A Morbid Fascination With Bullying
I just heard the story about a 7th grader in Minnesota who hung herself due to bullying. Her story is hardly uncommon the past couple of years. I think I speak for most people when I say that I'm deeply saddened and outraged by the effects of bullying. As many of you know, I decided to write a novel about bullying. I'm not very far along into it (especially after my Master's Project reshaped it), but I've had to think a lot about bullying to work on the novel and I want to share some of my thoughts and experiences.
One of the reasons I think bullying has grabbed everyone's attention is that we've all been through it. I'm one of the lucky ones. The only time I was bullied was in 6th grade on my bus. I wasn't really one of the main targets either. There was this one kid who I cannot even remember his name who was trying to impress two of the ugliest girls you will ever see. I swear to God the one girl looked like a perverse version of a China Doll, because of her makeup. She was even uglier on the inside, because she bullied and enjoyed it more than anyone I've ever seen. I wrote about this in an essay for class recently and it made me realize how lucky I was that I didn't have to ride the bus and or I see any of them in my actual middle school. The problem with bullying is how inescapable it becomes and how it can ruin a person's life and make suicide seem like an attractive solution. I sincerely believe not even grown adults could deal with bullying if they were subjected to it as much as some kids are these days.
I think a couple of things are going on right now to cause bullying. The fringes of our culture is becoming increasingly adult and vicious. I don't mean this in a we need censorship or keep profanity away from children kind of way, but that it is easier than ever for for kids to be exposed to all kinds of bad stuff. There is a lot of really dark and mean-spirited things on the internet and even on TV that kids can find. This leads to the sort of nasty, hurtful comments bullies make. Facebook and cell phones have made it really easy for bullies to harass someone in semi-public places and in their private lives. One damaging photo can be seen by what seems like an entire school. That makes the shame really powerful.
Schools and adults for that matter simply cannot keep up with this. I think there are a lot of cases where they could have done a better job, but it isn't even realistic to expect them to be able to stop bullying entirely. Nobody can police Facebook or catch every sign of bullying. This reality helped inspire me to write my novel as well as after I heard the story of Sladjana Vidovic. She was the fourth person to commit suicide at one high school near Cleveland within 5 or 6 years. After doing some digging, I discovered that the high school was much larger than average and it was hard not to believe that played a role in the suicides. Sladjana was called a slut, whore, and every other epithet you can think of. She was hit with a waterbottle and shoved down stairs. At her funeral, her bullies attended the funeral and laughed at her body. And what shocked me the most was not that she committed suicide, but how she did it. Sladjana tied a rope to her bed and jumped out her bedroom window to kill herself. A bed should never be used by a 15 year old for something like that.
So I find myself like a lot of America having a morbid fascination with bullying. We all want to stop it and nobody knows how. It appears impossible. With new stories of kids committing suicide every week, I wonder if people could start to become desensitized to it. There are many serious topics that have become that way for us. I know I never could and I hope others will continue to be outraged and seek ways to prevent bullying. If we care about the future generations, it is the least we can do.
One of the reasons I think bullying has grabbed everyone's attention is that we've all been through it. I'm one of the lucky ones. The only time I was bullied was in 6th grade on my bus. I wasn't really one of the main targets either. There was this one kid who I cannot even remember his name who was trying to impress two of the ugliest girls you will ever see. I swear to God the one girl looked like a perverse version of a China Doll, because of her makeup. She was even uglier on the inside, because she bullied and enjoyed it more than anyone I've ever seen. I wrote about this in an essay for class recently and it made me realize how lucky I was that I didn't have to ride the bus and or I see any of them in my actual middle school. The problem with bullying is how inescapable it becomes and how it can ruin a person's life and make suicide seem like an attractive solution. I sincerely believe not even grown adults could deal with bullying if they were subjected to it as much as some kids are these days.
I think a couple of things are going on right now to cause bullying. The fringes of our culture is becoming increasingly adult and vicious. I don't mean this in a we need censorship or keep profanity away from children kind of way, but that it is easier than ever for for kids to be exposed to all kinds of bad stuff. There is a lot of really dark and mean-spirited things on the internet and even on TV that kids can find. This leads to the sort of nasty, hurtful comments bullies make. Facebook and cell phones have made it really easy for bullies to harass someone in semi-public places and in their private lives. One damaging photo can be seen by what seems like an entire school. That makes the shame really powerful.
Schools and adults for that matter simply cannot keep up with this. I think there are a lot of cases where they could have done a better job, but it isn't even realistic to expect them to be able to stop bullying entirely. Nobody can police Facebook or catch every sign of bullying. This reality helped inspire me to write my novel as well as after I heard the story of Sladjana Vidovic. She was the fourth person to commit suicide at one high school near Cleveland within 5 or 6 years. After doing some digging, I discovered that the high school was much larger than average and it was hard not to believe that played a role in the suicides. Sladjana was called a slut, whore, and every other epithet you can think of. She was hit with a waterbottle and shoved down stairs. At her funeral, her bullies attended the funeral and laughed at her body. And what shocked me the most was not that she committed suicide, but how she did it. Sladjana tied a rope to her bed and jumped out her bedroom window to kill herself. A bed should never be used by a 15 year old for something like that.
So I find myself like a lot of America having a morbid fascination with bullying. We all want to stop it and nobody knows how. It appears impossible. With new stories of kids committing suicide every week, I wonder if people could start to become desensitized to it. There are many serious topics that have become that way for us. I know I never could and I hope others will continue to be outraged and seek ways to prevent bullying. If we care about the future generations, it is the least we can do.