Four eyes! Fatso! Thunder Thighs! Giraffe! SLUT!!
What do you think about these words? Did they affect you when you read them? Did you wince? I did. And, I heard them over and over all through my young life. These words, these epithets, are what I grew up hearing. They are the curses that slapped me and the designations that defiled me. You see, I was the kid with the coke-bottle glasses. You remember me, the girl whose eyes looked like saucers behind the often scratched and eternally smudged lenses.
Sports were my nemesis. I was victim of my inability to see beyond the periphery of my frames, the world blurry all around but hyper focused straight in front…laser focus on the kids taunting me with vicious words outlining how I was inferior to them. “Four Eyes!” may as well have been; “You are less than me because my body does what it’s supposed to do and yours doesn’t. You are defective”. I was also never a skinny kid. Not that I was legitimately fat, but I had some meat on my bones. Looking back at pictures of myself I can see that I didn’t deserve the ‘fatso’ moniker, but I didn’t have control over what people said to me, I merely had to deal with it. Things got worse around puberty when I started to develop womanly curves. Image the impact of being called out for having “thunder thighs” at the age of 14. Later on, I started to grow tall. I lengthened. My limbs elongated and my neck stretched. By the age of 15 I’d reached 5’8″ and finally quit growing at just shy of 5’10”. Long limbs and a long neck will earn you the nickname of ‘Giraffe’, or didn’t you know? Giraffes aren’t cute and cuddly like kittens or puppies, they’re freaks. At least, that’s what I thought. But, that wasn’t the best of it. Nope. The kids I grew up with, cruel and heartless, had something worse in mind for me. The worst curse you could possibly throw at a young girl: Slut. I’ll admit that I tended to be flirtatious. What those kids didn’t know, and what I didn’t yet understand, was that my petite coquette act was a text book symptom of someone who’d been sexually molested as a child.
Now, I can see you sitting there; wallowing in pity for me and thinking of
how pathetic I sound. Wanna know the kicker? I didn’t let this get me. I didn’t let this define me. I didn’t let this become me. I didn’t let this end me. Ever.
For the kids calling me ‘four eyes’ I, without fail, countered with a succinct, “Four eyes are better than two”. When that girl, on class picture day, asked me to scrunch down a bit so she could be the tallest I said I would, but then, right before the click of the camera, I stood up as tall as possible. And those kids in High School who called me a slut, and started the rumour that I was pregnant? Well, one day I sat smack dab in the middle of the cafeteria and scarfed down a huge bowl of ice-cream and pickles for all to see. “Let them think I’m pregnant,” I said to myself, “I know I’m still a virgin.”
Life is funny in its propensity to deliver sweet irony and delicious Karma, and when I look back on everything now I can’t help but to chuckle. As the old adage goes, “Living well is the best revenge”. I graduated early from High School so my family could move to Florida where I was soon scouted by Ford Models. The next 12 years of my life were spent living in New York City, flying around the world for work, and hanging out with the rich, famous, and fabulous. No one called me ‘four eyes’, or ‘fatso’, or ‘thunder thighs’, or ‘giraffe’ (in fact, being a giraffe in that career is a plus!), or ‘slut’. I was just me. Just Sue.
Now I’m living in North Carolina with an incredible husband who spoils
me and my two young children who gift me each day with a life full of
love and laughter.
And, this is really the point, this is what I wish for every child to ingest and internalize, this is what I want everyone to try and teach their children: Bullies only have the power you give them. You have to believe they’re right for their accusations and verbal assaults to have impact. What’s more? After High School you become free. Your life becomes completely your own to do with what you will. You have the ability and opportunity to blossom and truly grow…far away from the toxicity of bullies.
I don’t spend a second of my day thinking about what the kids of my past said about me and to me. I understand that it really had nothing to do with me, but was them looking for a weakness, looking for something to make them feel better about themselves, or just indulging their innate meanness. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. *It. Wasn’t. About. Me.*
I implore you to do whatever you can to build your children to be strong and to know themselves…to love themselves, no matter what. This will help them from becoming victims of bullying and, possibly, prevent them from becoming bullies themselves. With all the stories we read about tragedies related to bullying, we, as parents, really have no choice. Teaching our children to be strong within themselves is a life skill, one that’s just as important as teaching them to read, write, and tie their shoes.