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Tag Archives: Bullying

A Two-Year-Old’s Thoughts on Body Image

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Children, Healthy Living, Parenting

≈ 8 Comments

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If you follow Humans of New York (and even if you don’t) you’ve probably seen this. Stella, a young woman who has struggled with weight and been bullied for it all of her life, recently posted a picture of herself in bra and underwear on her tumblr, declaring, “THIS IS MY BODY, DEAL WITH IT”.

She then ran into Brandon from HONY, who did a portrait of her. She told him about her photo on tumblr and he posted it to the HONY Facebook page. As of this writing, it has 316,327 likes, 12,344 shares, and 32,471 comments. Many of them are positive, but, unsurprisingly given the trolls who command the internet, many of them are negative. The poor woman has been through a lot in the last 24 hours.

I don’t want to add to that burden. But I am going to post the picture here because I think it really helps to make the point I’m about to make, and because I know all of you are kind and wonderful people who will say nothing negative about her. Continue reading »

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Book Review: Bullied

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Book Review, Causes, Children, Family, Parenting, Politics/Current Events

≈ 6 Comments

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Today I’m reviewing Bullied, by Carrie Goldman. I received this book as part of a promotional tour, and I could not be happier that I did.

Everyone – parents, teachers, all adults, all teenagers, even younger kids – needs to read this book. Now.

Carrie Goldman came to the bullying issue when her first-grade daughter was bullied because she brought a Star Wars water bottle to school. Star Wars is for boys, apparently, not girls. Carrie wrote a blog post about the issue and the response was overwhelming. People wrote about their own experiences with bullying, women wrote about loving Star Wars, men wrote about being bullied because they were too girly. The massive influx of support inspired Carrie to look at the issue more deeply, and the result was this wonderful book.

Bullying is an incredibly complicated issue that involves not just relations between two children on the playground, but our entire society. Continue reading »

And How We Learned

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Children, Creative Writing, Pensive Moments

≈ 39 Comments

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We spent the whole summer outside. Any time we didn’t have to be in the house, we got out of it as quickly as we could. We had a big backyard, with a creek and a woods, and we spent all our time there. We ran around barefoot; we felt the dirt in our toes and sticks pierced our skin, but not for long – our feet calloused over in days. We walked barefoot along the hot road, black with new asphalt. The feeling of almost, but not quite, burning our feet tickled and sent shivers up our spines. We raced down that road, our bare feet slapping against the pavement.

photo credit: A Structure for Spirit

The sun baked us that summer, turning our white skin brown. With my long, dark hair, almond eyes and sun-browned skin, I looked Native American. We pretended I was Pocahontas. I loved it. I lived it in my mind. My imagination was always running; I was a squaw, digging in the river for clams to eat and building a lean-to for shelter. Wherever I went I imagined I was Pocahontas, journeying across the wilderness.

The woods were small, they couldn’t have been more than 40 feet wide, if that. But to us they felt huge. Continue reading »