So much for sticks and stones. One school's answer to a bullied 13-year-old girl is...plastic surgery. Gabrielle Jackson is a sixth grader who has been taunted and harassed by classmates. The school's solution? Suggest to the mother that her daughter opt for breast reduction surgery.
Mom Tammie Jackson was outraged about Riverview Gardens School District's response to the bullying, which she claims included two options: either Gabrielle should transfer schools or go under the knife.
"It makes me feel like now you are telling me it's my fault, it's God's fault the way he made her." said Jackson in an article on Huffington Post. "[The school should] talk with the kids, let them know, you know, people's bodies are changing, everybody's body is different but God made us all great."
The school is of course investigating the allegations, which it maintains stemmed from miscommunication. Cosmetic surgery is on the up among American teens, with nearly 219,000 ops being performed on 13 to 19 year olds in 2010.
Last year a 14-year-old girl made headlines when a children's charity footed the $40,000 surgical bill, which included "otoplasty—pinning back her ears, rhinoplasty—reducing the size of her nose—and mentoplasty—altering her chin."
But is plastic surgery really the answer to the bullying problem? Psychologist and author of "Face It," Vivian Diller claims such procedures are not only dangerous but they send "a terrible message" to both bullies and their victims.
"Do we really think that changing physical features undoes the emotional damage created by being teased?" asked Diller. "And aren't we validating the very message behind bullies' actions, that diversity and variation is bad? We need to be encouraging young people to admire and embrace differences -- and that starts from an early age."
How do you teach your kids to like their features, idiosyncrasies and all? Erica Ehm's story seems like a good place to start...
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