The Jonas Brothers rose to fame as teenagers, and many people were fascinated with the band’s decision to wear purity rings. In light of their accessories, Nick and Joe Jonas admitted that they were asked uncomfortable questions about their sex lives and religion when they were teenagers.
While appearing on Thursday’s episode of Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast, Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas revealed they were commonly asked questions about their plans to wait for marriage to get physically intimate with a partner during the early years of their career.
Joe claimed that some journalists would threaten to write that they were in a “cult” if they didn’t discuss their stance on the topics, which led Badgley to note that some reporters were essentially “asking a 10-year-old about their sex life.”
After noting that he was older than 10 when he was first asked about his sex life, Nick said that the industry has come “far” in the way people have conversations about the topic. “I think it’s really a good thing,” he said, adding that it wasn’t “so outside of the realm of possibilities” for someone to ask “a 14-year-old about their sex life.”
Joe claimed that the questions came up in “every interview,” which prompted Nick to point out that there was a larger problem at hand. “It wasn’t just us. It was a whole class of young people coming up,” he said.
When he was around 15, Joe said he felt pressured to answer questions about the purity rings during interviews. Other questions they found inappropriate were about religion, and he claimed he was asked if he believed in God.
Earlier in the conversation, the DNCE frontman explained that purity rings were popular “in the community of [their] church” and that “everybody else” around 10 and 11 years old wore them. Joe then noted that they wore the rings to symbolize their decision to “wait for the right person.”
Joe said that the uncomfortable questions were always asked on the record, which made them feel pressured to answer them. “I can definitely speak for all three of us here. I felt the pressure of being like, ‘Well, we have to live these lives because we kind of said it in the paper once.’ It’s in print, so you gotta do it. It’s forever,” he said.
“Obviously, it’d be scary and freak us out until we got to a point where it’s like, ‘Fuck this,’” Joe continued. “Because we were like, ‘We can figure out who we are on our own terms.’”
Joe added that it wasn’t until the band temporarily broke up in 2013 that they felt they could make their own decisions as individuals. While Joe said it was “scary and kind of confusing” when they parted ways, he also noted that it pushed them to experience life on their own.
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