As someone who got his fair of share of getting picked on as a kid, today I will wear pink.
I had braces. I had glasses. I was small. I did what my mom told me.
Add that up and chants of “spaz! spaz! spaz!” hang from the rafters at hockey practice, or a nickname of “mamma’s boy” gets tossed your way in the frat house.
“David Shepherd, Travis Price and their teenage friends organized a high-school protest to wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied…[They] took a stand against bullying when they protested against the harassment of a new Grade 9 student by distributing pink T-shirts to all the boys in their school.
‘I learned that two people can come up with an idea, run with it, and it can do wonders,’ says Mr. Price, 17, who organized the pink protest. ‘Finally, someone stood up for a weaker kid.’
So Mr. Shepherd and some other headed off to a discount store and bought 50 pink tank tops. They sent out message to schoolmates that night, and the next morning they hauled the shirts to school in a plastic bag.
As they stood in the foyer handing out the shirts, the bullied boy walked in. His face spoke volumes. ‘It looked like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders,’ Mr. Price recalled.
The bullies were never heard from again.” [source]
I’ve been wearing pink shirts for years, around 2003 I almost got into a fist fight in Willowbrook Mall over it. I had just come back from golfing, was rocking the pink and this guy looked and smirked as he walked by. I said “Excuse me?” He proceeded to tease and laugh at me for wearing a pink shirt. Keep in mind I’m in my 30s, he’s in his late 20s.. I could only chalk it up to being in Langley, a land of lesser enlightment. It degrades to where we’re almost at blows, yelling obscenities across a mall.
Over a pink shirt.
Today I will wear pink. I hope you will too.
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I too am was picked on all the way up until grade 11 … ( and when i say picked on .. i mean t.o.r.t.u.r.e.d. ) and for that .. I am too wearing pink.
I used to read your Blogs on MySpace religiously .. and just stumbled across this site of yours. I’m glad to be back … you are my favourite blogger Buzz
<33 .. tiff
Glad you found the site, Tiff..
I was a pretty lonely and put-upon kid in elementary school, but this strikes me as a pretty tedious campaign. To be brief, I got better.
But I refuse to be bullied into supporting this absurd feel-good cause! Maybe in the specific case of the kids above it was sensible, but I got a to-all email at work yesterday exhorting me to wear pink to work.
Today, I am wearing black and blue, plus this wristband:
http://store.ronniejohns.com/?show_product=HTFU
So, I guess I got over the being-bullied thing.
BTW, I gotta say that the pink-shirt-in-Langley anecdote probably says as much about you as about your dim-bulb taunter. You escalated to what over what? Buddha says: let it go.
You wanna get teased by random passers-by, try wearing spandex in public and get back to me (only on the bike; I’m not a complete anorak).
One more thing: a lot of this anti-bullying rhetoric ties into the theory that self-esteem is important to our little ones and other innocents.
Self-esteem is probably overrated.
[...] « Wear Pink Feb 27 [...]
Well Ryan, I happen to know enough about you to know you’re pretty damn special. In that, I mean your parents did a pretty incredible job enhancing your natural ability to be yourself and really not give a crap what other people think. You are a treasure to this world, and those who didn’t catch that missed out on someone pretty damn awesome.
I, on the other hand, care too much about what others think. I was picked on at school. I don’t want my kids to be picked on. People should just be nice. Parents should do more to make their kids respectful of others. Period. I’m wearing pink today, so in the case my kids get picked on hopefully someone else sticks up for them. I know your brother did.
Aw Amber, you’re pretty special yourself! Okay, mutual appreciation festival is over now :).
Okay, yes, it’s true, my younger (middle) brother was the enforcer in our family, not me. Probably because he spent most of our teenage years as the bigger, stronger, more athletic one :).
But in the general case, I have a hard time who is out there supporting the pro-bullying cause at this point. Aren’t we already drilling an anti-bullying message into kids pretty much from pre-school? I sure remember that kind of message in school myself. Heck, I bet even the bullies in school are wearing pink today, in support of going with the flow, or perhaps in support of looking good for the ladies.
My parents, as wonderful as they were and are, probably didn’t do much to enhance what could, through much of my youth, be summarized as social obliviousness. I was also pretty lucky in that high school was, for me, a LOT less alienating than the last years of elementary school. The apparent result was that my grades went all to heck in high school…
Also true: the only even remotely pink garment I own these days is a pair of socks that went through the wash with a red shirt. I don’t avoid pink per se, it’s just not a color that looks good on me.
Where was I? Effortless gestures are meaningless gestures. And if you’re into bad behavior at the mall, let me tell you the story of the time my lovely bride got punched in the arm by a stranger for what amounts to no damn reason at all.
“I could only chalk it up to being in Langley, a land of lesser enlightment.”
Does someone think people from Langley are less enlightened? I don’t live in Langley but I do take offence. Yes in this case this man was obviously in the wrong, however I don’t this everyone from Langley is like this man.
The further east you go from the downtown core, the more likely you are to run into a knuckle dragging neanderthal.. that’s all I’m saying.
Ryan, youre saying bullying is ok and kids should just get over it? Wow. Tell that to the kids who have committed suicide from being bullied so much. Oh wait! Theyre dead!