fightnight

I'm curious if anyone has ever heard of the "rainbow party" or "lipstick party" actually occurring. I had never heard of these until recently, and am just curious if this is more of an urban legend, or if these sorts of things actually happen? The more I hear about things like these, the more it makes me think that kids are becoming more radically sexualized, at earlier ages than they used to. I have a feeling it's due to mass media these days, and the ease with which kids can get information on a myriad of subjects on their own. Anyways, that's for another thread, but I'm just curious whether anyone has actually heard of one of these taking place, be it in college, high school, or before, or if it's something that only exists in theory. It boggles my mind that kids would be engaging in this sort of event. See details below from wikipedia on the supposed orgins of the term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_party_(sexuality)

ngdawg

While kids might becoming more 'sexualized' that we know of, I don't take much credence in these stories. Anyone remember the rubber bracelet scare? Supposedly different colored bracelets girls wore showed their sexual 'expertise'.
Total fabrication.
Kids as young as 6th grade are doing fellatio and cunnilingus, even anal, in the belief that the girls can say they're still virgins. Those I knew in the school where I worked were not exactly the highest academic achievers (read: nerds) and when I found out some of my 'daughters' were doing it, I laid into them good. But it certainly wasn't the majority of kids by and large.
I really think these stories are exagerations if not total myths to scare parents into confronting their kids. Believe me, if the kid doesn't want you to know about something, nothing will stop them from at least trying to be sneaky about it.

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snowy

This reminds me of something my SO's brother's friend's mom did to their group of friends. She had just seen a special on 20/20 about how kids were choking each other to get high. So she interrupted their exciting night of roleplaying to ask if they choked each other to get high. I guess she screamed at them about "playing the choking game." So now, as a joke, everyone asks each other if they play the choking game.

WTF.

Until recently I worked with teens, and they were fairly wild/crazy teen girls who told me a fair bit about their exploits--and nothing ever got as exciting as that. I don't think any of them would know what a rainbow or lipstick party is. I think, like ng said, it's a myth perpetuated in order to get parents to actually talk to thier children about sex.

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ngdawg

Slight threadjack, but you reminded of something we do with my daughter: every time she gets up from the table to go to the bathroom, we ask her if she's making 'room' for the rest of dinner, ie;throwing up. She'll yell, 'I'm NOT bulimic!!' and we all crack up.
I think if parents bring up issues in a light enough manner, it makes it much easier to talk about-using stupid myths and stereotypes is a good way to start.

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Ustwo

Sometimes an aberation will be presented the norm and its always fun to talk about it on daytime talk show.

Hell I've been to some pretty wild sex parties as an adult, and none of them would have included something like that.

So while I wouldn't be surprised if something like this has happened, and I would also not be surprised if someone heard about it and did a sort of copy cat party, it sounds more like one of those things to scare parents and get ratings all at the same time. Its best of both worlds in daytime TV when you can titilate and demonize in the same segment.

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Toaster126

Which comes first? The event happening and causing a stir or a stir happening and causing an event?

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fightnight

This is kinda what i'm starting to believe, that someone comes up with one of these ideas, it gets perpetuated as a myth, until someone actually has to try it. Kinda a funny cycle...

kurty[B]

I saw Rainbow party, and immediately thought about the Rainbow Family, and was going to say "Yeah, they're nice people, kinda trashed our forest just north of town, but nothing that some volunteer hours and a few years of regrowth won't fix", and then I actually read the article. Wrong type of party.

Craven Morehead

Many here are too young to recall, but the Association had a hit song in the 60's called Windy. In it is a line "Who's bending down to give me a rainbow
Everyone knows it's Windy"

Was rumored to be about oral sex. Once I heard that I had a greater appreciation of the song, which I really didn't care for that much.

Back on topic - don't you think most of these stories are urban legends? Young people (and not so young people as well) aren't that honest about their sexual practices.

Gatorade Frost

So uh... How would I go about organising a lipstick party?

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Willravel

Not the one I went to. Odddly enough, the urban legends gave birth to real braclet parties at universities across the US. I was aware of at least 4 and went to one (before I was married, of course, and I decided to leave).

ngdawg

That's the point. There was no such thing as keeping score with bracelets until it became some urban legend. As for 'bracelet parties', never heard of them around here; the myth was simply the color you wore signified how far you'd gone. Brought that up to my daughter (whose arms are covered in them and other bracelets) and she promptly cracked up laughing.

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ratbastid

I was going to say... TFP, your invitations are in the mail!

ASU2003

I never knew that. I guess that is why she is smiling at everybody she sees.
That song will never be the same.

It is the same thing with AC/DC's some The Jack, which they sing as The Clap at the live show. The lyrics are a little different, but the hidden meaning makes the song great.

shakran

when i was a kid supposedly tearing the pull tabs off coke cans would get you sexual favors with certain girls. If you got the ring and the part that drops into the can you supposedly got better favors.

Point being there are ALWAYS idiotic fantasy rumors going around that a given school is full of hundreds of wanton sluts who will screw anything that moves as long as he has some sort of easy-to-obtain talisman.

Doesn't mean it's true.

Cynthetiq

you mean the green M&Ms don't mean anything????

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fresnelly

The main reason I doubted the reality of these parties (certainly that it's some trend) is the sheer amount of co-ordination needed to throw one. Kids are lazy.

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shakran

Only if you're in little league

(thanks for the chance to make an 80's reference)

rmarshall

While I could imagine peer pressure making young girls go ahead with a lipstick or rainbow party, I have a hard time picturing young boys having the guts to whip out their dicks in front of a group. They'd likely die of embarrassment.

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KungFuGuy

this is the sorta of thing that might get done once, then gets blown out of proportion by the media, and then everybody wants to try it because they saw it on tv.

sorry about the run-on.

ShaniFaye

I call dibs on the bright pink lipstick

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cadre

I think this is kinda like the bracelet thing, I had never heard of the link between sexual acts and those bracelets. Of course, after the story hit the new s I started hearing about it actually happening. It was actually more of a joke amoung most kids though as far as I know.

I'm waiting to start hearing about rainbow parties now though, this makes me curious. I do agree though that it would take alot more planning than most kids are willing to put in.

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Kaliena

Honestly, I've never seen/heard about one. I want to agree with the others in thinking that sometimes, it's like they come up with this stuff, a couple people watch it, follow through, get arrested, then it's an epidemic.

Also, I can't imagine it would be fun, lipstick tastes like crap, especially the cheap bright colors.

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Derwood

I was working at Oprah at the time this show was taped and the term "Rainbow Party" became a running joke among the crew. It was the first ( and only) time i've heard the term

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Xazy

It does exist, I used to work in an youth group, and I know a few girls that were involved in one. This is going back about a couple years ago, and the girls were probably 15-16 years old (I will guess do not remember exactly when it was).

morepleasure

How I will know he or she really has - or is just making it up!? - well that is an interesting question!

Xerxys

levite

I'm very close to a number of my young (high school/junior high) cousins-- they either don't have or don't get along with their older siblings, and I kind of play that role for them, including being a "safe" older person to talk with about sex, drugs, etc.

I asked a couple of them, and they say not only have they never been to a rainbow/lipstick party, they have never known anyone who went to one, either. They freely admitted knowing plenty of kids who have oral sex, or anal sex, or regular sex; knowing kids who have exchanged naked or semi-nude pictures of each other via text or e-mail; who've had cybersex or done sex chatting online with others; and a number of other things that I admit gave me a certain mild consternation. But no rainbow/lipstick parties.

I am inclined to think that they are the stuff of urban legend.

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thespian86

This began while I was in mid high school. Stories of "bracelet parties" taking place. I was very sexually active and nothing like this was taking place. There was lots of sex at the high school level but for the most part people were abstinent. Or sleeping with someone they had dated for a long time.

"adults" love to point to kids having sex as a form of promiscuity when really they are pretty monogamous for the most part.

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cementor

A single mother friend of mine has a son who stole a diary from the friend of his sisters. (convoluted!) . My friend took the diary from her son and read portions to figure out who it belonged to. One of the excerpts was a discussion on a group blowjob in a darkened movie theatre during the flic, there wer actually 3 instances reported. The kids involved were 7th and 8th graders. When she asked her daughter about it she confirmed that these events were fairly commonplace. There was a swapping element involved as well. I was asked to have a discussion with the son which I did. He said he hadn't been involved as he was a couple years older (but I'm sure he wishes he had!).

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thespian86

Man! I was cool back then! Come on society; throw me a bone. I grew up in the NINTIES (terrible). I had to live through pop-rap and boy bands. Not cool!

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ametc

This is SOOOOO fake! My school had very horny ass kids who would do almost anything (and anyone). They had sex in the classroom (seriously.. and never got caught), in the bathrooms (got caught.. weird.), in the PE field, on the roof... and they even had orgies and one night stands with strangers. There were tons of student-teacher relationships going on.. but it was never made known to the administration somehow. (It was a bad school.. with bad administration. After school district got wind about a bunch of drug and sex scandals going on in my school, there were tons of firings and all that that went on and the administration got transformed into a bad ass, soul-crushing student's nightmare.)


I read palms and fortunes and tons of people came to me with their scandalous stories and asked me to counsel them or read their fortune.. and not ONCE have I heard of a rainbow party. I mean.. srsly.. where the hell would you even buy those colorful lipsticks without it costing an arm and a leg?

There were crazy orgies, yeah.. but it didn't involve any crazy lipsticks.

MSD

After this media frenzy started dying down, the brilliant minds at Something Awful collaborated to attempt to get a hoax into the news. It was called greenlighting: a trend by which people communicated their intent to hook up with anyone, anywhere by wearing a green polo shirt with a popped collar. The admins hid the thread from public view while planning went on. There were forums set up with thousands of backdated posts, fake myspace profiles and code words added to real ones, and people started spreading rumors. A few days before we were going to tip off the media and go public, someone snitched and ruined the prank.

People on other forums that we hadn't posted rumors to had already picked up on it and apparently taken it as fact. If it weren't for the spoilsports, we would have let it go for a few weeks and then pulled the rug out from under everyone who reported it as truth in the media. I'll bet it would have succeeded, too, and I hope another hoax like this can succeed to show everyone what a joke this kind of thing is.
This could as easily be teenage fantasy as reality. It's entirely plausible, but just because it was written down doesn't mean it happened.

thespian86

The confirmation kind of kills that theory though.

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Jozrael

That last bit is true at least. Soooo much oral goes on in theaters with groups of teenagers.

morepleasure

How reliable - don't know - mp

---------- Post added at 11:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 PM ----------

“All of the examples in my post were real, not urban legends. What I described as a "lipstick party," the 5 girls and the 5 guys, took place in a basement where the parents were upstairs and the father went down the stairs because the parents upstairs were wondering why things had become so quiet. What I described is what he saw. The kids used the term "lipstick party." The bracelets the girls used to wear a few years ago signifying sexual acts they are willing to perform, wasn't an urban legend either."

From another forum

dippin

The question of whether its real or legend depends on what we are asking. Is it real as in, has there ever been something like this? In all likelihood, yes. Is it real as in it is a real fad that is sweeping the nation? No.

The thing about teenage sexuality is that they are so pumped with hormones that there is little actual planning of big time sex parties... they just happen because kids are horny.

World's King

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Xerxys

What's wrong King ... digging up 'gone-awry' experiences?

ASU2003

I could have sworn I saw a porn video of a bunch of girls doing this in a fraternity house a few years ago. Now, whether it was a fake porn stunt or something that actually happened and was filmed, I don't know.