Post by The Big PINK One♥ on Sept 28, 2010 16:32:42 GMT -5
From TeenVogue.com
Are girls getting meaner? Rachel Simmons investigates the scary new breed of extreme bullies--and how to deal with them.
Every morning of her sophomore year, Cara* would sit in the front seat of her mom's car near her high school. But she couldn't open the door. "I stayed in the vehicle and just cried because I didn't want to go in," she recalls. Cara dreaded school because she was a victim of bullying. Her torment began as a freshman, when she started dating a junior boy. His female friends hated her, laughing in the hallway and yelling that Cara was "retarded," "fat," or "unlovable." When her guy didn't stand up for her, she ended the relationship, but the torture didn't stop.
Her male classmates joined in, and the bullying followed her everywhere: the cafeteria, classrooms, and online. As the weeks wore on, Cara sank into despair. "I felt like I had nothing to live for," she explains. "I started to believe that it was going to last forever and that death had to be better than the situation I was in. I couldn't go through the bullying anymore." After a suicide attempt, she realized that she didn't really want to die. Now, a year later, she is being homeschooled, but she plans to return to school this fall.
However, not every victim of bullying is able to overcome the experience. Earlier this year, in a story played out in countless headlines, fifteen-year-old Phoebe Prince came home from school after weeks of relentless bullying and hanged herself. After her death, messages defacing her memorial Facebook page were posted. According to the National Crime Prevention Council, nearly 60 percent of American teens witness bullying every day. And a study by national nonprofit Fight Crime: Invest in Kids found that one out of six middle-school and high school students are bullying victims each year. Phoebe's suicide and its ugly aftermath, however, exposed a level of bullying among girls that goes beyond typical name-calling or teasing. A new breed of mean girls, extreme bullies are willing to do anything in their power to inflict pain and humiliation--from turning entire school communities against their victims to waging campaigns of vicious online harassment.
What's causing this alarming behavior? Some experts point to reality television. Most reality programs overflow with female bullying and aggression--and in many episodes, mean-girl behavior is rewarded or seen as justified, which may create an incentive for teens to imitate it. In fact, earlier this year researchers at Brigham Young University found that reality shows have, on average, nearly twice as many aggressive acts as nonreality ones do.
Becca,* a sixteen-year-old, thinks that extreme bullying all boils down to competition: "It's about being the prettiest, skinniest girl and having the best clothes and hair." Some girls will stop at nothing to get ahead, she says. "Girls feel a need to step on someone else to get to where they want to be on the social ladder." When boyfriends come into the picture (as was the case with both Cara and Phoebe), competition can become even more cutthroat. "If girls feel like their relationship is threatened, they do whatever they can to get secure," says Julia Taylor, a high school counselor in Apex, North Carolina. "They lose their minds for a brief moment. Their brains are affected." Becca agrees: "Girls feel justified in doing whatever they want to get the guy."
In a world where fitting in is everything, being different often singles out girls as targets. "I stood out like a sore thumb in high school," recalls Alexandria, nineteen, now a sophomore in college. Her outfits, musical taste, and personality challenged the status quo at school and made girls feel insecure. She recalls, "One girl warned me, 'In this school, we don't dress like that.'" Alexandria refused to change herself. Her peers retaliated. They teased her in public; spread rumors that she both was a lesbian and had sex with multiple guys; turned her friends and potential love interests against her; and even chanted, "Kill yourself," as she walked down the hall. Alexandria became depressed and couldn't sleep. When she did sleep, she had nightmares. Her hair began to fall out from the stress, and she stopped eating. "I ended up starving myself after having girls say to me, 'You're so ugly,' one too many times," she admits.
The stereotype of a bully as a boy who steals your lunch money leaves some girls unaware they are being bullied at all. "When we thought of 'bullying,' it was like somebody throwing stuff at you," explains 20-year-old Bella,* a self-confessed bully in junior high who was then a victim of bullying in high school. "We didn't realize that it could be a verbal and mental thing as well." Indeed, the pain can be much worse--and much harder to escape--when your tormenter is your friend. Girls bullied by friends may initially think their torment is standard drama. "When my friend turned on me, I thought, This is probably just a phase; it'll pass. But it didn't," Bella remembers. Terror of being friendless (even if "friends" are the ones making their lives miserable) can trap girls in abusive situations. Stella,* fifteen, sat at a lunch table where she was teased, given dirty looks, and excluded from every conversation. "If I distanced myself from these friends, I would have no one to sit with at lunch--but if I stayed, I would slowly rot," she says.
Unfortunately, most girls ultimately never find out why they are bullied. Because bullies often use covert tactics like rumors, victims become confused and desperate. When Rayna,* sixteen, moved from New York to South Carolina, she was laughed at and shunned by almost everyone at her school. She dissected herself constantly: "I was like, Do I look different? Is there something wrong with me?" Alone all day at school and overwhelmed with insults, turned backs, and laughter, girls lose faith in themselves. Some start to believe what is being said about them. "They think, I really am all those things they say I am," says Barbara Coloroso, an educator who is the author of a book about bullying. "They begin to succumb." Bella explains: "It's just a mere fact of how many times something is said to you or how long it goes on. It continues to get into your head, and it's like being brainwashed. I knew I wasn't ugly; I knew I asn't a slut. But when you hear those things so many times and so many people are alienating you, it's like, OK, if nobody wants to hang out with me and I'm not good enough for anybody else, then what is the point of living?"
Coloroso advises targets of bullying not to blame themselves or look for a reason why they are being tormented. "They do it just because they can," she says. "It isn't your fault." She suggests cutting off contact with bullies by refusing to answer phone calls or e-mails. If you're being victimized online, change your Facebook settings (or delete your profile completely). And if you're hanging around ex-friends who are bullies, find other friends, Bella says. "There are so many different groups--you'll be able to find someone to be friends with. Believe in yourself." Girls can help their peers by refusing to be
bystanders and instead deciding to be defenders, Coloroso says. "Sit next to the bullied girl at lunch. Stand up for her."
The most important thing, say survivors and experts, is sharing what is happening. "Do not be afraid to speak out," Cara says. "Tell anyone, tell an adult, tell someone at your school what's going on." Ask them for protection against retaliation if necessary. And remember: Hurting your body just makes things worse. No matter what, be true to you, she says. "Be yourself, and don't try to make someone else happy. The only person that really matters is you."
*Name has been changed.
