The Jonas Brothers have candidly expressed why they think their infamous purity rings, which they wore at the beginning of their careers, were a “bad idea”.
Kevin, Joe, and Nick reflected on their childhood, and the early years of their careers, during a recent game of “One, Two, Agree or Disagree” with Andy Cohen, while appearing on Watch What Happens Live. As the TV host read out various statements about the band’s career, he asked: “The purity rings were a bad idea…Agree, disagree?”
The band previously wore the rings as a symbol that they were abstaining from sex before marriage, but removed them as they got older.
In response to Cohen’s question, all three of the Jonas Brothers held up a green sign that read: “Agree”. When asked why the jewellery was a “bad idea,” Nick poked fun at how he hadn’t know much about purity rings as a child.
“In theory, they’re not a bad idea,” he said. “But you should know what you’re signing up for before you sign up for it.”
Joe agreed with his younger brother, as he added: “When you’re 12 versus when you’re like 16 is a very big difference.”
When Cohen asked the group when they officially stopped wearing the rings, Nick responded: “It just sort of happened.”
During an episode of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019, the three brothers reflected on when they first got purity rings and what they meant to them. According to Joe, he wore the rings as a symbol that he was waiting for the “right person” and “right time” to have sex.
“When you’re like 12 and you do that, because we grew up in a church and our dad was a pastor, so it kind of just came natural for everyone we grew up with to go through this, and get one, and say: ‘I’m gonna wait for the right person,’” he said.
However, he joked that his understanding of the ring’s meaning changed as he got older, adding: “When you’re about 15, 16, and start dating, and you go: ‘Wait a minute. What did I say I was gonna do?’”
Joe noted that, while he and his brothers were “never going to talk” about their rings initially, they decided to speak about them after a reporter allegedly threatened to say that the rings meant they were in a cult.
The singer also acknowledged how they were subject to many viral jokes over their purity rings, before they chose to take them off.
“We decided at one point: ‘Look, this is not who we are. We don’t need to be wearing this anymore. This is annoying. People are making fun of it anyway. We can make fun of it ourselves,’” Joe explained.
Months later, Nick also criticised some of the questions that he and his brothers got about their purity rings and their sex lives. “It became a defining factor of who we were as a band, which was disappointing,” he said during an interview with his siblings for Harper’s Bazaar in 2019. “I was just trying to navigate love, and romance, and what sex even meant to me, at a sensitive age.”
He added: “The question should have been: Is it appropriate for people to talk about a 16-year-old’s sex life? It’s absolutely not - and it wouldn’t necessarily fly today.”
Today, all three of the musicians are married, with Kevin the first to get married in 2009 to wife Danielle Jonas. Nick married Priyanka Chopra in 2018 while Joe married Sophie Turner in 2019.
The brothers have also gone on to have children of their own, as Kevin and Danielle have two children: Alena, nine, and Valentina, six. Joe and Sophie have a two-year-old daughter, Willa, and 10-month-old, whose name has not yet been publicly revealed. Meanwhile, Nick and Priyanka have a one-year-old daughter, Malti.
In 2021, Joe’s wife briefly roasted the band for their purity rings in a Netflix comedy special, Jonas Brothers Family Roast.
