MovieChat Forums > Odd Girl Out (2005) Discussion > Bullying goes unnoticed

Bullying goes unnoticed



When I was in school, It didn't get this bad for me. I got the name calling and people telling other people not to ever talk to me and the whole pointing and ended up spending a whole school year with no friends, but I never understood why and I still don't know why they were like this. I faked being ill not to go into school and cried myself to sleep. But I don't think the teachers really noticed. Its an awful problem and I've never understood why people are like this and the efects it can have on people.
I got teased for not having striaght hair and being fairly quiet, So that made my the odd girl out throughout primary and secondary school! It took 3 years after leaving sceondary school to regain a good confidence, But I'm still left with self doubt and trust issues!
So the sad thing is that nothing is really done about this because this type of bullying is so subtle and support systems need to be brought into schools and students should be taught that being different is great, because isn't everyone different in some way.

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I agree, my health teacher told me that at this other school she worked at there was this overweight kid. Kids made fun of him because he was overweight, then one day he commited suicide. She told us if we ever had any problem was to talk to someone about the situation. She also said his suicide could have been prevented if more people noticed but people don't seem to care which is not great.

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That happened to a kid at my school. He got bullied everyday until he couldnt take it anymore and he killed him self.

I got bullied at school too when I was in middle school, for all 3 years. I had no friends at all, and the ones I thought were my friends turned against me. Teaches saw this and did nothing about it, there was one who actuarly started teasing me in class to be "cool" and anything he said the other kids would use it too.

I think schools need to take bullying more serious. This is why kids go and shoot up their schools... and really I dont blame them. At times I felt like bringing a knife to school and stabbing all my bullies.

I wish they showed this movie, the movie "Elephant" (which is about a school shooting) and the episode "Time Stands Still" from Degrassi at schools.

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I agree, with the recent Virginia Tech Shooting schools SHOULD take bullying more seriously.

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like. what i totally hate about all of it is that the kids who usually do it, are nothing special themselves.

for example. there's a boy at my school who teases a LOT of people. he is overweight and extremely unattractive, he gets high off marijuana before school each day *and his mom let's him because she'd rather him do it IN the house*, he fails his classes...etc.

every school has one of those.

and you know, he makes fun of me really really bad.

what i used to do was tell on him but it went in one ear and completely out the other.
so in like, october, i told him off.
he left me alone basically the whole year.
until like, the last day of school.
how retarded is that? he actually snorted at me.
like a pig. and then said, "what, are you going to tell on me now?"




but after everything...i feel SORRY for him.
i mean, i'm starting to notice that people, in general, feel that they need to
make fun of those around them to make themselves feel better. (that's so cliche blah blah blah.)

but it's true, isn't it?

i mean, PUTTING MYSLELF IN THEIR POSITION, "i'm failing. i didn't bother trying out for a high school program because my grades aren't good enough for that. i'm not going to get into college. i'm ugly. i'm overweight. i'm almost fifteen years old and i've never even been kissed before. i smoke pot. nobody takes me seriously. my friends kinda even don't like me much...."

i'd be quick to lash out at kids too.

that's horrible to say but it's the truth.



but then their the popular girls.
and it's almost the same thing, except they've thrown up enough times to make themselves skinny and they've been kissed...and probably more than that.


for them it basically comes down to this.

THEY LAUGH AT EVERYBODY BECAUSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT. everybody laughs at them because they're ALL THE SAME.


in my family consumer science class this past year, i had about five of them in my class.

they were bitchy, and complain-y. and nobody took them seriously.


like, imagine that.

being spoiled, getting everything you want, but never being truely happy because you're not that smart and and not that many people like you because you're ridicuous.

it's kindasortareally sad.



are 99% of the population better than them, despite what THEY think.

absolutely.




we kinda need to stand together.

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Agreed. I was there!

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See it's really sad. I don't make fun of people, I try to make them feel wanted. I'm considered somewhat "cool" in my school but I don't like to see people be made fun of. If i was at your school, I would've made you feel wanted. No one should have to go through school without friends. I try to get my teachers to show "Time Stands Still" parts one and two in school, but they think it'll cause some unneeded violence. Please! These kids need to know that teasing others is what causes these things. Hello! The character Rick didn't shoot up the school for nothing! And that episode and episodes before it showed that adults in the building don't care if their students are getting picked on and don't realize the damage until after their school is on the 6 o'clock news.

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Whats Time Stands Still?




Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

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It's an episode from the show Degrassi: The Next Generation. It's about how this boy named Rick was pushed too far by the bullying and pulled a gun out and shot and paralyzed someone.

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This movie is basicly my 11th grade year. One alpha girl made my life a living hell and got others to do it too. My last year of high school I went on independent studies.

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Haha my middle school health teacher was a bitch. I have been struggling with anorexia since age 12 and I remember during one class we had about calories I told her I only eat 700 a day and she told me that there was no way that could be true because I don't look skinny. So by the next school year I dropped down to 95lbs by eating nothing but rice cakes and diet pills. Some of these people really need to be fired!!

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Omg, wait so all of you are in High school and are still getting bullied?!?!?!

Oh God, I feel sick, I'm gonna have to go back to America for High school soon...... [I moved to China just after 4th grade]

Meow

I could be nice, but then what fun would I have in life?

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Thanks...but I'm just afraid 'cos I'm gonna be the 'New girl'

Meow

I could be nice, but then what fun would I have in life?

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Yeah......I move a lot but now it's just getting hard cos there are already gonna be cliques and all. Thanks for your advice.

Meow

I could be nice, but then what fun would I have in life?

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No, after about 9th grade people usually stop the bullying. Middle school is the worsttttttt.

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aw i feel so bad for you all that goot bullied=( after seeing this movie it made me realize that bullying is really really really bad. im gonna try and do something about it

*[lOVe YA xoxo]*

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This type of girl bullying has gotten SO much more vicious over the years and goes SO unnoticed it's horrible. Teachers and adults think because no one's throwing a punch it's not as bad. It's worse. A guy punches another guy in the face his bruise will heal and so will his ego but when you socially destroy someone like that it doesn't heal. It's horrible. Girls who attack other girls like this should be suspended and punished. But it's so hard to catch and you can't fix it once it's happened.

formerly not_so_much

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i got harassed for not having straight hair, too! to me that got bad because it was mostly black kids saying *beep* about my natural hair, and i thought it was so weird that they thought chemical straight hair was so much better. then i learned it was jealously cause my hair was long and thick and theirs wasn't. i got teased for speaking proper english as much as possible in school, at least around the teachers. kids said stuff about my lack of name brand label clothes. i got punched by one girl in science class on middle school and she egged another girl to punch me, too. i still have no idea why they did that, and i graduated high school in 1997. that same girl enjoyed making fun of my clothes, my hair, whatever. i was smart but hyper and not good in school. i didn't have a click but talked to people in lots of groups. i spent a lot of lunches alone eating in the stairwell in high school. or hung out with the "weird" kids. other stuff happened that i don't remember. that might seem trivial, but when you're already teased at home it sucks for it to happen at school, too. or camp or wherever. and somethings are harder to let go of.


my mother remembers girls bullying her because they thought she thought she was so smart and so cute! she was in college prep in high school; back then you either were going to vocational school or prepping for college. the ones going to college were treated special compared to the others. she wasn't a big girl, so bigger girls hated her for it. this was was back in the earl 60's, so this type of behaviour has been going on for generations. i'm sure my aunts and grandma even their small time got bullied for something, too.

guys tend to be more physical by beating each other up. girls are just vicious and rip into your emotional core.

thanks to the internet being the way it is now (unlike the slow crap in the 90's), bullying is much easier now. all someone has to do is pissed at someone else about something stupid. being in school is bad enough with that going on, but to extend it to online makes things worse.

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by no means was i always innocent, though. i don't think i was as vicious as those girls, but i'm sure i had my share of gossip at times. i remember being vicious in gym class...lol... calling all sorts of names, hoping the opposite team's star got hurt. my method of handling my lack of athletic ability i guess. but i felt bad when that person was actually hurt, cause for me in was all in competition, and i didn't act that way outside of gym. for the most part

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When I was in school it was worse. I had a group of jerks that always tormented me.

When I wore a pretty skirt, I was called a slut and told I should see how a real slut was treated..

When I wore baggy clothes, I was called a "dyke".

I was catcalled at in the hallway, and they all told me I smelled.. So much so that I now have a bit of an obsession with body sprays and soaps..

If I fought back, they laughed at me. They'd take my notebooks while I was in the bathroom and write nasty things in them.

I went to the principal crying once, after telling another girl off, and she feigned innocence.. She didn't get any reprimand, and he called my father and told him I needed to "toughen up".

This went on for about 4 years. I only got it to stop by switching schools.

This story feels like a tiny part of my life, but I was never friends with any of my bullies beforehand.

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by no means is this racial
but the meanest girls who bullied me were all black
the nastiest girls
and the band teachers daughter
we once went on an overnight trip
and i was roomed with the 3 black gals who bullied me
that was no coincidence
i know it was the band teachers daughter
those girls are mean
why is it that nastiest meanest women in life just happent to be black
they are more nasty than other race
hispanics i know are hospitable and kind
but the blacks
i am not a racist
but the meanest people i have met have been black girls

i read an earlier post about school shootings
to be honest i dont blame them at all
what they did was wrong yes
but my gosh who drove them too it

and also bullying always happens when no adult is watching

i wish i had a spy video camera with audio on it
so i could record what those poeple did to me
and cuased my life to be and living hell

my esteem is still affected
how i view myself is still affected
i have been on and off anit depressants for a long time

and the worse thing about it was this was at a christian shcool

i dont want to be a christian becuase of this christians who bullied me

chrisitan can really be mean

politics and religion can really be hazordous to ones mental and emotional health

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Once you said "why is it that nastiest meanest women in life just happent to be black" you became racist.

and prejudice when you said that it was because that these people were christian too.

Mean people are all races and religions. Just because the girls that bullied you were black doesn't mean that 'black women' are the meanest. Some of the NICEST girls I've ever met were black, and wouldn't say a mean thing if you asked them to.

The MEANEST people I've met were well off, spoiled, and white.

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Once you said "why is it that nastiest meanest women in life just happent to be black" you became racist.

and prejudice when you said that it was because that these people were christian too.

i don't think she was trying to be racist or preijuce, cleo she was just saying what she experienced. I was bullied from both white and moreso from black girls. (I too am black)Girls can be mean no matter what your race. Its sad but its the absolute truth!!! I wnderstood where kam1975 was coming from.

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What pisses me off is that the only way you can really stand up to a bully at those ages - since you are completely outnumbered socially - is to break their nose. And then its you who gets in trouble, not the bully.

Which is why I have no sympathy whatsoever for every teenager that's ever been killed in a school shooting where the motive was harassment/bullying.

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As a teacher, I have to say that it is hard to prevent and help in these situations. It's hard to make a judgment call of when it has gone beyond normal girls fighting, and moved into a situation where one needs to intervene. Sometimes the kids act differently in front of the teachers or act like it doesn't bother them and we don't know--we aren't one of them...sometimes our intervening makes a situation worse, sometimes it doesn't. All I can say is that if you are being bullied--TELL SOMEONE. Unless you do, the teachers don't know. We aren't mind readers...and we want to help, we just don't always know when we are needed.

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I agree, and it made me sick when the principal said "There's nothing we can do, it's too common". The ironic thing is, it's only common because they don't do anything about it.
The school? What about the kids PARENTS? They could have identified their kid's screen names. Even if they didn't want to get their kids expelled, they could have at least looked into what their kids were doing online. If your kid has created a hate website, or contributes to it on a regular basis, there is going to be evidence of that.

I agree with megaddie-1. The kid being harassed has got to TELL SOMEONE (alot of them do not because they're embarrassed), but it's ridiculous to hold schools responsible for something the kid's parents haven't caught onto.

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When I did tell a teacher they were more bothered about me truanting than dealing with the bullies. I got told its part of growing up and it was school policy to let us all deal with it ourselves, they only intervened in actual physical fights.

In my case when the bullying was at its worst, I had easily over 30 people or so who would bully me if I was near them. My friends didnt turn against me as such but they asked to not be in my class as they started realising they only got bullied when I was with them, the days I wasnt there they got left alone. Only one friend was loyal to me though it all. But there was nothing he could do about it we was completely outnumbered.

There would be a few occasions where people who werent my friends but obviously had a good soul would stick up for me, but they always just got ignored so they gave up.

To me there is only 2 solutions.

1 - You fight back against the main principal bully early on physically, this probably would have to be done before it gets severe and whilst not many people are involved to be effective and just hope his/her friends dont retalliate.
2 - Move schools, this will be easily the most effective way. Has a risk if one of the bullies knows people in the school you move to.

Telling teachers doesnt mean they will cooperate, if we assume the teachers help it can very well make it worse since you will be known as a grasser, and of course teachers cannot guard you 24/7. Some teachers have trouble controlling a class and so controlling bullying would be too much for them. The best result I can see from telling teachers is if they then get hold of the bullies parents and make the parents control the bully. But I expect more often than not the parents couldnt imagine their sweet little thing doing such nasty things.

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I was bullied from 2nd grade to around 8th grade. I switched schools to the "good schools" in 2nd grade, and I was bullied simply because I was new. I was told that I smelled, someone snapped my glasses once. I had kids going through my desk and ripping up my homework. My teachers didn't do anything. Kids told teachers and bus drivers and anyone else that I hit them or swore at them, so I was in trouble a lot. No adults ever did anything because they assumed I was just trouble.

My parents refused to do anything because they were under the assumption that everything that was happening was my fault, and that I deserved it. I don't have the most normal family. Later in high school, one girl who tormented me did end up apologizing, but I'm still a little bitter.

College was definitely my time to flourish, and I'm sad that college is over...but one thing I have definitely taken away from this experience is what to believe when I have my own children. No child should go through that torment.

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