Expanding Our Definition of Bullying

My generation has watched our favorite stars from Brittany Spears to Amanda Bynes to Lindsay Lohan, the ladies we grew up watching and admiring, completely self-destruct. Television stations and magazines, of course, eat it right up and, in a way, so do we by devouring each scandalous detail. Fame can be a really ugly thing, which we already know, but social media has allowed us to watch our favorite celebrities get psychologically abused by the media.

We often forget that underneath the talent, money and glamor, stars are just people. I was shocked when I started to notice the ways in which people engage with these starlets on social media. Miley Cyrus gets comments on her Instagram posts telling her to die and get cancer, and recently Iggy Azalea publicly removed herself from the twitter sphere because of the ways in which media and critics were treating her. Despite much criticism surrounding Azalea, one thing to be said is that she has an amazing way of engaging with her fans. Her twitter was a place in which she retweeted, and talked to her fans in a way that one of us might talk to our friends. She shared her personal thoughts and exuded a down to earth vibe, a rare trait for someone with her level of fame. Recently, she went on vacation and received harsh criticism of her body, which led to her ultimate decision to remove herself from twitter.

Whatever your opinion on Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea, or really anyone, this kind of public shaming can only be equated with bullying, something that our country has publicly denounced. We say “Hollywood destroys these young girls,” but I’d argue that we’re complicit in this destruction. We demand to see a certain body type, we greedily consume the tabloids created by those who virtually stalk and photograph these women, and even hack into their personal information to leak intimate details of their lives. In my opinion, a life filled with these pressures sounds far from glamorous.

I am a firm believer in freedom of speech, but using it to harm these young girls who could be our sisters, daughters, or friends is detrimental to each of them as well as to all of the women of our nation. Shaming Iggy for having cellulite just underscores a culture that tells women that they must be entirely free of imperfections. This is damaging to everyone involved both as perpetuators of bullying and as victims of this way of viewing women. No matter how much you hate/love/are fascinated by these people, let’s just lay off a bit. I think signing off twitter was a wise move for Iggy, but now it’s our turn to stop being complicit in harassment of any kind.