The story “The Hundred Dresses”, written by Eleanor Estes, talks about a girl named Wanda being bullied by her classmate, Peggy, in school. Wanda was bullied for many reasons. First, Wanda has a Polish last name, Petronski, which is hard to pronounce, and classmates used it to make fun of her. Also, Wanda says she has a hundred dresses and her classmates don’t believe it because she wears the same pale blue dress everyday to school. The Petronski then move away because the father doesn’t want Wanda to be bullied at school. Reading this story connects me very much to the bullying event my brother experiences recently. The kids at school said mean words to my brother and segregated him for no reason just because he is a top student in class. So what is the nature of bullying? What are the effects of bullying? And what should people do when they get bullied by others?
Bullying is an unwanted, aggressive behavior of taking mean actions or saying mean words, to cause people to get injured, feel isolated or hurt, or become miserable and depressed. Four types of bullying are recognized, including physical bullying, verbal bullying, social bullying, and cyber bullying. Physical bullying is the use of physical actions to damage the target’s body, like kicking, pushing, or pinching. Verbal bullying is when the bullyer uses verbal language to hurt the target’s feelings, like name calling, teasing, or insulting. Social bullying is to use various ways to say bad things behind the target’s back to other people to destroy the target’s social reputation or relationships. Cyber bullying happens when the bullyer uses social media to intimidate or threaten the target by sending humiliating images, posting negative messages, or sharing harmful information. Bullying can happen anywhere but usually during or after school hours in the playground, hidden corners of the school buildings, school buses, any electronic communication for school purposes. StopBulling.Gov conducted a survey in 2019 and showed that about 20% of students ages 12-18 and 19% of students in grades 9-12 experienced bullying nationwide.
People who are bullied could have negative physical, emotional, social, and academic effects. The consequence of bullying can cause long-term physical injuries. Bullied kids could be hit by a great force of the bullyer with dangerous items such as using a baseball bat to hit their stomach or punching their face with fist. Regardless if the bullying is on purpose or not, the mean action of the bullyer could cause irreversible damage to the body. As a result, the bullied kids emotionally reject going to school because they are afraid they would be picked up and get physically hurt again. Even though they are brave enough to go to school, they would be socially separated and isolated from other kids by the bullyer, which further hurts the feelings of the bullied kid. Gradually, such segregation causes the bullied kid socially awkward on how to interact with others. Moreover, the bullying would make the bullied kid absent from school or they cannot concentrate in class so they will have poor academic performance. A study by CDC researchers shows that 12.9% of teenagers missed school because of fearing bullying.
When seeing someone bullied or being bullied, people should stand up against the bullyer, report bullying to a trusted adult, or ignore the bullyer. Usually, the bullyers like to bully a target who looks physically or emotionally weaker to see his reactions to satisfy their feelings of being a “king”. When bullying happens, people need to be brave against the bullyer by loudly shouting with the right-hand palm facing them “STOP! Don’t Bully Me! It is NOT okay!” People need to let the bullyers know that they are stronger and they are not okay to be messed around. Or people can talk to a trusted person, like a teacher or the parents, about the whole bullying event. So the trusted person will inform the parents of the bullyer, hoping that their parents will concern the bullyer more and change their bullying behaviors. Another way is to ignore the bullying event. As mentioned before, the bullyer likes to pick on the weak person. If the bullyer see the target’s frightened or almost crying facial expressions, the bullyer would think he has more control over the target, empowering their bullying actions. So don’t react to the bullyer just “swim away” and the bullying will stop.
Honestly, bullying is a serious problem at school and we should take this matter seriously. While we all agree bullying is not acceptable and cannot be tolerable and we need to know how to handle the bullying, at the same time we need to understand the reasons why the bullying event happens or how to prevent the bullying event from taking place. Everything happens for a reason. No one wants to be a bully on purpose. Maybe something happens to the bullyer so he starts to hurt others. If we could understand what the bullyer thinks, reason with him, and show our compassion to him, maybe the bullying event could be prevented from happening again. Also, the potential target who looks emotionally or physically weak could exercise or do the sports more to strengthen their body or make a couple good friends. By doing so, when a bullying event happens, the target would be physically strong against the bullyer while getting help and protection from his friends.
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