As if it's not hard enough being a girl in the thralls of puberty - what with media pressures to look a certain way - teenage girls in Newfoundland and Labrador are being ranked on an online "ugly" list.
The school district is currently investigating six separate polls in which girls are rated according to their appearance.
One incident in Torbay made headlines after grade 12 student Lynette Cantrell wrote this amazing retort on Facebook to shame her shamers:
To the person that made the "ugliest girls in grade 12 at hth" ask.FM straw poll. I'm sorry that your life is so...
Posted by Lynelle Cantwell on Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Unfortunately people, in Cantrell's words, "whose life is so miserable that you have to try to bring others down" have always existed. They existed 20 years ago, and they always will. But in the past, such lists were confined to a scribbled bit of lined paper passed from hand to hand, from one desk to another. Such lists rarely got much traction, because they rarely circulated widely.
Due to the nature of the Internet, such harassment can attract more attention and spread quickly.
It is also, as the director of education Jeff Thompson and the RCMP have discovered, harder to pin down and track.
"These are very disturbing acts and they're complex to deal with," said Thompson.
Despite having an Internet and social media safety committee in place for the past two years, the district has not prevented such incidence from occurring.
In the meantime, the likes of Cantrell have proven that true beauty and wisdom runs deep. Hope she's having the last laugh, with a viral Facebook post under her belt.
"Just because we don't look perfect on the outside does not mean we are ugly. If thats [sic] your idea of ugly then i feel sorry for you. Like seriously? Get a life."
Get a life, indeed.
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