ireland...

 and the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's Beat Bullying campaign. Other wristbands include wristbands for kidney donation (green), breast cancer

Breast cancer

Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

 (pink), diabetes (blue), multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...

 (orange), Make Poverty History

Make Poverty History

Make Poverty History is the name of a campaign that exists in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark , Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and Ireland...

(white), wrist injury (red), epilepsy

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...

 (half blue, half red), Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

 (ocean blue mixed with white), pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...

 (purple), and AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 (red, made only in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

). In general, the color of the band describes its cause, and the colors are often the same as the colors of awareness ribbons. In the UK a wristband is available from the charity Help for Heroes (H4H) bearing the colours of the 3 armed forces: Red (Army), Navy Blue (Royal Navy) and Sky Blue (Royal Air Force).

Urban legend

During a resurgence in popularity in 2003, gel bracelets became the subject of a widespread urban legend

Urban legend

An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...

 linking them to a supposed sex game explaining their popularity among young teenagers: they were subsequently dubbed "sex bracelets". According to rumors, girls who wore the jewelry implied they were willing to engage in various acts with whoever pulled them from their wrists; the acts ranged from hugging and kiss

Kiss

A kiss is the act of pressing one's lips against the lips or other body parts of another person or of an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, affection, respect, greeting, friendship, and good...

ing to sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

, and were determined by the bracelet's color.

In October 2003, the rumors were prominent enough in Alachua Elementary School in Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

 that the principal banned the bracelets to avert disruption and inappropriate comments about them. They were subsequently banned in other schools around Florida and elsewhere. The effectors of these early bans did not insinuate that the rumors were true; however, some later media reports suggested that they may have been, generating something of a moral panic

Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...

. The meanings of the colours of the bands was reported in the British press in 2005. A very similar set of stories surfaced (or re-surfaced) in the British media later in 2009, in which the bracelets were allegedly nicknamed shag bands.

Different versions associate different colors with sex acts (similar to the handkerchief code

Handkerchief code

Handkerchief code or hanky code is color-coded system, employed usually among the gay male casual-sex seekers or BDSM practitioners in the leather subculture in the United States, Canada and Europe, to indicate preferred fetishes, what kind of sex they are seeking, and whether they are a...

). For example, purple might be associated with kissing, red with lapdancing

Lap dance

A lap dance is a type of sex work performed in some strip clubs in which a naked or topless dancer performs an erotic dance either in immediate contact with a seated patron, or within a very short distance. With full-contact lap dances, the stripper may engage in non-penetrative sexual contact...

, and black with intercourse. Some versions said the involved action occurs at parties held for the purpose, making them similar to contemporary rumors of "rainbow parties

Rainbow party (sexuality)

A rainbow party is a supposed group sex event featured in an urban legend spread since the early 2000s. A variant of other sex party urban myths, the stories claim that at these events, allegedly increasingly popular among adolescents, females wearing various shades of lipstick take turns fellating...

", a gathering at which groups of girls wearing varying shades of lipstick

Lipstick

Lipstick is a cosmetic product containing pigments, oils, waxes, and emollients that applies color, texture, and protection to the lips. Many varieties of lipstick are known. As with most other types of makeup, lipstick is typically, but not exclusively, worn by women...

 supposedly take turns fellating

Fellatio

Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...

 their classmates, leaving an array of colors on their penises. Other tales of teenage sex parties

Sex party

A sex party is a gathering at which sexual activity takes place. Sex parties may be organized to enable people to engage in casual sexual activity or for swinging couples or people interested in group sex to meet, but any gathering where sexual activity is anticipated can be called a sex party.Sex...

 have circulated at various times. Folklorist

Folkloristics

Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. The term derives from a nineteenth century German designation of folkloristik to distinguish between folklore as the content and folkloristics as its study, much as language is distinguished from linguistics...

 Barbara Mikkelson of snopes.com associates the "sex bracelet" stories with similar ones of the past. In the 1970s, pulltabs from aluminum cans

Beverage can

A beverage can is a tin can designed to hold a specific portion of a beverage. Beverage cans are made of tin-plated steel or aluminium.- History :...

 and labels from beer bottle

Beer bottle

A beer bottle is a bottle made to contain beer, usually made of glass.Bottled beer has been in use since as early as the 16th century. Beer bottles come in various sizes, shapes and colours....

s were supposedly considered "sex coupons" and obligated any girl presented with one to sleep with the bearer; by the 1990s the rumors shifted to include an assortment of plastic items, including some worn as bracelets. According to Mikkelson, there is likely little truth behind the stories, and the vast majority of teenagers who contact her site express shock and disappointment that so many have believed them.

Most commonly used color meanings

Color	Meaning
Black Black Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...	Intercourse
Red Red Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...	69
Blue	Oral sex
White White White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...  / Clear	Gay
Yellow Yellow Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...	Hugging
Pink Pink Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....	Flash breasts
Green Green Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...	Fondling
Orange Orange (colour) The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...	Love bite
Purple Purple Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....	Kissing
Gold Gold (color) Gold, also called golden, is one of a variety of orange-yellow color blends used to give the impression of the color of the element gold....  (Golden)	All of the above

External links

• Guide to wristbands (CBBC
  CBBC
  CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
  
   Newsround
  Newsround
  Newsround is a BBC children's news programme, which has run continuously since 4 April 1972, and was one of the world's first television news magazines aimed specifically at children...
  
  )
• Awareness Charity Wristband