Courtney McGrailTime changes everything
‘Death-witch-black-metal-Goths’ was the name coined for my group of friends by a group of boys in school a couple of years above us – clearly the pride of Ireland’s literary heritage!
Lashings of black eye-liner, mascara and the palest shade of foundation was our usual war-paint, teamed with individually altered and accessorised school uniforms. Rings on every finger, black nail polish, chunky silver bracelets and piercings were the usual ‘bling’ that were removed with experienced rapidity at the sight of an approaching authority. Yeah, we were cool…
Unfortunately not everyone in the school thought so and from 13 to 16, teenagers can be particularly spiteful towards members of another ‘clique’. A study by Trinity College revealed that 16% of secondary school kids had been bullied at one time and that one in four girls and one in six boys have been the victims of cyberbullying. Online bullying was not an issue for us, but we had everything from cruel taunts and general spite to having the ‘popular’ girls throw our school bags in bins, among other things.
Movies like Mean Girls and what was our favourite, a lesser known movie called Disturbing Behaviour, outlined the typical groups. There are the nerds, the popular boys, the popular girls, sports types and rich kids, the younger want-to-be popular kids, the indies, the emos, the hippys, the hipsters and so on. As Nick Stahl says in Disturbing Behaviour, “It’s a class system, here at CB High, Stevie Boy.”
Artistic license
But, what looks like artistic license on account of the screenwriter is actually real life as far as I have experienced it anyway. But also in my experience, films like these actually portray the prejudice with which certain groups are treated extremely true to life. The cause and effect relationship here is debatable – has Hollywood taken a truth and projected it? Or have we taken that projection and acted it out thereby establishing a social norm?
The teenage years are difficult. You are thrown quite quickly from a situation where you are an innocent, naïve child to being a semi-responsible young adult, with the moral competency to know better. However, the school environment is not like normal life. Mean Girls compares high school teenagers to wild animals in Africa. High school or secondary school has its own eco-system and in order to survive this eco-system we form groups and so the ‘clique’ system is created. Just like the herbivores and small animals, the weaker social groups fear the carnivores and the dominant ‘popular’ groups at the top of the social structure, because if they put a foot wrong, they are devoured.
In many ways, my group did not help ourselves in this social hierarchy, but we decided that if we were happy in ourselves that it did not matter what anyone else thought of us or called us. If one of those girls called us a ‘freak’ we acted like freaks. Knowing they would pass it on we would say strange things to them and make up outlandish, although semi-believable stories about ourselves to show that it didn’t bother us. They could say anything about us, did we care? Who were the insecure people – the people minding their own business or the people putting other people down to make themselves feel better?
“If someone hits you, hit them back and hit them harder.” That was what my mother taught me when I was a child – her version of an eye for an eye! Standing up for yourself is one thing, but stooping to their level – was it really worth it? At that age, it was. But all these things become trivial as time moves merrily along.
Cool
In the last two senior years of secondary school the same crowd of girls that had bullied and mocked us, were going to the same venues for local bands as we had been going to for the last four years. The same crowd of girls were now wearing leather jackets and listening to rock music and trying to be friends with us, because now they had decided it was ‘cool’.
Should we have taken that moment to revel in their hypocrisy? Was there any benefit to acting superior to get revenge for years of being condescended? No, absolutely not. It was not worth stooping to their level – as Gandhi said, “an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind”. Having the maturity and strength of character to let things go is a far greater achievement than trying to get the upper hand.
Everyone goes through phases, and rather than mock and bully anyone else for their individuality, it’s better to embrace our differences and accept people for who they are because school days are just a fraction of a life that is full of possibilities.