Recently, a photo went out on the Internet of Katherine Webb posed in a bikini. Shortly after the photo of Webb, an Auburn graduate and now the wife of former University of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, hit the net, hate comments began coming in of how skinny she looked.
Webb addressed those comments Tuesday on Good Morning America by saying that she was “really surprised with the response, with the disgust” and that she hoped people writing about her on social media would “tone things down.”
“Really think about what you say,” she cautioned. “Can you imagine if someone said those things to you?”
The comments Webb received have been classified as “cyber bullying.”
Just this past Monday, my wife, Shari, who teaches kindergarten at Brewton Elementary School, took part along with other employees of the school in a workshop against bullying.
I asked her some things that they learned in the meeting and she said that the speaker said most bullying occurs at the elementary school grades, but is not heard of much because it does not have as much affect on the students as it would in higher grades and in older students.
She said that if cyber bullying was done off school campus, but affected a school day or student during school, that it was be an offense that would see punishment from the school.
Bullying has been around for a long time, and I would say is getting worse. If you have ever been on the wrong end of it, or your child has, you know what it can do to a person.
There is a saying that says “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That’s a flat out lie. Words are powerful things. It wasn’t until I heard a pastor speak on the words that we speak, that I realized how much that we say can have such a negative impact on our lives. But, just like negative words can do harm to us, if we turn things around and speak life, we can see things turn out for the better for us.
It has been recently that I have seen how things can be said to people and it makes people ashamed of the way they look. I see this more so with girls, but guys can be affected as well. But if a girl gets told she may be too fat, she will go on a diet or starve themselves to get skinny…even if they are already the perfect size.
Stats say that: an estimated 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students; 1 in 7 Students in Grades K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying; 56 percent of students have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school.
Those are just a few of the reasons while bullying at school, on the Web, and just bullying in general needs to be stopped.