A12
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2013
VIEWPOINT
Address: The Surrey Now, #201 7889 132nd St., Surrey, B.C. V3W 4N2
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Publisher: Alvin Brouwer
Pink Shirt Day
And the award for bullying... GuestColumn Bob Groeneveld
I
t’s kind of ironic, isn’t it, that the Oscars happened so close to Pink Shirt Day? After all, Pink Shirt Day was about raising awareness about the negative effects of bullying, and maybe even doing something about it. And the aftermath of the Academy Awards is just about the biggest, universally sanctioned bully-fest going. Kids who stop to think about it will immediately recognize the fashionbullying that fills the entertainment “news” channels and yellow journalism tabloids, and overflows into supposedly more legitimate news venues, including top television news stations, news magazines, and national and regional newspapers (and some community newspapers will manufacture a way to dip their toes into this foetid pond, too). I was flipping through the news channels early
Monday morning, still too early for all the Oscar winners to get to the hangover stage from their awards partying. I caught the tail-end of one “news” item in which Jennifer Aniston was being raked over the coals for wearing a dress that “shouldn’t have been at the Oscars.” And her hair was apparently not up to snuff, either. Not properly styled in the latest fashion. The comment went something along the lines of “yes, we like the ‘Rachel hair’ (an allusion to her role as Rachel in her previous life as one of the stars on the hit television sitcom Friends), but she could have done something with it.” That snide delivery was followed up with a list of derisively helpful suggestions. Other channels were filled with comments about the “losers” who were judged by the Motion Picture Academy to be only the second-to-fifth (or sixth) best achievers in their categories in the entire entertainment industry. Children just love to pick on each other this way. Schoolgirls, especially, like to find fashionable reasons
Why wouldn’t kids pick away at each others’ scabs like too many chickens trapped in a tiny coop? to ostracize classmates who are not deemed worthy of inclusion in “the group.” The wrong clothes, or the wrong hairdo, or the wrong makeup (or no makeup at all, god forbid!) make the odd one out an easy target for a bully onslaught. The guys, too, can sniff out a failed trip to the barber, or an unfortunate choice of sneakers, although they’re more likely to pick away at a brain too full of intelligence and not enough manly sporting aptitude. And why not? Why wouldn’t kids pick
away at each others’ scabs like too many chickens trapped in a tiny coop? Our entertainers have somehow become our most influential and socially powerful class. And it sometimes seems that they and their publicity machines veritably exist to bully each other, with fashion-unconsciousness often the weapon of choice for the females of the species, and a shallowly questionable choice of a mate often the wimpy male entertainer’s soft underbelly. Meanwhile, we viewers
and consumers of their entertaining antics, pile on, bullying them all into anorexia and a variety of other debilitating neuroses that too often result in fatal self-medication with illicit drugs. And then we cry for them. Oh! how we shed those tears of grief for a life lost too soon, before they could give us a few more wounds for our seemingly unlimited supply of salt!
If you didn’t wear something pink on Wednesday, then at least turn off the TV when they start gushing about someone’s “wonderfully clever” backward necklace while condemning someone else for a hairdo. Bob Groeneveld is editor of the Langley Advance, a sister paper to the Now. To read Bob’s blog, scan this page with Layar.
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