In which I help you with cover tips, writing tips, rant about Sirius Black (Better known as my husband) and make Banana Pancakes to help everyone get through 2018.
I honestly hate the way bullying is portrayed in the media and a lot of fanfiction, it just feels so inaccurate. Like in those teen movies, a girl with glasses or a weedy boy walks down the corridor only for a group of jocks or 'blonde bitches' to bump into them, knocking the books flying.
And then in a lot of fanfiction the 'they bullied you because they like you!' trope is so often used and just no? That's awful, and promotes so many unhealthy relationships.
I feel like a lot of the time, people see bullying as very extreme, forgetting the little things. Like yes, sometimes bullying would be black and white, somebody is picked on for very little reason and badly hurt but people seem to forget about the grey area, the subtle forms that don't even seem like bullying, that people don't even realise is happening.
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Like why do teen movies and fics seem to think these are the only two type of girls who exist? Popular girl and Nerd: Bully and victim. Like it can be the other way round too, slut shaming! 'I'm not like other girls' mentality! Nerd ≠ pure, virtuous soul and popular ≠ bitchy bully.
My experiences and views from it won't be the same as everyone else's of course, it even varies within my city (London is fucking huge after all). Like my school and area is the epitome of white middle class, so we never had fights or open bullying, it was very subtle. When bullying did happen nobody ever got physically hurt or had their books thrown to the floor and it was done by people's friends usually. Often it was so subtle that nobody picked up on it for weeks and when it did happen, the school would genuinely be divided because we all related to both sides.
Too often bullying just becomes the black and white thing but there are SO many different forms which go unnoticed.
Like gaslighting, which is where you manipulate somebody, making them doubt their sanity. Like I have seen this done so much in real life and it sucks, a group excludes one person and when they ask about it, they're told they're being paranoid or wrong. I saw it done with a friend of mine, she liked the same boy as her best friend and then her friend began hooking up with the boy. When she would ask about it, the girl would tell her she was wrong and being 'paranoid'. The worst part was that when it all came out, many people still sided with the gaslighter, accusing my friend of being jealous and standing by the bully.
And another one that never really sees the light is exclusion. Like intentionally not inviting someone out, or when a person comes and sits down, the rest of the group actively moving away from them, little by little. Or when somebody sits down and the others instantly engage in a conversation that they KNOW they can't join in. It's ridiculously subtle sometimes, to the point where neither side even truly realises it's happening but it can slowly and subtly have a major effect, even though it's so often not seen or the person is told they're paranoid or overreacting.
The Bullies are often portrayed as either 'Bad boys' or bitchy blonde girls who wear pink all the time and don't have a nice bone in their body unless they fuck the 'nice guy'. But that seems to hardly ever be the case, mainly because those stereotypes don't actually really exist.
Often the bullies can be just normal people, maybe the group decides that they don't like a certain person and start to feed into each other's mentalities until everyone believes that the exclusion or lying that they're doing is actually right to the point where if somebody accused them of bullying, they would wholeheartedly believe they weren't. Sometimes, if one person has doubts, the others will simply reaffirm it. Sometimes, the victim has done bad things too, and rather than cause conflict, the others will simply decide to ice them out, something that I've seen so much, it's almost just seen as normal sometimes.
Like there are so many grey areas in bullying, the victims aren't always complete loners who never fit in, the bullies aren't cocky bad boys and bitchy bimbos and too often, the weapons are words and rumours - E x
