I hate that I even have to write this post, partly because there's a s**t ton of doucheknuckles in the world, and also because for some stupid reason, there's an actual definition to bullying that makes some really s**tty stuff technically not bullying, which I call BS on. First things first -- this lady is making the news (which is ironic since she reports the news) because of a segment she did on her news show talking about an email she got basically calling her fat/obese and a bad role model, especially for girls. Check out the video below real quick (it's like 4 mins long), then continue reading.
Crazy stuff, right? So here's the interesting part that inspired this blog post -- I threw this up on my Twitter and also my Facebook for people to check out, and I actually praised this woman. Now obviously the news anchor brought up the topic of bullying and that she could take it because she's an adult and stuff like that doesn't affect her, but a lot of school-aged children would be ripped apart by this and start acting unhealthy. Totally logical and I think a great tie-in considering she twisted this whole BS into a positive message.
Turns out, according to one of my Facebook friends who apparently works in bully awareness, this technically isn't bullying. When I brought up the fact that not all bullying has to be physical, but that there's verbal bullying too, she agreed. Then laid this little tidbit out there -- she said the actual definition of bullying is "repeated, aggressive behavior that is intentional."
So basically what she's saying is it needs to be a repeated offense for it to be considered bullying? Am I the only one that considers this to be total and utter bulls**t? (And for the record, I'm not talking about what the girl said, I'm talking about the fact that the definition calls for repeated offenses.) Seriously, let's break this down -- now more than ever, people (well, mainly teens and young adults) are committing suicide because they're bullied...whether it's body size, facial features, skin color, sexual preference -- they're killing themselves because their peers are little a**holes and torture and torment them. But what you're saying is if it only happens one time, it's not technically bullying so they can't get help like a bullying victim could?
What if it only took that one time? What if someone was just having a really crummy day -- family problems at home, feeling down on their luck and just not good about themselves in general -- what if that ONE day, someone just walks up to that person and says, "You know what? If I were as fat and ugly as you, I'd walk around like the miserable waste of space that I am too. You should just go kill yourself and do the world a favor." Now that's only ONE offense, so according to definitions given by people who work in bully awareness, that's not bullying. But what if just the ONE time is enough for someone to be like "F**k this, you're right" and the kid offs him/herself?
I see posts from people all the time who wanna change the world. People like my buddy Paul Varga (@PVarga on Twitter), who just yesterday interviewed his mother on his radio show because they're both survivors of Domestic Violence. People like my girl Jillian Jensen (@ItsJillJensen on Twitter), who recently just gained some fame for her audition on The X Factor where she made pretty much the entire panel of judges cry because of her bullying story and her NEED to stand up against it. People like me...I wanna do good in this world too.
But how are we supposed to change the world if they people that have seemingly the most power or at least are in a real good position to kick off some change (like Bullying Awareness), handcuff everyone because technically it's not bullying if it's repeated? S**t only needs to happen once for terrible consequences to result, and until people wake the f**k up and realize that fact, nothing will ever change no matter how hard we try.
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