The Self

This post is in reference to the two following articles:

The first article is about a former student of St Patricks College, an all girl’s school, Jazmine Oyston who was bullied by the “popular group” for wearing a one piece bathing suit to a swimming carnival instead of a two piece. Every year we hear about students being bullied for various reasons such as sexuality, appearance, and certain disabilities. The reason I choice this article is because of the simplicity behind it and how something so minute can make you the victim of bullying.

First off, let me start by saying that some of the hottest models wear one piece bathing suits and rock them like nobodies business. But, that’s besides the point. Seeing someone being bullied over something so minute in this world ( a bathing suit) is so over the top. It really makes us question the priorities in our world when it comes to our values. This news story is a perfect example of how someone’s self-image can be terribly diminished by anyone and anything

Charles Cooley, in his theory of the Looking-Glass Self explains that the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward them of other people. The physical and mental abuse of her peers has caused Oyston to suffer from serious anxiety and depression. She has also attempted to commit suicide twice and has self-harmed herself by slitting her wrists. Cooley breaks up the Looking-Glass Self into 3 principal elements:

1)imagination of our appearance to others

2)the imagination of his judgement of that appearance

3) some sort of self-feeling

Taking the story of Oyston and the bullying she experienced, her appearance and judgment of herself was greatly influenced by the acts of her peers. Thus creating this self-feeling of worthlessness and at times she felt that she “didn’t want to be alive” (Cummings 2010).

Although Oyston has been saved from the horrors of death, there are still a great amount of college students that commit suicide every year due to mental health issues, many of which are related to bullying in some form. Social theorist William James (1890) explains that a man’s social self “is the recognition which he gets from his mates” and each person carries an image of him in their mind. Any sort of hurt to that image is hurt to the people themselves. Oyston, along with many other students that have been in her position, have been hurt by the images that people put on them as being “outcaste” from society, their own self-image is also being hurt, despite what they thought of themselves before.

Events like the one portrayed in the backpack article can help to bring awareness to college students and the harmful affects that bullying makes.

Seeing yourself as “amazing just the way you are” is an important message that is hard to get across to many, especially if your self-image is constantly being put down by society.

This “Send Silence Packing tour” that was held at MSU displays 1,100 backpacks which represent the number of students who commit suicide each year. Attached to many of the backpacks are stories of students who previously owned them. Seeing that reality is the kind of message that needs to be spread all across the country in efforts to minimize the bullying and suicides each year.

William James- “The Self and Its Sleves” (1890)

Charles Horton Cooley-“The Looking-Glass Self” (1902)