(no subject)
I have stolen this article from Amy's journal:
"Have you heard of "cutting"? If you're a parent, you'd better read up. "Cutting" refers to self-mutilation -- using knives, razor blades or even safety pins to deliberately harm one's own body -- and it's spreading to a school near you.
Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses" and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as "Thirteen"). There is even a new genre of music -- "emo" -- associated with promoting the cutting culture.
In Britain, health care researchers estimate that one in 10 teenagers engages in addictive self injury. According to psychiatrist Gary Litovitz, medical director of Dominion Hospital in Falls Church, Va., the growing trend here in America has alarmed school guidance counselors around the country.
It's not just delinquents and social misfits who are doing it. A concerned parent sent me the following letter recently:
I just found out this week that my 14-year-old daughter is a 'cutter.' She has a 4.0 average, 8th grade, goes to a good school, and is well-liked by all who know her. She is popular, has two homes (mine and her dad's) with supportive, loving families in each. Her own friends cut, too: four of them that I know of now between the ages of 11 and 14 . . . as do her two cousins, ages 11 and 15.
My daughter cuts herself with a safety pin. I found this out on her own personal website, which I discovered she had been hiding on a hidden account she used at another relative's home. She had links to webrings about cutting, suicide and broken hearts as well as images and poetry. Her friends all feature cutting/suicide links, icons and song lyrics as well.
The counselor at her school told me this: At her middle school, '70 percent of the kids here cut or know someone who does. It's cool, a trend, and acceptable. Boys do it as well but are more public about it. . . . you're not even the first parent this week: you're the third, and just today a girl received stitches in the hospital for cutting herself so bad.'
While many public schools deny the problem exists, public health advocacy groups are warning medical professionals of the cutting craze -- and have even declared March 1st "Self Injury Awareness Day."
This madness would not be as popular as it is among young people if not for the glamorizing endorsement of nitwit celebrities such as twentysomething actress Christina Ricci. Several of the websites I researched highlighted the same quotes from Ricci describing her experiences with self-injury:
In an Us magazine interview, for example, Ricci blabbed about various scars on her hands and arms: "I wanted to see if I can handle pain. It's sort of an experiment to see if I can handle pain." In another interview, she described putting cigarettes out on her arm and answered questions about whether it hurt: "No. You get this endorphin rush. You can actually faint from pain. It takes a second, a little sting, and then it's like you really don't feel anything. It's calming actually."
And in Rolling Stone, Ricci prattled about scratching her forearms with her nails and soda can tops: "It's like having a drink. But it's quicker. You know how your brain shuts down from pain? The pain would be so bad, it would force my body to slow down, and I wouldn't be as anxious. It made me calm."
It may be all fun and games for a Hollywood starlet like Ricci, but her mindless stunts have inspired countless young girls to carve themselves into a bloody stupor. Hollyweird strikes again."
This article is fucking bullshit for SO many reasons. The author talks about cutting and suicide as though they are new inventions that have suddenly gripped the world's youth, who obviously have nothing better to do. Perhaps s/he would prefer to return to their own schooldays, when depression and self-harm were more conveniently swept under the rug and not discussed? If I was a parent and I found out that my child and a number of his/her friends had been cutting themselves, I would want to talk to them about why they felt unhappy or angry enough to do it in the first place. This article practically recommends that parents go snooping through their children's private websites and diaries to find out what they've been up to. Then, if that's not enough of an insult, why don't you belittle their problems and accuse them of mindlessly following the crowd? That should help them to snap out of it!
It's easier for this author to explain away a problem they don't understand by labelling it as teenage rebellion, so they have ignored the fact that grown-ups do it too. I started cutting at the age of 25. One of the self-harmers I know is a man of around 40 who has a 9-year-old daughter. All four of the 'famous self-injurers' referred to in the article are grown women, three of them mothers, and all have had successful careers. And they have each had complex problems of their own above and beyond cutting. All of them live (or lived, in Princess Diana's case) in the public eye with little or no respect for their privacy. Angelina Jolie, Courtney Love and Princess Diana all experienced difficult marriages, Diana's and both of Jolie's ending in divorce, and Love's ending with the suicide of her husband. Diana and Christina Ricci both had eating disorders and depression. Courtney Love was addicted to drugs. They didn't pick up a knife and cut themselves one day because they were bored, and then recommend it to their fans as a bit of a blast. The criticism of Christina Ricci particularly angered me. Ricci has always insisted on being honest and open to the press about issues which have affected her life, rather than gloss over the details. I personally have found her attitude refreshing and helpful, not a "glamorizing endorsement" for destructive behaviour. Would she be a better rolemodel for teenage girls if she had more 'socially acceptable' problems like affairs, divorce, unplanned pregnancy, extreme dieting and cosmetic surgery?
In support of the many thousands of teenagers who are depressed, or considering suicide, or cut, I'd like to say this. Being a teenager SUCKS. School sucks. Puberty sucks. Having parents who don't understand anything you do or say sucks. Other teenagers who like different things to you, and pick on you because of it, suck. I know a lot of teenagers and none of them are bratty, immature, stupid, or remotely interested in doing something just because their peers say it's cool. But every one of them has genuine problems with school, parents, or both, and several are clinically depressed. My conclusion: there's something wrong with how teenagers are treated in this society. No period of life should be that consistently fucking awful.
Oh, and 'Thirteen' is an 18 certificate film, so it's not "targeting young girls and teens". Note to author: SHUT THE FUCK UP.