Bullying
Wanting to belong

Have you been teased or been a bully yourself?
It's a common experience as girls develop their individuality. Katti, Kemba, Rachel, and Wendy tell how they handled it.

Katti believed her fellow cheerleaders were her friends. She felt a sense of belonging. Suddenly, everything changed. Katti was teased for how she dressed. "It was horrible," she says. "They were so rude and hurtful towards me."

Wendy was teased for wearing eyeglasses. "Four-eyes, geek," she says. "I heard that a lot." As a result of the teasing, Wendy grew depressed.

Kemba noticed that girls compete over appearance. "It feels like we're always trying to look the best or be the best at something," she says.

Rachel felt that pressure in junior high. "You're so insecure," she says of being that age. She listed questions that occupied her mind: Will people like me? Am I pretty and thin enough? Is my chest size OK? Is my hair color acceptable? Should I be nice, or should I be mean? What makes me cool?

She admits to a time she was the attacker. "I thought if I put other girls down, I would feel better," Rachel says. "I found out it doesn't work."

Rachel's best friend wrote her a letter about the way she was treating others. Then her parents talked with her, too. " I think deep down inside I knew that I wasn't treating others well," Rachel says. "And I felt really bad about it." Rachel made a decision to treat others with more respect. She started to feel better about herself.

Loneliness, depression, and fear are common among people who are bullied. Girls want to belong and, at the same time, struggle to become individuals.

Finally, Wendy quit caring about what others thought and said. "I got tired of listening to the in-crowd," Wendy says. "I just wanted to be myself."

Eventually, being "yourself" attracts people with common interests. Finding friends you can trust is key. "What's important," Katti says, "is that you can talk to someone, and they can really be there for you.

Through her experience, Rachel learned a lot about herself. "Now I know what really matters is how I feel about myself," she says, "and how I treat others."