Things you have been bullied or ridiculed about

[Frenchboat]

My dc is starting school soon and has inherited my wild, curly hair. I'm worried she will be bullied like I was.

Having curls has made me feel ugly and ashamed all my life. I was called names and even had my hair yanked. I was called ugly. All because my hair didn't lie straight. I really hope things have moved on a dc won't go through the same thing.

So I guess I want to know what things you have been picked on about as a child or even now, as these things make you feel
Inferior, things can deeply hurt for years.How did you regain confidence?

My teeth, my accent, my foreign surname, my freckles. Gosh, probably more!
People just pick whatever they can think of if they're bullies, and incidentally I love curly hair.
I think most schools are better with dealing with bullies these days.

Being quiet, being shit at sport (was always the last to be picked for PE) went to an all girl's school so very bitchy, hated it at the time but looking back realise I got off lightly compared to some :(

Having frizzy hair.
Wearing thick-lensed NHS spectacles.
Being overweight.
Going through puberty (and how!) while still at primary school - I still cringe when I remember trying to get changed discreetly in a corner of the communal swimming pool changing room while the "popular" girls tried to force me to turn round so everyone could gawp at my breasts...

For being 'posh' - I wasn't, at all. I had a wide vocabulary and enunciated properly, is all.

For being quiet and academic. My sister is considerably older than me and I was effectively raised as a hothoused only child who found it easier to talk to adults. I wasn't shy, but I became very introverted over the years.

For liking music and bands that were considered 'uncool'.

Eventually, for struggling with depression and self harm. A supposed friend found out about the self harm and went blabbing to people. It was a horrible time and I shrank even further into myself.

I was desperately unhappy at school. A lot of those attitudes from others have followed me into adulthood as well - nothing's different really, just nastier in many ways. I'm grateful every day that DS1 is a bright, sociable little boy. I'm actually welling up remembering how awful it all was.

So many..
Being short, being foreign, being 'posh' (see 'foreign'), being academic, not being sporty enough to make up for being academic, and being Catholic.

Secondary - being fat (was underweight, developed eating disorder, still teased for being fat), being crap at sports, not having a local accent and not being rich.

It was a bit of a lightbulb moment when I realised not only that the people bullying me were insecure, but realising what their insecurities were - and that I was probably better positioned than them as I didn't have to spend my time picking on other people to make myself feel better.

I did meet a couple of my bullies when I was in my twenties - it was weird how invested they still were, as if they wanted me to confirm that they'd really upset me and I'd never been the same since. It did make me wonder if shoving me into a locker was really the high point of their lives - how sad if true!

Nothing at primary school, we were all lovely kids but at secondary school I was tortured. For the way I walked, that I played a musical instrument, for being "full of myself", for having a fat face for having "big hair", I absorbed all this and decided the bullies must be right. In reality I went up to secondary a happy and confident girl to someone who walked around with head down afraid to make eye contact with any girls. As adults we know bullies are cowards with extremely low self esteem and whatever they bully you for says far more about them than it does about you. As self conscious children/ teenagers though being tortured daily this is hard to grasp. I will say though it hasn't scarred me, just made me stronger (Christina Aguilera puns welcome ) and I'm so pleased I never wrestled with pigs in shit...I do wish I had stuck up for myself a bit more though.

Spots
NHS plastic glasses
Frizzy hair
Being posh
Being skinny with 'fake boobs' (they weren't )

However my mate was teased for having lank hair, wearing contacts lenses (too good for glasses) and being fat with no boobs.

It never occurred to me until adulthood that they were just nasty people. It wasn't me, it was them.

My appearance, name, hair colour and cut. No boobs, too skinny etc....
What gave me confidence? My parents, knowing that I am loved, and leaving school when I discovered that teenage girls do not rule the world

Forgot to add big nose! But that was more jokes being thrown my way about it and it was all good fun (no malicious intend because whoever said it got the same treatment back!) but it did affect me in the long run...especially coupled with all those teen magazines that always showed beautiful flawless faces. And acne too which I got later in life (college)

Just for being shy I was dealing with a lot at home as my DB was on drugs.
Clothing was another we didn't necessarily have a lot of money to get the latest things. When I got a job at 15 I relished in been able to buy the latest trends.

DP is ginger got bullied once but he has such a am quick tongue he would shot someone down in a heartbeat. My DS wears glasses and sometimes people would call him blind. I told him not give them the power to affect him that people will call someone on anything these days.

I'm middle aged so was at primary school in the 60s and secondary school in the 70s. Things were different then.

I was bullied at secondary school... for being skinny. I was what would now be a size zero (maybe smaller) til I was about 20... It was the height of unfashionable to be thin at a time when the 'fashionable' girls seemed to be size 12 or 14 (which I think is actually much healthier than the societal concept of female beauty these days, but still, if you didn't fit the 'norm'...)

I was also bullied, not a primary school where it happened, but at comprehensive school for... wait for it... having a dead mother. Yes. Nice, eh? My theory even at the time was that the unimaginable had happened to me and every time they looked at me, it reminded them.

One day, in what is now called Year 8 or maybe 9, I overheard one of the worst bullies in my form - a girl called Sharon - turn to her best friend (Jayne - see how their names are engraved on my memory!) and say: "Her mother's dead. I think we shouldn't bully her." And they stopped. Just that fast. I loathed them forever, though and never trusted them.

I think in retrospect that decision of Shazzer's had more to do with the fact they'd heard I had a very unpleasant stepmother.

And the last one was for being Jewish (although I wasn't).

My dad came from a nearby city's Jewish area, and these lovely 1970s' school kids decided he was - their word - a "Yid". I capitalised on their mistake by telling my form teacher I wasn't going to do assembly anymore as I was Jewish and it was against my religion... she believed me so I got several years of never having to go to a single assembly ever again! Brilliant. I think that one backfired on them.

ETA: I dunno if other former secondary school bullied kids have the same phenomenon but... I never bought or kept in the house or let my dad buy old school photos. So I hadn't seen them in years.

Not so long back, someone from my old village started a FB group that has hundreds of old school photos on. There I was in several of them. The bullies had always convinced me I was hideous, ugly, revolting... but when I look at the photos now, it's striking that I was actually one of the best looking girls in my class not, as they totally convinced me, the ugliest. And the bullies were actually really unattractive teenagers, by comparison. Very odd how skewed your view of yourself can be.

My last name was a favourite...also
Being fat
Being tall
Having a male best friend
Having public hair, underarm hair, etc (damn communal changing rooms ) aged 9
Being clever

Kids are weird

Being short, being ginger (I'm not even ginger!), having freckles, having 'chicken legs', being 'posh' because I don't have a Midlands accent, having nits (school-wide smear campaign that Rupert Murdoch would be proud of), being shit at netball, being a 'goth', liking different music, liking the same music, being friends with the other uncool people, doing homework, not doing homework...

I'm sorry so many of you were teased for being 'posh'.
I was on a thread recently about class and a poster said it was fine to sneer at people for being 'posh' as they had more advantages in life.
Presumably posters who think this pass on their views to their children who then think it acceptable to tease the posh children at school.
I wonder if they realise how much pain they are causing.

Being fat. Being from an ethnic background. It didn't bother me too much (ok maybe it did deep inside) but what really bothered me was when, at secondary school, a boy made friends with me. Nothing romantic, just friends. and then he got called Paki-lover and bullied for it too.

I was never going to look/be like all the other teenagers but desperately wanted to be. Only ever encountered very low level name calling etc until I moved schools in mid teens and was mocked/laughed at/socially excluded for:

• being tall
• being skinny
• no boobs
• ginger
• pale
• having quite protective parents (not allowed to go out drinking at 15 etc)
• having parents that insisted I wear the correct school uniform, when most of the other girls wore a much more fashionable version
• not having the local accent
• not seeming to know what clothes are 'cool'
• not having a boyfriend
• shit at PE (PE teachers were actually the worst at this and would encourage others to point and laugh when I was crap at a sport even when I tried to explain that it was not something I'd ever placed before and I didn't know the rules. I remember particularly playing one sport where there were several courts in a line and the loser from each stayed on that court/winner moved up. I asked how to play (previous school had focussed on a more limited number of sports) teacher rolled her eyes and said 'OK Chunky- bottom court- we'll put your name on it, you'll be there all year'. There were slightly too many pupils for the number of courts so everyone had to take a turn at sitting out at the sides for a game- teachers sat all those who were sitting out next to my court so they would have something to laugh at- some didn't join in but most did.

I got over most of the above by realising in my late teens that actually I didn't want to look like everyone else. I also left the area which really helped my confidence as I could have a fresh start and could fake confidence (which eventually started to become actual confidence). Never got over the sports thing though- I still won't do any sort of win/lose sport (so aerobics/zumba etc is fine but I feel sick just considering walking on to a tennis court or playing netball etc).

As a parent I try really hard to boost my DCs confidence and let them know that they don't need to be like everyone else- I think if I'd have been more confident I wouldn't have been such an easy target but may have been in more trouble for swearing

Frizzy hair (thank goodness I've learnt to control it)
Too skinny
Too short
No boobs
And I was one of the popular kids!

They will find anything and everything.
She has to learn somehow to give as good as she gets or let it go right over her head and laugh at herself.

As soon as I started high school, the older kids started having a go about how white my legs were. Yes, I am very very pale.
I never wore a skirt again.

Then it was my frizzy ridiculous hair. That got chemically straightened when I was 12, begged my mum to let me have it done, and they left me alone after that.

Year 10 came and my friendship group turned against me. There was a campaign against me it seemed and pretty much everyone hated me for some reason. It was pretty constant then, they called me 'pig nose', 'ugly', 'fatty' I don't consider myself to be pretty but I certainly don't have a big nose and I wasn't fat. I developed an eating disorder. Things got physical at one point and I was hidden away because they couldn't protect me.

My problem was I had nobody to back me up. My mum was not there for me like I needed her to be.

I was picked on at secondary school for being young. I was a year younger than everyone else (gifted child) and top of the class to boot. I tried to keep a very low and quiet profile but was teased and taunted.

Glasses
Spots
Good at Art and English
Wrong clothes (i still suffer from that! Very much more miss than hit!)
Wrong earrings - small gold studs, not pearl
"Your daddy is in the wrong armed force". Apparently the RAF were a bit shit and he should have been in the Marines, or the Army.
Big chubby cheeks; my 'D'Sis is 3 years older and would tease me and encourage others to do so, including my peers. She gave me a nickname that cut to the bone, mum and dad did nothing about it. She hasn't called me it for years but that's because we barely speak. Funny that

Actually, looking back, she did the most damage. Thank fuck we're in different countries

Being small, "posh" and wearing glasses. Cruelest of all was going through puberty very late compared with everyone else. The boys at school and some of the girls were hideous to me.

Being poor and living in the old smelly house. They called me "Hobo".

Being called a witch - in primary school, my long-enough-to-sit-on-hair was cool, in secondary school, it clearly suggested I dabbled in the dark arts.

Having a surname that rhymed with 'snot' & 'swot'.

Utterly crap at sport.

Being a virgin. Apparently the only one in a class of twenty eight thirteen-year-olds.

Bad teeth (thumbsucker).

Wearing a 'cropped vest' instead of a proper bra. Also wearing 'apple-catcher' pants - God, I hated P.E.

My mum putting health food -shop stuff in my packed lunch, esp. Hedgehog Crisps. They are a NOT made from hedgehogs.....

Aw, NoCakeLeft. I was the poor, smelly child, too.

I was also bullied for being gay (am straight), having a facial disfigurement, and my father being an alcoholic.

I'm cool as fuck now, though