When you hear things like this it just screams ignorance, and sometimes it’s hard to be mad ignorance, you feel sad, and perhaps you what to slap the shit out of it, but mad, mad just seems fruitless…
So here is the story:
A mother ( Tammy Jackson) in Moline Acres gets a call from the school saying that her daughter (Gabrielle) is being bullied because of her breasts – now the girl could be transferred to another school (away from her bullies-*note that the victim is the one who is being shipped out not the perpetrators) but there is really only one way to assure that it stops happening and that is of the girl to have a breast reduction, the child–CHILD is 13,in sixth grade *(note still growing an developing well under the age to have this sort of surgery done)
Now I did some checking, Moline Acres is in St. Louis County, Missouri The population was 2,442 at the 2010 census. This sounds like some Harper Valley PTA crap to me, where some operator/secretary was trying to be “helpful” I (and this might be wrong) picture her to like 65 and old fashioned kind of woman for whom in her day sexual harassment was the norm (think Mad Men) and she was thinking that “Sweetie where ever we send her those boobs are gonna follow so…” so I don’t think that she meant anything bad by the suggestion, I think that she certainly overstepped and she should not have given her two cents for sure. She spoke out of turn, that having been stated, it says something about how this woman felt this young, voluptuous girl should feel about her body. That 1) – since the knuckle headed boys couldn’t deal with her womanliness (albeit premature) then she should leave. She and her breast were the problem, the bullying boys get to stay but. she should run away. Or, because of course, this was going to happen everywhere (and all the time throughout her life) she might just consider cutting them off-I don’t want to call it “mutilation” because I think that when women choose this surgery it don’t think it is that. It is a choice that should not be judged (walk a mile in my bra…) but to suggest that she alter herself because others can not control their actions, behave civilly, deal with it…reduce her breasts because they attract too much attention..the wrong type of attention????… and to make the suggestion about a child a 13 year old, that is something to look at… and again I don’t think that this woman whomever she is meant any harm at all, in fact I think that for that woman, she was being protective of that little girl. And THAT is the scariest part.
Somewhere, somehow there are women (young and old) who think that the best protection from being a woman REDUCTION. Reduction of body or being—Reduce- breasts, bottom, reduce weight, become smaller, less threatening, less visible, invisible…
Instead we should be telling young girls and women alike to be bolder, louder, prouder, stronger, unapologetic, were RED. BE UNDENIABLE, UNFORGETTABLE, BE SEEN, HEARD, BE IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE…. (now step aside and let me get to my locker…)