Pink Shirt Day

We celebrated Pink Shirt Day Aotearoa on Friday 17 May by wearing pink. 

Sam Stokes

You don’t belong here. Your muscles are undeveloped. Puberty will come any day now. How are you planning on fitting that ball dress? Do you really need that dessert? It’s undeniable. We have all been the receiver of a backhanded comment, physical abuse, or the wrath of a furious keyboard warrior. Bullying is a word thrown around so carelessly and yet it affects so many. Frankly, we are all flawed and imperfect. I can only imagine what a boring world it would be without diversity. Ideally, we would simply accept our individuality and learn to look past this trivial fact. However, the reality is that there will always be bullying around the corner.

So where do I come into the equation? Well, I, like many of you, have experienced first-hand the gut-wrenching feeling of bullying. In Year 11, I was still eagerly awaiting my growth spurt, and the combination of being somewhat of a late bloomer and young for my year left me dwarfed amongst my peers. One of the seniors took to calling me ‘monkey boy’ in a sing-song voice. While admittedly, my ears were proportionately quite big for my head and a recent buzz cut wasn’t doing me any favours, this significantly knocked back my self-confidence. For weeks I dreaded prep and meal times for fear of an unwanted encounter and further ridicule. One evening I was late to prep and forced to walk past the seniors. Sure enough came the taunt ‘monkey boy’, but this time followed by Gano’s definitive reply “oi don’t be ratchet to Stokesy.” And that was the end of it.

This is where you all come in. Inevitably you will be in the position where you become, through no fault of your own, a bystander of bullying. I challenge you to go against the Kiwi way of minding your business and speak out against it. You don’t have to be close to the person being bullied, or even on a name-to-name basis. Shutting down this behaviour can be a crucial turning point to restoring someone's confidence and giving them the courage to carry on. From my experience, the one who is bold enough to silence the passing of hurtful comments is looked up to by those around them. It is difficult to speak out against your peers, but the minor discomfort this may cause you pales in comparison to the feeling of being hunted and alone.

There are undeniable links between bullying and mental health issues, such as depression, insomnia and eating disorders. The little effort required for you to pass a hurtful comment has an exponentially greater impact on the person receiving the comment, and pushes them further down the rabbit hole of mental health battles. This shares similarities to Taika Waititi’s speech on racism: “but if i only give a little bit, will it even make a difference? Not to you, no, but to the people receiving the racism, they’ll be getting hundreds of small bits every day, so it will add up, it will be noticed”. When you feel something mean brimming on the edge of your tongue, I encourage you to push it aside. Honestly if your go-to conversation is tearing someone else down, picking apart their flaws, then maybe it's time you had a good look at your own.

And now we come to the timeless responses: “It's not that deep,” “It's just banter,” “Learn to take a joke,” and the incredibly passive-aggressive, “I’m just saying”. When a comment needs some sort of justification or begins with, “No offence but,” then my guess is you have, or are about to, cross just about all the crossable lines. It goes without saying that if you can predict a comment to be hurtful then it is not worth sharing. Ultimately, this all circles back to the classic mum move: “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say anything”.

I am certainly no saint, I have my fair share of moments where I say something I shouldn’t and instantly regret it. Fortunately, you and I come equipped out of the box with a state-of-the-art way of partially remedying our mistakes, otherwise known as an apology. We are all human. It is human to have flaws and imperfections. It is human to occasionally lose our cool and offend someone. And it's human to apologise and forgive. The difference between this and bullying however, is it takes effort to be a bully. So don’t be a bully, mully mully. 

Sadie Williams

Extensive research from specialists, mental health professionals, and psychiatrists all speak about the importance of addressing difficult topics openly and honestly. So, considering its anti-bullying week, I will be delving into issues of severe bullying and the extreme impacts that follow, including suicide. If discussing these topics triggers any discomfort feel free to leave the room.

I developed a friendship with a girl, who although several years older than me, became a very close friend. We all know those people who embody the sun, well, she was one of them. Always smiling, my friend was deeply involved in the community through volunteering, an advocate who spread awareness of many worldwide issues, and most importantly a person who was not only friendly but cared about everyone she came in contact with - no matter who you were or where you came from, she was always there to listen, offer guidance, and be a shoulder to cry on.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that my friend had experienced her fair share of bullying and the mental health impacts that followed all throughout this period. However, from the way she was always laughing, smiley, and so positively conducting herself, I don’t think anyone would’ve truly known what she was going through. At least I didn’t. I remember when I found out that my friend had passed away, and how confused I was. How could someone who did so much good and left such a fundamental mark on my life be taken away from us? I watched as her mum would put out heartbreaking videos about her own journey with grief online, and her best friends dedicated Instagram posts in her memory. I still recall that hole-like feeling in my stomach, a sense of injustice in that the world had just lost someone so loved. I found out later that this was a result of her taking her own life. And in that moment, I realised how profound bullying and bully culture can actually be.

Now I share this story today because, like my friend, sometimes the people you least expect might be going through things completely unimaginable and incomprehensible to our own lives - and that actually our words and our actions can have lasting impacts far greater than what we intend. Quite frankly, bullying although an epidemic, is also, on the contrary, viewed by some as a ‘right of passage.’ We always hear phrases like, “Some people just need to be bullied,” or “It builds character.” When in actuality, I believe these views are misguided.

In New Zealand in particular, we often are forced to brush off hurtful words as just jokes or harmless banter. We're told to laugh things off, to toughen up, to not take things so seriously… otherwise you’re a “buzz kill,” “boring” and will most likely cause you to become even more of a target.

But where do we draw the line?

What happens when there are times when others' words have made us think we’re not good enough, times when their actions have made us feel as though we are not wanted, and times when school - a place supposed to feel like a safe environment - has been the place where it feels anything but.

Very quickly, the banter is no longer funny and, therefore, no longer harmless. Thoughts of: “What is wrong with me” and “Why don't they like me?” can turn into, “Is the world better without me?” and “What is the point?”

Because of how we are expected to react as though everything is always fine, bullying has become so hard to detect. It's similar to that feeling when you manage to pull off an embarrassing fall and everyone's laughing at you, so you’re pressured to laugh as well, despite the excruciating pain you may be feeling. There's nothing worse than having to fake a laugh through tears. Just like there's nothing worse than pretending that everything is ok, when it's really not.

Now I know it's very unrealistic to simply go up to someone and say, “Stop it, I don’t like it”

Because let's be real, bullying isn’t just some silly little primary school thing that disappears by the time the bell rings for morning tea. And without the proper care and support needed, it can become something pretty serious.

Leading professionals say the most effective way to deal with bullying is to talk about it.

If you even think you’re being bullied, tell someone, anyone, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have that someone, our school offers amazing support services, teachers, mentors, and if anything, there's always me. Outside of this environment, heaps of teenagers also contact programs such as Youthline which means you can talk to someone completely removed from your situation in full confidentiality. There is no denying how scary it is to reach out for help, especially when telling someone that you have been bullied can be a completely isolating and vulnerable experience.

Something I wish I could’ve told my friend is that each of you knows that you are loved, appreciated, and worthy. If you take anything from this speech, I want to stress that, despite all the darkness there is hope, and there are people around you who will help you find that hope,

For those who cannot resonate with the feeling of being bullied, I encourage you to seek to make others' days better. As cliche as it sounds, it's something which I think we can all get better at. You will never truly know what someone else is going through. The boy who makes friends with everyone or the girl who sits at the back of your math class are entirely different people on the inside than they appear to be.

I touched on fearlessness in my introduction to the school. So, in that spirit, be brave; don’t just stand there and listen to the hurtful things people around you do. If someone you know has been left out, talked about negatively without reason, or you see active bullying happen in person, I challenge you to actually say something. It could make the world of difference, and you might just save someone's life. Remember, it's not about being a hero; it's about being human and just looking out for one another.