Bullying comes in all shapes and sizes, much like the people to whom it's directed. It comes in many different forms ranging from emotional to physical, and no matter which type you come across in your life (because I suspect that most people have experienced bullying in one form or another) it leaves a mark.
The belief that fat is a shameful and uglyfying contagious disease is prevalent in our society. We see it in the tabloids and on the streets every day. People continue to behave like they can pick up a stigma-tastic fat virus by breathing the same air as someone who is larger than they are, and that somehow it's possible to be considered as undesirable, as unpopular, or be as bullied as a bigger person if you hang out with, like, or even (gods forbid) find them attractive. And I'm not talking about the reasons why a person is fat here (for there will be as many different reasons as there are people who are large), but simply about the social dishonour of being ‘different'.
I find that in itself to be very telling: that the modern human psyche is somehow letting it be known that bigger people get treated like crap, and no-one wants to be treated like crap if they can help it. No-one wants people to think that they are deficient on some mental scale for liking a bigger person, so instead of an empathetic response of kindness, inclusion, acceptance, the knee-jerk reaction is one of avoidance, exclusion, and, in more extreme cases, physical bullying. Bullying perhaps just to prove that you're really, really having nothing positive to do with a fat person in any shape or form, just in case the fat cooties attack you, too.
I was reminded the other day* of an incident earlier in my life where I was advised to seriously contemplate having a relationship with someone because he was the only person they knew of who liked fat girls, regardless of my own feelings (or lack thereof) for the guy. The implication being that they** thought a) he was a rare thing, in a strange fetish fashion, and b) I wouldn't find anyone else, so settling for him was the only thing to do if I didn't want to remain single for the rest of my fat, unlovable life. I'm paraphrasing, thankfully, but behind the ‘you seem so nice, you deserve to be loved even if we consider the potential him to be weird to do so' was a theme that has been a recurrent one since the time I discovered boys. And in varying degrees of platonic friendship from even earlier days.
My own experience of being bullied isn't unusual. It began when I was around eight years old. Before that I don't remember being made to feel I was different or not worthy of inclusion, but it was a tiny primary school, so once the kids reached an age to notice differences amongst ourselves, there was no place to hide.
Why was I bullied? I'm presuming it was because I was plump and looked different from everyone else. It's certainly the only things I was ever teased about. (Well, I was called ‘Duracell' a couple of times ‟with the copper-coloured top" but being a red-head was never anything I was teased with more than once or twice.) I was big little thing from day one; slightly premature and underweight (oh the irony) but broad-shouldered and compact none-the-less. I turned into a shy, chubby, emotionally-tangled hermit, (I'd go into ‘huff's, as they were called, when I didn't understand what was happening around me) and looking back I suspect that because I didn't understand why I was being picked on quite so much, it probably didn't help matters much once I became known for being a loner further up the school system.
My best friend back then was the polar opposite to me, skinny, a bit spoilt (partly because she was an only child, partly because she was from a troubled home and her parents were probably trying to cover things up with material things) but a kind friend to me until she started to be bullied because she was my friend when we were maybe ten or eleven. I never condemned her for her decision to choose not being bullied over being my friend even at the time, although I remember the sense of abandonment.
I wrote an essay in my first year English class at secondary school about being bullied, being careful not to name names as I was still being targeted by the same people, who were, incidentally, in the same classes as me at the ‘big school'. As a piece of prose it got a good mark (write about what you know...), and because of that the teacher read it out to the class, after which the bullying instigator from primary school came up to me in tears to apologise, not realising how much being bullied had affected me, yet somehow realising that she was the bully ringleader about whom I had written. I don't remember my reaction (probably embarrassment), but I do remember she was never so bold in her taunts afterwards, and instead I seemed to disappear from her radar, and therefore most of my primary school acquaintances' radar. Mostly a good thing, I think.
I spent much of my secondary school career by myself. From the tenor of the teasing and insults tossed at me on a daily basis I have to presume again it was because I was by this time quite overweight, partly in thanks to a heady cocktail of big genes and a knee condition which stopped all sports and movement almost in their tracks when I was thirteen. (I've written about this elsewhere on the blog - Osgood-Schlatter disease. Then: a debilitating knee condition that could turn a sporty, ballet-mad youngster into a decrepit old person almost overnight; now: something that can be handled with drugs and physiotherapy.) And again, a loner known to be a loner is left alone to be that loner. A meta loner, if you will.
The guys I crushed on were the objects of pity and potential tease-target themselves because of it, and I learned that my affections were to be abhorred and shunned, that I was not worthy, and that anyone who did actually like me would probably be emotionally deficient. The people I had to sit next to in class were sometimes subject to ridicule because, ugh, who wants to sit with the fat girl. So I learned to find seats by myself at the back of the class where no-one could see me and where I couldn't bother anyone. I stopped eating lunch in the canteen because I was so ashamed and embarrassed to be sitting by myself every day, and being subject to sniggers and jibes, (I started putting on extra weight because the dinner ladies felt sorry for me sitting on my own and piled my plate up every day to ‘make up for it', and I'd comfort myself in the food***) so instead took packed lunches to school, eating them in the locker room by myself, then eventually taking my sandwiches down to the beach, far away from school environment, and I learned that it was better to be lonely than be surrounded by people who made me feel like I was less than human.
Ironically the only other overweight girl in my year was my biggest tormentor. Pun not intended. She was sporty, strong, large, and tall; a giant who would physically push me around if we met up in the corridors or in the locker room. Hindsight suggests that the choice (in this context) for the fat girl at school was either to be the bully or be the bullied, and she obviously chose the former before the latter could put a choke-hold on her life. Compassionate retrospect aside, she is one of the few people on earth who I would not deign to spit on if she was on fire, even now, thirty years later, for it was her behaviour that was the catalyst in making my secondary school life a thousand times more painful, heart-breaking, and awful than primary school ever was. Where she led, others followed, either by example, or by avoiding me, and a lot of the emotional scars continue to lurk just under the surface.
Although yes, since school, instances of bullying haven't been as physical, but comments continue to fly from uncaring, uneducated lips, ranging between sneers and sniggers from passers-by in the street, a memorable account of a stranger, an especially rude bitch, poking me in the stomach in M&S telling me I didn't need to buy sausages, to being told more than once that I didn't get an operatic part because although I was vocally a shoo-in, I wouldn't fit in to either the director's visualisation of the opera, or the already-designed costume. And everything in between, whether from strangers with ill-intent, or from friends who ‘only have my best interests at heart'.
Current psychotherapy appears to be going along the lines of ‘what happened before has no bearing on the now', concentrating more on current feelings and thought processes, but you can't tell me that decades of rejection, being laughed at, and being made to feel less than human doesn't contribute something to how one feels about one's self, how we expect to be treated by others, and what we expect to be given in terms of affection throughout the rest of our lives.
But let me get this straight - I've not written this for sympathy; I neither need nor want any. Nor do I seek personal attention. I just want to add my voice to the myriad others who are trying to bring attention to the subject at hand, whether it be bulling by fat-shaming, disability-shaming, gender-shaming, race-shaming... In this context I don't care about the reasons why a bully bullies; in the end such perpetrator-coddling begins to sound like nothing more than victim-shaming. The ‘they beat you up, physically, emotionally, but that's because really they're sad, going through some ‘stuff', or is angry at themselves right now and therefore shouldn't be condemned, told off, or made to be responsible for their actions, but instead they should be cosseted, cared-for, and understood' argument holds no water when faced with the realities of being on the receiving end of their ‘bad day', and told we ‘probably deserved it, anyway, fatso'.
Is there a solution to the bullying question? Well, yes. Taking a moment to think before you speak or act might be a step in the right direction. Not openly sneering at someone who doesn't fit in with your own particular brand of ‘normal' might be another. Not judging someone by their appearance. Maybe trying to be less prejudiced and more embracing of human diversity. Then teaching your kids by example.
They sound so obvious, patronising even, but these tiny things can make the biggest difference to someone who's used to running the gamut of insults on their person every day. But I can't force people to change their discriminatory actions towards others; it's hard enough stopping myself from giving (or, more realistically, thinking about after the fact) retaliatory insults, or making my own snap judgements about a person, to try and change the world one twat at a time (I can change myself, though), but the first day I walk about in public and not receive any vocalisation of distaste or disdain will be an interesting one, I think.
* “You don't like being single - have you tried internet dating? There are sites especially for guys looking for bigger girls."
** It's fair to say that these weren't close friends telling me how to live my life, because my true friends, at least, don't insult me to my face, sugar-coated or not.
*** Beef olives, chips and gravy. mmm For all the possible connotations it may have to crap times at school, it remains a comfort favourite. Not all memories are bad, I guess...
