Sharpied Slap Bracelets
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the Earth-669 iteration of Chelmsford High School, a small group of young women uncertain about coming out decided to signal to one another that they were gay by taking a black Sharpie marker to their slap bracelets.
The black slap bracelet was meant to call to mind and reclaim the black triangles used by Nazi Germany to mark prisoners deemed “anti-social,” which included lesbians. The girls who pioneered this effort did not realize at the time that, though the black triangle was initially used to mark a number of different “anti-social” groups, it was exclusively used to identify the Romani people by beginning of the Nazis’ genocidal “Final Solution.” They would come to regret this oversight on their part later in life.
In any case, the experiment was colossal failure. Not knowing how to spread the word about what the Sharpied slap bracelets meant without outing themselves in the process, the small group of young women who attempted to start the trend were the only ones who ever understood what it meant.
Chief among these bummed-out young women was Desiree Emerson, who hoped that her best friend Veronica Silver—who Des felt pretty sure was a lesbian too—would notice, confirm her suspicions, and ask Des to marry her.
They did eventually get together, but it was a long time after the Sharpied slap bracelets failed.
Mechanics & Inner Workings
A slap bracelet consists of a flexible metal core wrapped in fabric or plastic. Its base state is flat, but it conforms to the wearer’s wrist by slapping one end of the bracelet against the wrist and letting go.
Significance
According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, slap bracelets were “a popular fad among children, pre-teens, and teenagers in the late 1980s.” And when they were banned in some schools “following reports of injuries from worn out or modified versions,” that only made them more popular still.
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