Poll: Bullied teen recieves free plastic surgery

[Samurai Silhouette]

Good for her, if it's a handout and allows her to live a much more comfortable life without all the TOTALLY UNNECESSARY HARASSMENT. I don't see the problem here. What's the alternative? Lost opportunities? Shattered ego for life? Suicide? "Oh well she could have been strong and shrugged off the bullying and been herself." Get off your high horse. We live in a very ugly society that needs to be fixed as well. But we all know that's not going to change. So again, good for her and the charity that helped this girl live a normal life.

 

[A Distant Star]

It just as a solution, completely doesn't address the underlying problem. It also just reinforces the idea that aesthetics are the most important aspiration young girls can live up to. It's wrong headed and doesn't actually help the problem at all.

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

You know what would have been great? If she'd had her ears enlarged. Like, made her head eighty percent ear. Then pierced both ears, ran a chain between them, and hung a pendant from the middle of the chain reading "Fuck you. I am objectively better than you in every way, you snivelling little shits." Big pendant obviously, hurt the new ears a bit, but worth it in my opinion.

Not that the option she went with was entirely terrible. I'm a little concerned, as a lot of others seem to be, that she's changing herself to appease the aforementioned snivelling little shits, but if she genuinely wanted her ears pinned back and wasn't simply responding to pressure, I suppose it's her choice.

 

[Yan007]

Maybe this could be considered as caving in to bullying, but the final result speaks for itself. On looks alone, she exponentially improved her odds of having opportunities in life.

She had male-ish features and now she's a beautiful young woman. Shallow? Yes, but that's life.

 

[Siege_TF]

Well if she was in Canada and wanted the bullying to stop she could have waited until she got a car and simply ran over a few of the bullies; it's silly how little people are punished for anything they do behind the wheel. Still, martial arts lessons are a lot cheaper and have better long term benefits than plastic surgery, and also helps to stop bullying, but that's a 'leading a horse to water' situation, except in the case of a tennager you are dealing with a much more obstinate creature, with a far smaller brain.

What I'm getting at is 'tennager does stupid thing' is a 'dog bites man' news story, and goes along with 'sun rises in the east' and 'river flows from mountain into valley'. It wouldn't be newsworthy except as an example of how broken the system is.

 

[Nexxis]

Although I don't completely agree with the decision, I worry about her future. Her body is still growing and developing, so I wonder if the plastic surgery will change with it, or if she'll have to just get more plastic surgery as time goes on.

Also, I believe that plastic surgery isn't going to help in the long run. Even if every kid is beautiful, there will still be something to bully them about. This is a band aid on a broken leg.

 

[Lonan]

What a horrible solution to bullying. Send in the police to patrol schools and arrest bullies for their various crimes (physical assault, harrassment, etc.) and people will stop committing suicide over their terrible treatment.

 

[Siege_TF]

What a horrible solution to bullying. Send in the police to patrol schools and arrest bullies for their various crimes (physical assault, harrassment, etc.) and people will stop committing suicide over their terrible treatment.

Let's not go overboard, that didn't work when America adopted the integrated school system, and instances of bullying/assault didn't exactly skyrocket when the authorities were removed.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened. How embarrasing...

 

[Lonan]

What a horrible solution to bullying. Send in the police to patrol schools and arrest bullies for their various crimes (physical assault, harrassment, etc.) and people will stop committing suicide over their terrible treatment.

Let's not go overboard, that didn't work when America adopted the integrated school system, and instances of bullying/assault didn't exactly skyrocket when the authorities were removed.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened. How embarrasing...

I'm Canadian, and I've never heard of this "integrated school system", but you say it actually involved police officers in schools preventing bullying? And for some reason they were removed and bullying skyrocketed afterwards?

 

[DarkRyter]

That's one hell of a surgeon.

 

[lunavixen]

I don't think it is a realistic stion, offering free counselling and access to psychiatrists I could understand and support, but plastic surgery? It's very risky, especially if done on kids and young teens as they are still growing, it'd want to be extremely drastic for me to be able to see it as a viable option to reduce bullying.

I was bullied from Kindergarten to Year 12 for various reasons, and the teachers could do little to stop it, suspending the bullies and detention was all they could really do, and the bullies saw suspension as a little in term holiday (as you can tell, I didn't go to a good school), I was not just verbally bullied, but physically too. It can be very hard to deal with.

 

[Gigano]

If she wanted it, and her parents allowed it, then it's nobody else's business.

People can of course lament it, but unless they want to step on the individual right to be the sovereign of ones own body - which would make them far more problematic and disgusting than this - then that's all they can do: Powerlessly lament.

 

[1337mokro]

Teaching your kid to forever run away from their problem and not solve the problem but rather cover it up. Teaching them that in fact your outward appearance really is the only thing that matters, that when even the tiniest fraction of your appearance isn't conforming to the norms set by the society you live in you better get that fixed rather than grow thick skin.

Yeah I don't see a problem there at all.

Here is the thing. Is her confidence now solidified? What if someone comes along and STILL makes fun of her ears? Will she go into surgery again? Will she have two extras like she did this time? Will her ears become Michael Jackson's nose?

I think the King of Pop is an excellent example of how surgery cannot alter that inside the damage and doubt will always be there.

Oh sure getting horrible deformities altered is fine, I'm not saying the guy who is missing an entire ear can't get surgery to attach a new one or the tip of his nose got shaved off in an accident and he wants to graft skin on it.

But this? She had big ears big fucking whoop. She got bullied for it and that is of course horrible. Fix the bullying. Don't fix the ears. Fixing the ears basically confirms the notion that if someone sees a flaw, it is a real flaw with you. It's not their perception or just their opinion. No the flaw is actually there.

I would love to see how she deals with her first wrinkle after this.

Judging by the CNN video not much changed either. Just the ears and some tucks. At the risk of an implied statutory, I'd hit that post and pre op in 4 years.

 

[RN7]

I don't know about all this. There are some nasaty looking people out there, and they could do looking less nasty so as not to offend my aesthetic tastes.

In all seriousness this is stupid. I don't see how looking any different will change their opinion about her. They'd probably just find something new to make fun of.

 

[RedLister]

What is dodgy is my own ears are bigger then that and i got a 2 scars over my right eye to boot. Instead of throwing money at the problem they could of just killed the problem at it's core. The poncy wankers bullying her in the first place. Should of gave them a good old hidin. But oh dear people too scared to discipline nowadays.

Just her having the surgery has shown them bullies that they have won. It will not stop the bullying. May probably even make it worse.

 

[Siege_TF]

What a horrible solution to bullying. Send in the police to patrol schools and arrest bullies for their various crimes (physical assault, harrassment, etc.) and people will stop committing suicide over their terrible treatment.

Let's not go overboard, that didn't work when America adopted the integrated school system, and instances of bullying/assault didn't exactly skyrocket when the authorities were removed.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened. How embarrasing...

I'm Canadian, and I've never heard of this "integrated school system", but you say it actually involved police officers in schools preventing bullying? And for some reason they were removed and bullying skyrocketed afterwards?

I'm referring to America's switch from black/white segregation to integration, but IIRC it was the army reserves, not the cops. I don't remember much about the details aside from what was in a few movies because I'm Canadian too.

 

[esperandote]

What would have happened if the bullies just choosed to pick on her about other thing? Would she have another surgery? Schools just should have thougher rules on bullying.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

How i dealt with bullies:

1. Ignored them until they got bored
or
2. Punched them repeatedly

I did not cut off my own face