I have realized over the past couple weeks that my blogs so far have focused on my own experiences, and perhaps I have come off as the victim; as if I have not made mistakes or done or said things to hurt others around me. With this being said, I have decided that this week’s blog will be about bullying and why girls do it.
The ways that girls bully other girls are much different from how guys bully other guys. Guys will use physical force and beat on another guy that they do not like. While guys inflict physical pain, girls will inflict emotional and psychological pain. We’ve all experiences it at one time or another.
It is the classic story line that we see in Mean Girls: we meet a girl (or group of girls) who is nice and sweet to us in person, but hear how the girl talks trash about other girls, trying to bring down their self esteem and personal image. Sometimes this occurs with girls we barely even know, yet we hear rumors that they spread about us anyway. Because of name-calling, rumors, and the passive bullying that defames our character, we begin to feel worthless, alone, and depressed.
We know the sticks and stones saying, we know that we should not listen when we hear nasty rumors about ourselves, but we all know it is hard to do that when we begin losing friends or start being judged by others based on these false statements.
Sadly, I am here to admit to you that every single girl has bullied in one way or another. Maybe it is genetically ingrained in us, but girls love drama and love to talk about other girls behind their backs. Sometimes it is just conversation, but other times it is just us tearing down another girl we do not like.
So why do we engage in this sort of bullying, especially when we all have been victims of it?
As I had said in my previous blog, there was a girl in fifth grade that I had been friends with, but I had called her names behind her back. She had never done or said anything to hurt my feelings and deserve me talking so negatively about her. At the time, I knew what I was saying and did not stop myself. Why?
Because I was jealous and tearing her down made me feel better about myself.
This is at the heart of why girls bully. For me, the girl back in fifth grade was smarter and more confident about herself, while I consumed myself in insecurities, which probably led me to believe that I was not as smart as her. I was jealous of her, so I said things to tear her down and try to make myself sound better than her.
The reason girls start bullying other girls who have done nothing to harm them is because girls let their insecurities get the best of them and they become jealous of something the other girl has.
For example, I am sure we have all been jealous of the “rich girl” that we know. This girl doesn’t have to worry about school loans, has plenty of money to go out and buy expensive clothes and jewelry, and doesn’t need to worry about working a summer job because she has enough money to go on vacations and relax when school is over.
We all know some one like this, and we get jealous of what that girl has. We talk about her, maybe let our jealousy get the best of us and call her selfish and spoiled. We tear her down so that we can feel better about our own lives and financial situation.
But does this really make us feel better about ourselves?
At the end of the day we are still left with our insecurities, and eventually word gets around to that girl and we are left feeling guilty and looking like a bad person for saying such horrible things about her. We are not just hurting the person we bully, but we are hurting ourselves, as well.
As a result of bullying my fifth grade peer, I lost the respect of my teacher when I was tattled on, and I lost a friend. Since fifth grade, I know that I have passively bullied other girls before.
With my ex-roommate from this year, I had called her a “typical Miami girl” because of how her and her friends were excluding me and making me feel. This bullying stemmed from me feeling angry and wanting to get back at the person who hurt me, which is another thing we have done.
Again though, this “reciprocal bullying” as I am calling it, hurts ourselves, too.
Whether it is because of jealousy, or because we want to get even with someone, bullying does not solve any problems. In fact, bullying creates problems. We lower our victim’s self-esteem and make her feel unworthy which can have long lasting emotional and social consequences if she receives bullying from others. At the same time, we are giving ourselves that nasty label of “bully,” making ourselves the bad guys, and feeling as lousy and insecure as we had before we chose to trash talk our victim.
Who wins here? No one.
As I have said, I’ve bullied before. I’m certainly not innocent as far as bullying goes. So how can we keep ourselves from bullying?
Since bullying can stem from jealousy, we need to try to not take our own lives for granted. We all have talents and unique characteristics that others do not have, and we need to cherish those. It is also good to remember that every single girl is insecure about something.
For example, when I smile I can tell that one eye closes more than the other does, and it drives me crazy! I get jealous of girls who don’t have that problem, but I have to remind myself that those girls are insecure about themselves, as well.
It’s not easy, but by constantly reminding ourselves that we all have things that others don’t have, and everyone is insecure about something, perhaps it will keep us from talking trash about the girls around us.
If we are happy with ourselves and accept our insecurities, we won’t have reason to bully other girls. This in turn will then prevent us from wanting to “get even” with a girl because their will be no bullying and no rumors around that will want us to seek revenge.
I could go on for pages and pages analyzing why girls bully, and perhaps in later blogs I will return to this topic, but for now I want all of you to realize that while we have all been victims of bullying before, we have also been the bullies.
So the next time you hear that a girl said something nasty about you, take a deep breath and remember that even though what the girl said hurt, it is probably because she is insecure and saw something in you that she liked and envied.
Finally, when you find yourself in a position to bully, remember how it felt when you were bullied and realize just how much you have to offer to the world and you do not need to tear someone down to make yourself feel good because you have qualities within you to make you feel happy!
Fun fact: I have owned three of my own bowling balls since I started bowling when I was six!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Miami (OH) chapter.