There has been a lot of controversy over the Keep A Breast foundation’s “I Heart Boobies” breast cancer awareness bracelets. The rubber bracelets have become popular with young girls, and schools across the country have decided to ban them, judging them to be too explicit for the school yard.
“Wearing bracelets such as these opens up dialog between students that most adolescents are neither sophisticated nor mature enough to handle appropriately,” Eisenhower Jr. High in Taylorsville, Utah, said in its school newsletter.
“By disallowing them, we are eliminating the temptation to have inappropriate and potentially sexually harassing conversations.”
Two middle school students in Pennsylvania disagree, and they’ve filed a free-speech lawsuit in Philadelphia to try to end their own school’s ban. Kayla Martinez, 12, and Brianna Hawk, 13, had parental approval to wear their boobie bracelets, but their school’s officials demanded that they remove them, calling the bracelets distracting and demeaning.
Even though the girls agreed to flip the bracelets so that only the breast cancer awareness website address showed, they were suspended and not allowed to attend school dances for a month.
“I don’t believe that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity or nudity (in the school code) apply to the word ‘boobies’ or ‘breast,’” Kayla’s mom, Amy Martinez, told the Daily Freeman. Martinez also pointed out that teachers at Kayla’s school wore tee shirts promoting breast cancer awareness during breast cancer awareness month.
ACLU lawyer Mary Catherine Roper summed it up in the lawsuit:
“The First Amendment does not allow schools to censor students’ speech merely because some students and teachers are offended by the non-vulgar educational message, and silencing the speakers because other students may react inappropriately would amount to a constitutionally impermissible heckler’s veto. Seeing a bracelet with ‘I Love Boobies!’ on it is a conversation starter that leads to discussion and awareness of issues affecting young people.”
What do you think? Should kids be allowed to wear “I Heart Boobies” bracelets to school?
