True Beauty and Truly Ugly, Penney’s Award Winner!

Today, I learned a very hard lesson. I learned the worth of true friendship and the value of true beauty. See, in a world obsessed with artifice, it’s very easy to get led astray. We applaud the unnatural, respect the unscrupulous and deny the good. We find some sort of perverse pleasure in being made feel insecure and it is this addiction which denies us the basic right of happiness.

To be honest, I’m fed up with people. Deep down, I truly believe we’re all nasty, Machiavellian animals. The survival of the fittest, fight or flight; I suppose it’s rooted in our very bones. But recently, recently I’ve really started to feel a little fragile, and out of this vulnerability sprung awareness. Every joke I heard was at someone’s expense, and that’s grand, but when does the line between joking and bullying blur? When everyone finds a safety net in one victim, the true nature of humans can be seen; the brutal, merciless pack-mentality. The teenage years seem to be one, long exhibition of it.

“You got your…freshmen, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, the greatest people you will ever meet… and the worst. Beware of plastics.” Personally, I think the film ‘Mean Girls’ hit the nail bang on the head. Granted, it’s a clichéd Hollywood blockbuster, but I found the animal references quite apt not to mention the tale itself quite applicable to, oh I dunno, every secondary school in the world? There are always the stereotype ‘popular’ kids who in fact aren’t all that popular. There’s a general admiration for them. But when we stop and think, what exactly are we admiring? Is it the 3 inch think mask for their insecurity, or perhaps the shiny doubled-edged swords that cut down their fears?

I know that sounds awfully harsh and judgmental, but in my experience it’s often the truth. I know this from the beautiful, tanned goddesses of my prior school, my friends, but Christ deep down beneath the make-up is a vortex of problems and writhing insecurities. And the insecurities manifested themselves in their war paint. For years I watched the comments and ‘banter’ ooze from their lips, but it was horrible. Everyday it’s another blow to someone’s self-esteem, another knock to someone’s confidence until they recoil into a shell of your former self. But the worst part is that when these bullies aren’t there, someone else takes on their take role- picking on someone because they’re chasing after an unobtainable respect. I guess it’s the vicious cycle of bullying.

The tragic story of Pheobe Prince was splashed across the newspapers last month. Sadly, that I don’t think there would have been half as much coverage over here if the girl hadn’t grown up in Co. Clare. She was a girl whose optimism and spirit dissipated and was replaced with a burdening dread of going to school each day. I saw an interview with the local parents from her neighbourhood and their comments reinforce the afore mentioned theory. All they said was ‘Yeah, well it really has opened my eyes. That could’ve been my kid; my daughter is the same age as her. It could happen to anyone, it could have been my little girl.” Well it wasn’t your little girl, it was the Princes’ little girl. The bullies that drove her to suicide were once ‘little girls’ too. So are you now going to actively tackle this epidemic to ensure no other ‘little’ lives are ended or are you content with the fact that your own daughter is still alive?

Pheobe chose death over life. She was a young girl. That’s the power some people, subconsciously or consciously, hold over others. In a way, it is other people that choose our place in society. And often it is the people in the most power who have the lowest self-esteem, the least control and the most problems. It really intrigues me as to why we feel the need to better ourselves. Of course there is some sort of primal instinct in us to push us to be predator rather than prey. But now we have conscious awareness and a myriad of emotions- including empathy. Why do we continue to harm our fellow humans? From the media to Iraq, we’re never happy until we are sure someone else is not.

War has always been a baffling concept to me. I just don’t understand how it works. What use is it killing legions of innocent people? And how does one know if they’ve won the war? When they’ve wiped out an entire nation? When nobody can fight back? It’s only through the pawns and peasants that kings claim land that isn’t theirs. Through fear, force and intimidation we let people choke on their own noose- this isn’t how life is meant to be.

Religion has been a major factor in our development as a society. As Einstein famously said “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind”. Recently I’ve been asking myself, do we actually need either? We use both as weapons, not as tools. Of course science has been extremely useful to us, and religion (in some cases); I’m not denying that. However, we seem to be missing the point. Leaps and bounds are being made in the medical fields and life expectancy is at an all-time high, but dying is a natural process which we must acknowledge and embrace instead of fighting. My problem with religion is that it uses death as leverage over life. There are some good points it makes (in relation to ‘thou shalt not kill thy neighbour’), but generations of Irish people have been manipulated by shame and intimidation by these so called people of God. Is this not bullying too?

Unfortunately, bullying is a part of life which I think will always be present. It’s simultaneously a protection mechanism, a means of attack and a blood sport. I feel sorry for the bullied but it’s the bullies that really deserve our sympathy. At the end of the day, they are the ones stuck in their own sadistic darkness.

This essay won one of the €100 vouchers generously donated by Penneys.

Author’s name with the Editor