A non-profit organization offers free plastic surgery to kids who are bullied. I was a little taken back on a quite a few aspects of it (if not all of them) when I watched this. I didn't think she looked that terrible at all - certainly nowhere near being "deformed". Yeah, those are some goofy ears, but she's a kid. Never mind the fact she just wanted an ear tuck, but the Surgeon said no'ooooo. Then of course its a non-profit scenario for bullied children. There's a lot here. Almost too much but ... Focus: If your kid was a bully target due to a physical feature, would you look towards plastic surgery? And where would you draw the line? Cleft lip or nose job? Alt Focus: I did my share of picking on other kids and I also got picked on. Is bullying that much worse these days?
Um. What. The Fuck. Honestly I was down with the story until the doctor suggested the additional shit to be done. Fucking crazy. He took it way beyond rational which was a stretch to begin with as I figured at first her nose was going to be the issue before even realizing anything "wrong" with her ears. I bet if she kept active in sports and matured naturally she'd be a stunner.
I cannot keep track of every model, athlete, movie star, musician who had ugly duckling syndrome. So, fuck it, people are mean and let's start hacking up our kids because we can't teach them any real lessons or values or defense. This organization is effectively seeking to destroy any character a kid might develop. Wonderful, we really had too much in this country lately anyway. You have a legitimate deformity? Great, let's fix it. Want a tit and nose job? Wait until you're in your 20s. What kid knows jack about life and living in their own body. Parents need to sack up. God forbid that resolute position rubs off on their kids. I was bullied by a couple people, nothing physical. I was a 6 foot gangly dude with zero muscle tone, scruffy hair, and pants my mom shrank in the washer "to make sure the dirt is out." I had a fucking bullseye on me. Go figure, I developed looks and a personality in spite of the awkward years. It seems verbal bullying is an extension of the way guys talk to each other. If you can't handle your shit and give it back, you'll get walked over. Physical is something more onerous. It's just jerkfaces being jerkfaces. It has gotten worse because, as I mentioned in the other thread, kids now have zero recourse to confront physical threats in schools and sometimes outside of school grounds. Students get suspended for events that happen outside of school all the time. Walk away, fight back? I suppose both have their merits. Though fighting back would be ideal in some situations because some of these malignant kids just won't let it go. Sometimes, you can't walk away because every tough guy wannabe pussy has you circled. Like prison.
Kurt Busch won a NASCAR championship, then had his Dumbo ears pinned back. Before and after pics included in this old article. He hasn't been the same since, everybody still hates him, and he can't even get a sponsor for his ride. (i.e. he still gets bullied)
Bullying is a real constant shitty problem in our society. Too many adults, having gone through some form of it, now scoff at the idea that it should be dealt with. "I went through it, so should you" is the essential mantra I see repeated in countless media. But genuine real bullying is a confidence and soul destroying experience that is, in no way, somehow useful in human development. I was bullied and made to feel miserable for a vast part of my childhood. I've gotten through it, grown up, and am a useful member of society, but the scars remain and affect me to this day and it's absolutely inhuman that so many people shrug off bullying as an irrelevant issue. All that said, plastic surgery on children is not a good lesson or a good coping mechanism for bullied kids. Real physical deformities aside.
It's been around for ever, but growing up, I don't recall hearing about anyone committing suicide from being the target. Has it gotten that much worse? Are kids today just that much less equipped mentally/emotionally to deal with it?
^That^ pretty much sums up my feelings on this. For something that is a true deformity, fine - this program fits the bill. IMHO it shouldn't be for kids whose parents aren't able to help them cope w/ Dumbo comments. As for the 'escalation' of surgery involved in this CNN clip - I'm gobsmacked. Oh - and I'll just leave this here.
That's all sorts of fucked up. She was a pretty girl as it was, even the ears were nowhere near as bad as they were made out to be. Bullies will pick on children perceived as weak and vulnerable, and they will focus on whatever trait first comes to mind. If it isn't the ears, it will be something else. "Fixing" the ears will probably not do anything to address the real cause of the bullying, which is primarily the fucktardness of the bullies and secondarily her own vulnerability and insecurity. That being said, I am not a naive believer in the "everybody is beautiful in their own way" nonsense. In the real world people are judged by their physical appearance, even babies will stare preferentially at images of attractive people. If you have a genuine deformity, then sure, fix it. But in a world where one is saturated by photoshopped models, people become obsessed with perceived physical short-comings and take it way beyond what is safe or reasonable.
I'm wondering if I should give them a call. My son (obviously) has big ears. He's never got any grief for them so far as I know. He did have one problem with a boy on the bus who harassed everyone, but not about his ears. This kid just kept shoving him until my son finally hit him in the balls. I got a call from the principal and the first words out of her mouth were, "your son is okay." She actually said he did the right thing and the kid has left him alone ever since. I was surprised he didn't get in trouble for defending himself. I don't plan on ever getting his ears fixed, part of that is that they don't seem to bother him. I also don't know if he will ever buzz his hair either. My dad did that once when he was two (with a Flowbee!) and my mom couldn't stop laughing hysterically every time she looked at him. I haven't done it since. I do find that a lot of schools want the kids to walk away and if a kid defends themself, they will get punished also. That happened to a friend of mine. Her son was acting in self-defense and he got punished. Not as many days as the bully, but he still got detention. The mom asked the principal what he should have done and the response was "walk away and tell a teacher". Because that works.
And nothing else needs to be said. I was bullied a little. I was a weird kid - but for all that I was never 'popular' in my own rights - I was always friends with one of the really super popular kids. Usually the one with a fucked up home life who liked being my friend because my house was normal and they could sleep over when their dad was drunk. It was never a deliberate strategy on my part - but it meant I always got to be part of the group and never got bullied too badly because of it. It probably helpedI was a slightly bigger and slightly stronger kid than most of my peers through grade school and there was a school legend / mostly true urban myth about me in high school that involved the fact that I was in a martial arts club. I was never fantastic at martial arts - but the original story about a blow job in front of a crowd of people grew legs about being a sexual savant and some kind of karate master. I kind of accidentally sealed the martial arts master legend when I intervened when another kid was being bullied. I really didn't do anything - some kid who I knew but wasn't friends with (he was kind of a dick, and didn't have any real friends at school) was being picked on. There were like 3 kids picking on him and being dicks. I called them pussies for picking on him and they shifted their attention to me. They weren't strong enough to really push me around or hurt me, so I basically ignored them and went back to talking to my friends while they tried to do shit to get me to start a fight, so they could start a proper fight and blame it on me when the teachers intervened. One of them eventually sacked up enough to punch me once in the face. It wasn't much of a punch and I'd taken way worse in training, so I just gave him a raised eye brow and told him to fuck off and went back to my conversation. Somebody else ran off and got teachers who came and found the three bullying fucks off on one side of the yard trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened, and me eating a sandwich and talking to my friends. Story came out - I didn't really give a fuck about the whole thing, I just thought they were dicks for 3 on 1 bullying such an easy target. The 2 off siders were suspended and punchy one's dad pulled him out of the school and moved him somewhere. The story grew legs and kids who I barely knew told everyone that all three of them tried to beat me up and I was so tough they couldn't hurt me and the punchy one was too scared to come back to school while I was there. The two who were suspended got the riot act from a vice principle who liked me and wouldn't come near me or talk about the incident afterward - so gossip consensus was that it was because I was a super ninja or something. I had no idea how to deal with any of that shit so I just ignored it all and hoped it would go away. My friends all thought it was hilarious and gave me no end of shit about it. There wasn't much bullying at our school to begin with - but there was basically none after that incident.
Whoever thought up butchering kids like Beverly Hills cattle was a great idea should be punched in the face with a falconry mitt. Are. You. Kidding Me. Plastic surgery is shallow and stupid enough minus necessary reconstruction (accidental mutilation, clef palates etc.). Whatever happened to loading your lunchbox up with rocks and cleaning everybody's clock that fucks with you at once? Worked for yours truly and first-time offenders don't get it hard from the principal in the 1980's, even if one of them DID happen to drool for a week afterwards. Or maybe even squealing for that matter? Public school is not prison, so finger the cruel little bastards. Anything but THIS. Back in that day, I had bad buck teeth. The worst you will have ever seen. I looked like a motherfucking sabre toothed tiger as a young lad, and my parents took me to this cosmic-weilding sorcerer known as an "othodontist" who fixed my teeth the correct way. It took a while, but I don't look like a walking can opener anymore. Can anybody take the hint that plastic surgery turns you into a melted mutant when you age out of it? Paging Meg Ryan. She would have been naturally hot into her sixties, and now she looks like a beat-up cachter's mitt. Now look at Mary-Louise Parker. She's 48 and looks like a 20-year-old smokeshow. How many dorky, ugly kids did you know in grade school that became knockouts once they became of age? I rest my case. Bullies are nothing more than insecure little shits, taking out their childhood frustrations on whatever shortcoming jumps out in front of them. Going under the knife won't stop them. Tackling the problem at the source will.
I am all for this. Between the fatties and the uggos I see, something needs to be done immediately to make sure that I have some young hot women to ogle when I hit retirement.
This is unfair. Where's my free acne treatment and muscle enhancement? Can't we offer penis enlargement therapy to the worst of the bullies? How about a government sponsored program that forces a rich, loving family to take in a quota of bullies from shitty families and cater to their every whim and need? I'm loving this idea, but this is only a fraction of what we could be doing for all the people who don't have perfect lives.
Just because you think a 17 year old with A cups is acceptable doesn't mean the rest of us do. I say that is a deformity.
Fucking A, man. I was the youngest one in my class in highschool AND reached puberty later than average. I was mocked in the showers and bullied in the locker room. (Side story: one of the bullies I hated the most is on his third marriage, has lost his professional license and is currently facing jail time for fraud. So . . . burn.) And, I didn't have the option to just grow my hair out over my ears. I'm assuming this non-profit group would've offered me testosterone supplements and growth hormone therapy?
This may come as a shock to many of you, but I wasn't bullied that badly in my, admittedly limited, time spent in schools (I was home schooled in various ways, on and off for various reasons). I was definitely a weird kid that never fit in, and I still pretty much am that guy, and while I didn't have it easy, I was never coming home with mysterious bruises etc. I get the feeling that if I attended somewhere that had a "normal" student population I would have, but because of attending either rural or niche schools, the issue never got that serious. Primary (Elementary) school barely counts, at least for me, because as I recall, all of us where annoying little shits. I was different then, but if the other guys weren't too dumb to notice, then even in hindsight it's not obvious to me. High School really began with me in Year 8 (Aus' second year of HS),in a new private school that had started, as an addition to a small time private primary (elementary) school. After having been homeschooled a few years, I was thrown into a mix that was strange and new to me, especially with developing girls. Probably the first 5-7 months I was pretty much on the outside (a lot of the kids knew each other already from the earlier incarnation), but by the end of the year, I was friends proper with the popular kids. Part of this was thanks to a quite mean campaign I orchestrated thanks to my gameboy, gameboy camera, and gameboy printer. Along with having a dumb sense of humour 13 year olds found funny in 1999... After my parents moved to a farm in 2000 and I faffed about for a couple years, I did my final High School years at a new country town school 2002-2004. But again, depite being razzed the same any of the other guys would have for saying/doing something stupid, mostly I didn't feel bullied. There was one main time I was targeted by someone older and bigger, just throwing basketballs at me (one of which I threw on the roof of a classroom), a teacher was informed, they spoke to the guy and I was left alone. I punched a guy who tipped water on me. He was bored, and I was an angry young man (these days he's a good father). We made up one drunken weekend later (I was 16, it took me like two-three drinks to be blackout wasted). After that, I certainly still felt like an outsider, but it was up to all me. I also started doing Tae Kwon Do at this time, and even if martial arts experts agree that it's just a black belt factory, it gave me confidence to at least feel like, even if I lost a fight, at least I could give it my best. I guess in summation, I'm saying what we all really know: that high school bullshit doesn't matter one iota in the real world. I think if bullying reaches a point where there's proper physical harm involved, it's going too far. And I definitely disagree that bullying is benificial in any major way. But in the scheme of things, shit that happens in school is shit that doesn't really matter. Not to say that everything is all mature and considered once you're out in the working world, but you get thrown into the mix of many different ages and cultures normally when you do... Hopefully... For these reasons I do kinda hope my boy gets transferred around different schools; I'd hate to think of what kind of sheltered idiot he'd become if he thought that life was spent with the exact same people who only had age in common with him...