Silly Bandz - Abby

In eighth grade, I asked a girl in my English class for a hairtie. She handed me a blue, elephant shaped rubber band. Two things wrong with this picture—1) my hair is curly and rubber bands are hell to remove from tangles and 2) she had a rubber band shaped like an elephant. What the hell? I said no thanks I would ask someone else. The next day she came in wearing about 10 in all different animal shapes and colors. Everyone thought they were dumb, because when you were wearing them they didn’t even look like normal rubber bands, they just kind of looked warped and twisted. Plus the girl was kind of weird. After that I didn’t see them again for about a year and a half. I didn’t even know what they were called.

In the beginning of 10th grade, my eight-year-old sister came home wearing a jillion of them on her wrists, and proceeded to tell me all about how her friend had given them to her and they were called Silly Bandz and did I want the kangaroo or the monkey? The next day she had 3 more and a few had changed because she had traded them with a boy in her class for some rock and roll ones. Apparently animals were not enough. Soon enough—Silly Bandz were EVERYWHERE. Little kids had them, teenagers had them, and one article even proposed that Silly Bandz were being used by college-aged kids to pick up dates at bars. People wrote funny raps about them; google turned up over 1,430,000 hits when “silly bandz” was searched; schools banned them and kids in school traded them anyways.

Even I thought they were pretty cool. I had changed my mind from thinking they were ugly and useless to thinking they were cute and funny. Was I really that shallow? To change my whole opinion on a thing just because everyone else did? What is it about everyone else having something that makes you want it so badly? Do you think it stems all the way from human survival? Maybe if you saw everyone running the other way from a wild beast you would think it was cool to do it too, so you would survive. Think on it.

This phenomenon of Silly Bandz did not end quickly. People still sport these funny rubber bands; in fact I got a couple from CITYtermers just recently (a duck and some Toy Story 3 characters). What is it about these bands that make them so intriguing? Is it their low cost? The maker certainly was conscious of the economy’s status when pricing Silly Bandz. Each packet only costs about $5.00 for 24 Bandz. Is it the fact that you can get them in any shape and color? This certainly would make it appeal to a larger audience. College kids would probably think it was funny to have beer bottle Silly Bandz, and little girls would more likely want a puppy or a princess crown over Spiderman or a racecar.

This trend had definitely had a lot of publicity. It has swept up young and old alike, and been picked up by even high-end newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post (which suggests that there may even be health risks associated with the little bands). But then again—remember the beanie baby explosion in 2001? And the neopets fad in 2004 and webkinz in around 2007? History definitely repeats itself when it comes to trends in pop-culture.