Two New Brunswick schools that are fighting a fashion fad said to signal sexual availability could be creating a bigger problem simply by their strong reaction to it, a pop culture expert says.

School officials in the Moncton area are worried about students wearing the cheap, jelly bracelets – colourful, rubbery bangles – which some adults think carry connotations of wild teen sex.

Jennifer Brayton, a sociology professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, says the "sex bracelets" story may be more urban legend than reality, and the school reaction just lends it more credence.

Jelly bracelets

"The schools banning them is giving it even more legitimacy. Because it's coming from a position of authority, it gives it more validity than maybe kids would necessarily give it if the schools weren't up in arms about it," said Brayton.

When elementary students began wearing them to Soleil Levant school in Richibucto, N.B., the school's administration sent letters home to parents explaining their meaning.

In Moncton, the principal of Beaverbrook Elementary School has outright banned the bracelets from classrooms.

Pop stars wearing the bracelets

The bracelets can be bought at almost any dollar store or teen boutique. Madonna first made them popular in the 1980s. These days they've made a comeback after being spotted on the wrists of pop icons Avril Lavigne and Pink.

The controversy over the colourful baubles began last year, when Time magazine reported that the bracelets were undercover sex toys.

A three-paragraph Time story quoted one source, a 15-year-old girl from Los Angeles, who claimed the bracelets carried a colour-coded secret.

The different colors a person displays supposedly represent different sexual acts the wearer has done, or is willing to do.

If a boy snapped a bracelet off a girl's wrist, depending on the bracelet's colour, she owed him a sexual favour.

A number of American newspapers and television stations picked up on the Time story, and soon school principals were banning the bracelets in several states.

Brayton says the perception of kids being sexualized at such a young age is ultimately the heart of the problem. "Regardless of what kids are actually doing with the bracelets, it's the perception of what's being done with them that's obviously concerning the parents," she said.

Sandra Byers, who teaches sexual behaviour at the University of New Brunswick, says there's only one way for parents to avoid unpleasant shocks about their child's sexual conduct – by discussing sexual issues openly at home.