Fat Friends

Like a lot of people, I spend an inordinate amount of time on Facebook just checking out the posts and photos of many of the people who I grew up with. The "what they're doing now?" question seems quite fascinating when you drag up the 'remembrances of things past' and see that scrawny looking kid who has been pumping iron daily since the day he left school probably with the taunts of bullies still ringing in his ears.

As a teacher it distresses me that children are so cruel to each other and that, despite the millions of pounds invested in trying to 'beat the bully', we still have such a huge problem within schools. There are plenty of people who think the 'take like a man, laddie', approach should apply and believe me it's an attractive one after you've broken up an argument because some one dropped their pencil and someone else called them a 'peanut' and then 'he said', 'she said' etc etc you almost wish you could lock them in a room and come back when they've sorted it or killed each other! But what is concerning is the amount of adults who can tell you the pain that they still suffer when thinking back to their school days.

Everyone says that school is 'the best days of your life' but I for one hated school which makes it pretty ironic that I now am still in one 5 days a week. I was fat and painfully shy and quite a know-it-all which is never a good combination! So recently I had a Facebook message from a girl who I started school with in year 1 and graduated with in year 12. She asked me how I was and what I was doing etc and I replied with a polite summary of my life these days and wished her well. The thing is that this girl was one of several who made my life hell for 12 years. OK some weeks I was in her good books and that made everything seem great but mostly I just wasn't cool enough, pretty enough or skinny enough to be in her gang. Thing is that this girl was no skinny-minny herself but unlike myself, who tried to shrink into the background and hope no one noticed me, this girl hid behind a manipulative popular girl facade, controlling who was 'in' this week and who was allowed to collect her lunch for her and walk next to her on the way to the school bus. I remember one lunch hour when we were about 11 years old, we had sports day coming up and although "Mary" (not her real name) despised sports, she had made herself in charge of the cheer squad. The cheer competition was a prestigious event and added 50 points to the winning team's total and I guess Mary saw this as a way of getting a bit of glory even though she fully intended to prance around in the stands all day rather than running! So Mary had the team out the back of B block one lunch time 'auditioning' those who were going to actually be allowed to be in the cheer squad. Of course I was desperate to be in it so I went along and waited to perform the chants that we had written and learn a short routine with the pom poms. Oh no, we didn't get that far ladies and gentlemen, the one and only test was how we arched our backs correctly like a dancer (not a good look when you've got a belly that arrives about an hour before you do!) and how well we could point our toes. Needless to say my belly stuck out to much and I didn't have the correct arch to my foot. These observations were made loudly in front of all the other (skinny) girls, who nodded sagely and agreed with her. The memory of that burning feeling in the back of my throat as I tried hard not to cry is still as vivid as ever and the feelings of rejection and isolation are still as vivid as ever.

As soon as I graduated from high school I moved away to attend university, ( I had only just turned 17). I studied Drama and pretended I was full of confidence. I did some further study and became a teacher and developed skills I never thought I'd have. Somewhere along the line, the pretense became a reality and I realised that I was full of confidence and I had achieved and experienced many things that many of the people I grew up with had not done; I was alright.

But this week I realised that those scars are not very deeply hidden when once again I became a bullying victim based solely on the way that I look. Let me just add that I have never done the "lose-all-the-weight-and-show-those-bastards" thing, I have always yo-yo-ed up and down between 'super-obese (according to the BMI scale) and just plain 'obese' so I should expect that there are always going to be comments made about my appearance, nevertheless it still infuriates me that people think they have to right to say hurtful things to others. Recently I have piled back on a lot of weight to the point that it's become noticeable. School's are not the best place to stick to a healthy eating plan but I have made the most of that in recent weeks! 2 weeks ago, a girl called me a 'fat bitch' and I was angry, not that she called me fat but because of her behaviour. So why the difference between that and 2 days ago where I left my class to their own devices (sackable offence I'm sure), because I refused to be reduced to tears in front of them?

It was a Wednesday afternoon lesson with a difficult group of year nines, I was feeling fed-up and cross as the previous day members of the same year group had stolen a whole lot of stuff from my desk. The lesson wasn't going anywhere, not until I was happy that they weren't going to go crazy as soon as I allowed them to move. A group of boys started it, "oinking" when I went to the door to take a message; pushing their noses up like pig snouts; singing the 'Peppa Pig' tune; asking me if I ate lots of sweets etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was a comment by a particularly nasty piece of work who asked me whether or not it was 'a big burger' that had been stolen from my desk - at that point I left because the alternative was to swear at him and throw a stapler at his head. And it was then that I realised that even though I pretend that I don't care about the way that I look, I do, deeply because throughout my childhood there was always someone to remind me that I wasn't good enough for the complex and bizarre standards that they had decided on.

Bullying is alive and well in a school near you! And what are we to do about it? I don't know the answer to the problem but I do know it's not something that we can continue to sweep under the carpet and just put down as 'one of those things' that we all do during childhood - to do that would be to advocate the behaviour of the many bullies who have gone on to become to the oppressors and the dictators who have left their indelible mark on our mutual history.

cringe-worthy moments

It was sunny when I woke up, which was quite fortunate as we all know how crazy it is to get a car park at the hospital and I'd planned to walk there for my appointment with the gynaecologist . Of course I hadn't really thought through the fact that it's year 11 study leave and living in the town that you work in makes it impossible to ever skive off work and just go shopping, let alone go to the hospital! On the way there I walked past a few parents who I recognised from parents' evenings and although my reason for being off work was fully legitimate, such is the constant guilt that I felt I needed to shout cheerily across the street to them, "Hello Mrs Doe......yes I teach Johnny but I'm not in school today because I'm off to have a camera stuck up my vagina....... yes yes, jolly inconvenient I know...... yes I'm sure it's not as painful as having children Mrs Doe but teaching Johnny is quite painful enough, well must be going now".

At the hospital he receptionist laughed at my attempt to pronounce colopscopy and left me to wait amongst all the bulbously pregnant women waiting for scans. I resisted to the urge to shout at them, "Don't do it! They'll grow up to make my life hell! but then I thought that was a bit harsh when the poor things were waiting to push those sods out in a few short weeks.

I was taken in to the gynaecologist's office by the world's nicest nurse - I wanted to slap her for calming me so effectively when I knew it was going to get worse in a few short moments - and those moments definitely were short when I realised that I knew the consultant! Well I had met him, a few times through his wife but I banked on the fact that he had no idea who I was and that he wasn't going to home and say' "well dear, you'd never guess whose vagina I was up to my elbows in today".

It was over relatively quickly but I thought I deserved Starbucks to recover from the mental trauma of it all. I thought I was being clever by taking my coffee upstairs to hide out but it seems I wasn't the only one to think that'd be a good idea because there, canoodling on the sofa with her (much older) boyfriend was a 16 year old student! She was on study leave so not technically doing anything wrong but there wasn't much study going on there!

So the moral dilemma - what do you do when you know full well that guy is total dick (let's face it most men barely scrape above just being a little bit of a dick at the best of times but they can't help that fatal flaw of the species) who is playing upon this girl's most potent and powerful insecurities to get what he wants? Who knows if pretending I didn't recognise her was the right thing to do or not but I just sat down and had my coffee and then left. This girl is stunning, she could have played the lead in Slumdog Millionaire or any other Bollywood film but being beautiful doesn't stop you from making silly mistakes because you think someone is offering you the love and affection you so desire. Part of me wanted to shout at her and tell that he was the scum of the earth, that he would never speak to her older brother about dowries and give her expensive jewelry for Eid or marry her to take her away from her shrew of a mother, that to him she was a vampish plaything for him to brag about to his mates when she finally conceded her virginity to him and that he would send to his uncles in Kashmir for a 'proper' wife from the village rather than making an 'honest' woman of her. But the other part of me wanted her to have to have the right to defy the emotional abuse of her mother, to give 2 fingers up to the abusive control of her older brother and to be able to exert her right as an independent young woman to act as she pleased with who she wanted in a country that promotes the freedom of the individual. Unfortunately I know that at some point, her heart will be broken and that is the failing of feminism, we may fight for equality and the right to not be judged against hypocritical standards that say it's ok for men to behave in a certain way and not for women, but when it comes down to it, it is our own hearts who betray us time and again.