In Rubiano's case, the school vice principal said that while she agreed with the message on the shirt, she did not think it was appropriate for school as "it opens up too many doors for conversations."
Piglowski's shirt came via the website of YouTube personality Danny Duncan, who sells clothing items with the slogan on them. Duncan, who makes skateboard and prank videos, started selling the apparel in 2018, and has said he designed the shirts to be tongue-in-cheek, but also with a positive message.
Since Duncan, who has nearly 3.5 million subscribers, began selling merchandise with the phrase to a more secular audience, increasing numbers of students have reported punishments.
In 2018, a 17-year-old at Roseburg High School in Oregon was forced to go home and change after he came to school wearing a Virginity Rocks shirt from Duncan's apparel line. He went home and changed into another Duncan shirt--one that made a sexual innuendo. That shirt was allowed to be worn.
The district superintendent defended the decision to prohibit the Virginity Rocks shirt, saying that the school "would have made the same decision if the student had been wearing a T-shirt that said sex rocks or smoke more pot."
In October 2019, a student at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School in Chetek, Wisconsin, was suspended for a day after he came to school wearing one of Duncan's virginity rocks sweatshirts.
The student, sophomore Thorn Willsui, was suspended after he refused to take off the sweatshirt or turn it inside out.