Thursday, April 23, 2009

Bullying

I spotted the story first in the paper, then finally the television media caught up. A girl who had been bullied over her weight has "defied" them by losing it.

Sorry perhaps I have a different definition of defied. Sure if they'd said "You're fat and you'll always be fat" then she would have defied them, but to me this has a double smack to it.

First is the fact that this story wouldn't have got anywhere near the news if she hadn't become a beauty queen.

Second, and most importantly, is the implicit assumption that the bullies were right. Without the bullies teasing her she wouldn't have lost weight and, the assumption continues, wouldn't have become a beauty queen. So going by the story she should be thanking her former bullies, and anyone who is not the 'ideal' weight deserves bullying because it's their own fault.

Yup ignore Christina "You're beautiful no matter what they say" Aguilera what would that skinny ***** know anyway. If you're overweight you're ugly and it's the duty of people to tell you that so you can feel guilty and ashamed and either lose weight or lock yourself away out of sight of decent thin people.

Yeesh I love these 'aspirational' stories the media put out without, you know, explicitly stating that they're supposed to aspirational. Shame for the government she didn't lose the weight after being inspired by the 2012 Olympic message.

5 comments:

Orphi said...

Mmm, I wonder how many people commit suicide every year because of exactly this sort of bullying?

But hey, the media doesn't care about people. They're just trying to sell newspapers, remember?

FlipC said...

Hey no, suicide by bullying is a story that crops up every so often along with a 'bullying bad' message. That's what annoying me when you get the media pushing stories about someone 'beating the bullies' by um agreeing with them.

Now a story I haven't seen is someone being bullied for being too thin and then rapidly putting on weight until declared obese. The same message as before, just not one the media wants to tell.

Unless said bulk is muscle then we have a story. Basically it's - person of societal-deemed wrong body type becoming societal-deemed right body type equals story. Any adversity they had to 'conquer' is just cherry.

Orphi said...

Put simply, the media is evil. They will distory or outright make up anything they like to sell more copies.

Hmm… how the hell did these people get here? I mean, who's idea was it to start writing down stuff that happens and printing it on paper for money anyway?

Dan H said...

Being bullied for being too thin isn't really bullying in the popular consciousness. Calling people thin, or making jokes about their thinness, is still socially accepted in a way that calling people fat isn't. I suppose it's because calling someone thin doesn't have an implied "because you have no self-control" behind it.

FlipC said...

And yet Dan people can be bullied for having spots or braces or other things that can be deemed beyond their control.

What interests me is the reaction to fat/thin. See someone who is obviously underweight and it's all "You poor dear" and "Get you a good meal" then they blame the media for forcing their ideal body-image on people especially the young. IOW it's not their fault it's the evil media's.

As a species we do like to assign blame as quickly as possible don't we?

Orphi - In England to an extent you can blame the rise of London coffee shops for the gossip sheets. They used to attract the literati of the time and the shops used to compete to keep customers. As such they'd produce little pamphlets for their patrons to read and even started employing people to write them.

So instead of checking the latest cartoon, they'd read Poet A's latest ode; instead of Celeb A's tedious serialisation of their biography you'd get Writer A's short stories; and of course you'd get bits of news and some foreign stuff sent in by patrons currently overseas.

And, people being people, you'd get the coffee-shop gossip that Lord N- had been seen dallying with Lady H- while Lord H- was away at sea; mirrored today by the same gossip columns that report 'famous TV presenter making advances to interns'.

Incidentally this is how Tatler started.

Newspapers themselves had been around before this, but only reported 'newsworthy' events; at least in England anyway.