Teachers, parents and other people of authority often miss the bullying all together especially when it comes to girls. One woman I spoke with put it this way, “Girls hardly ever (in my experience) get in trouble for bullying because it’s not as apparent that it’s being done. A guy pushes another guy against the wall, beats him up, or stuff him in a locker? A teacher/parent can see that and put a stop to it. But you can’t really stop a girl from talking to/about another girl unless you overhear them.” Subtly, girls cut down each other’s spirits under the noses of adults. A smile and a compliment to the target when parents are looking is usually enough to dissuade concern. At an age where girls mature faster than their male counterparts and in a world that often sees females as the meeker sex, girl bullies can easily wield their perceived innocence as a weapon. “The sugar-and-spice image is powerful and girls know it,” Rachael Simmons says, (Odd Girl Odd, 23). This is a problem added to by the fact that many bullied children refuse to ask for help. As adolescents leave childhood behind they fight for independence, an occurrence as natural as a young bird leaving the nest. However, it often becomes hard for teenagers to separate the things they can handle alone and that which requires the help of an adult. Moreover, the threat—real or perceived—of retribution can dissuade a teen from asking help. Some teens simply believe no one will help even if they do ask. “At once I am reminded of scary movies in which only children can see the ghosts. The adults pass through the same rooms and live through the same moments yet they are unable to see the whole world of action around them. So too, in classrooms of covertly aggressive girls.” (Odd Girl Out, 25)
With the pressure from our ever judging culture on young and developing minds, fostering insecurity in emotionally growing teenage girls and any additional turbulence from family life, it is not hard to see where bullying may began. Out of control themselves, some teens become bullies lashing out to try to control others. Some are jealous. All are insecure, lack empathy and project their own inadequacies on their intended target. “Girls punish each other for failing to achieve the same impossible goals they set themselves.” (Reviving Ophelia, 52)
Home life for the majority of bullies is usually a pendulum swing to one extreme or the other, either unforgiving rigid or entirely unstructured. Bullying is a learned behavior, and the first lessons always come from family. Violence begets violence, so to abuse begets children who hurt other children. From adults in their lives, the ones trusted to guide them, they see and feel the powerful (parents) hurting the weak (the child). On the other side of the spectrum is the neglected child or pampered child. With a lack of any guidance or a lack of any discipline, the child is left to create their own moral guidelines. Often this leads to creating no morals at all. “It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be obvious that someone who is allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person,” says Alice Miller. (The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander, 45) This thought was echoed by the girl I spoke to, injured by her friend with the broken bike. “That’s what bullying is, really. It’s some demented way to defend oneself, before anyone else can harm them…What it comes down to is insecurity.” She saw bullying as an underhanded, unethical form of self-defense, fighting off threats that peers pose to inflated egos. Injured animals will often back themselves into a corner and fight anyone who comes near, so to the injured psyche of the bully.
Bullying violates the targeted child, stealing their security and leaving them feeling helpless. Focus is lost and consequently grades drop because of fear. The result can be physical even if the bully never touches them. Anxiety prolonged can cause headaches, insomnia, ulcers and a number of other medical problems. With each attack the adolescents self-worth is depleted.
Girls who struggle to be accepted by their peers wear down. As Mary Pipher points out in her poignant book “Reviving Ophelia”, we become like Shakespeare’s tragic character, Ophelia—driven mad trying to please and drowned by the fancy clothes worn to impress. One young woman I had known for years told me her story of feeling rejected. I was shocked as this beautiful, intelligent and friendly girl explained how she had eaten lunch alone every day at high school, and nothing improved with college. “I feel invisible,” she wrote, “I came home and cried almost every day. I was told they were the best four years of my life, but if they were the best, then I knew that I didn’t want to ever see the worst.” Another girl seconded these sentiments, “To some people, school was the best days of their lives. I feel sorry for them.”
Pushed to the edge some kids fight back—becoming bullies themselves—others jump. A simple web search will bring up dozens of pages made in memoriam of the teens who could not take the pain anymore—adolescents, literally, bullied to death. This, in fact, has become so prevalent a new phrase was coined for it, Bullycide. In 2004, Corinne Wilson was slapped across the face by a classmate and told to kill herself. Corinne listened. Corrine was a victim of relational bullying that escalated over time and became too much for her. This is one of many stories written by mothers of girls and boys like Corrine in their book Bullycide in America. Perhaps the most powerful example comes from a song by The Readings, “We didn’t realize the damage sticks and stones would do, ‘cause it was deep inside Wanda was bleeding. The paper said her death was self-inflicted but was it suicide? ‘Cause the note she wrote said ‘Why do you hurt me and treat me like you do? What have I done to deserve this from you?’” (Wanda’s Song, 2004) As the song so piercingly points out, is it really suicide when someone is pushed to it?
Though injured children often turn their pain inward and end their lives, they rarely make news until the pain is turned outward—exploding in violent ways. Ten years have past and yet Columbine is still the event that comes into people’s thoughts at the mention of school violence, a virtual 9/11 of school shootings. Bullied and pushed until they could no longer take it two boys entered their high school and shot it up. This description could easily fit many other such stories that have colored the ten years since. “The idea that being excluded, shunned, ridiculed, ostracized and physically assaulted by the bullying faction merits vengeance or violence is but one of those self-degrading ideas that we embrace creating a cure that is worse than the disease.” (Diana Reeves, The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander, 1) Driven by hate in reaction to bullying though they were, the fault for the shooting rests on their shoulders. It was Corrine’s choice to kill herself. However, actions spreading out causing ripples across the world. Intended or not, bullying can lead to suicide and other acts of violence. In response to my request for help a very touching email came to me. “I certainly cannot condone such acts of senseless violence,” she wrote, “but I wonder how many of the people who write these kids off as monsters were ever pushed so hard against the wall [that] they could feel the wall—and themselves—begin to crumble.”
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