American Teenagers Are Declaring ‘Virginity Rocks’

Mr. Duncan has a trademark for use of the phrase on clothing, greetings cards and condoms, according to public records. Mr. Toler said policing the trademark was “insane.” Still, he has been able to remove imitators on Amazon by using the site’s brand registry and has been successful when he has sent emails to sites like Teespring, which allows people to customize apparel, asking them remove items, he said.

For some school administrators, the clothing has presented a confounding problem, and they have struggled to address its popularity. Teenagers have been suspended for wearing shirts with the phrase at schools in Oregon, Wisconsin and Missouri. That has outraged parents, who believe the clothes are bearing a positive message.

One student at Roseburg High School, in Roseburg, Ore., was sent home in 2018 after wearing a “Virginity Rocks” shirt. His grandmother wrote a Facebook post wondering why the principal found it offensive. The school, which declined to comment when contacted by The New York Times, told a local news outlet at the time that the shirt would have been disruptive in class, and that the same treatment would have extended to shirts that said “Sex Rocks” or “Smoke More Pot.” The school also gave the student the option to turn the shirt inside out or change into one it provided.

Mr. Duncan, who lives in Los Angeles, subsequently visited Roseburg, filming a video that he posted on YouTube. The video shows him emerging from a sleek black van emblazoned with “Virginity Rocks” and being greeted by a large group of screaming teenagers in a parking lot. He then distributes free “Virginity Rocks” shirts to the ebullient crowd, which begins chanting the phrase with him.

A high school student in the Chetek-Weyerhaeuser school district in Wisconsin and a middle school student in Wentzville, Mo., have also been disciplined for wearing the shirts, according to local news reports. Some of the incidents have been picked up by conservative news sites, which have framed them around the issue of schools banning pro-abstinence clothing in an affront to Christian values.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/style/danny-duncan-virginity-rocks.html