Please Stop Laughing at Me- book review

Book Review

by Katerie Prior

PLEASE STOP LAUGHING AT ME

by Jodee Blanco

In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings in April 2000, many news programs tried to examine the motivations of the teenage shooters. One show interviewed the high school's wrestling team; all repeatedly said they couldn't understand why the teens did what they did, since everyone was so nice at Columbine. Another show interviewed an acquaintance of the shooters, who said they were spit upon, beaten up, and had to hide as they walked to classes. She concluded the interview, saying, "Nobody should be treated like that."

Even as the contrasting interviews aired, hundreds of people visited internet chat rooms and message boards with their own stories of being tormented by bullies and treated like pariahs in school. While the shootings were condemnable, many understood the feelings of hurt, hatred, and rage that came from being the target of bullies. Yet, for all the soul-searching that occurred across the nation, high school shootings still occur and on a wider, yet lesser-known scale, so does bullying.

Perhaps, this is what makes Jodee Blanco's Please Stop Laughing at Me so timely. Now a high-profile publishing executive, Blanco spent her adolescence and teenage years as the victim of her classmates' bullying. Sometimes the kids taunted or threatened her, but most times they physically beat her. While her family, teachers, and even her psychiatrist dismissed it as kids being kids and told her that she would laugh about it someday, Blanco endured extreme humiliation, anger, and sadness at being a school outcast.

Blanco's narrative begins at her high school reunion. Too scared to go in despite her achievements, she remembers being bullied in high school. This leads to Blanco's recollection of when the problems first started. As a fourth grader in a Catholic school, Blanco befriends a handicapped girl and loses her best friend, who threatens her for being nice to the "retard". While there are no immediate repercussions, the next year she sticks up for a group of deaf kids being teased. An only-child who is helpful and smart, Blanco's actions brand her as a tattler and she is taunted for not teasing other people.

At the end of the school year, Blanco's parents switch her to a private school. Everything starts off fine until a friend's boy-girl party turns into a make-out fest. Repulsed, Blanco calls her mother, who in turn angrily tells the host's mother. Again, Blanco is labeled a snitch and the kids she thought were her friends vandalize her things. She finds her shoe laying in a toilet and garbage in her locker. Things escalate when her former friends repeatedly ambush and beat her. When a teacher sees one of these attacks in the school parking lot, instead of punishing the kids, he tells Blanco she should learn to fight her own battles.

Concerned, her parents take her to a child psychiatrist, who prescribes drugs and biofeedback session. It's an interesting, but dark turning point for Blanco who wonders why she is the one who has to see a psychiatrist and nothing happens to her attackers. Blanco switches schools again and faces the same problem. After her initial acceptance, her intelligence and an attempt to stand-up for someone almost make her an outcast. To compensate, Blanco conforms to the whims and demands of her friends. But after she plays a cruel prank on a teacher, her guilt forces her to stop following her friends and instantly she is a social pariah. At the bus stop, she is pelted daily with dirt. When she ignores her tormentors, they throw gravel and eventually wet cement. The attacks escalate until members of the football team throw her on the ground and shove snow down her throat, almost choking her.

Puberty and a different high school make matters worse as Blanco suffers from a rare defect that deforms her breasts, making one noticeably larger than the other. While she succeeds in hiding the problem temporarily, her secret is discovered in gym class. Once the news gets out, the entire class corners her to shout jeers.

Blanco's narrative recalls these incidents in a simple, straight-forward style. Some of her descriptions sound as if they are coming from a diary, but for the most part, Blanco seems to be writing from memory. This makes her snubs, rejections, and physical attacks come alive with her feelings of pain, anger, and white-hot shame.

Naturally, this makes the narrative very subjective, which sometimes undermines the significance of Blanco's message. Her fellow students seem cruel without reason. Her parents simply don't understand her. Her teachers are apathetic. Her psychiatrist is just accusatory. This is a typical viewpoint of only children. While other kids with brothers and sisters are being told by their siblings that they're ugly, stupid, or secretly adopted, only children aren't exposed to this torment, and instead, are the center of their parents' attention. As an only child, Blanco takes to heart any incident where kids make fun of her. A classmate comparing her to a deformed frog during a museum field trip is almost as painful to Blanco as being beaten.

Blanco also never attempts to extrapolate the motivations of her tormentors. People are never bullies for no reason. There could be a million reasons the kids target Blanco - from something as small as trying to hide their own feelings of inadequacy to some kind of abuse at home. But Blanco never seems to explore these issues when she describes the attacks. If the fundamental problem is that bullies and the people who turn a blind eye don't realize that their victims have feelings and just want acceptance, there is also a problem with victims not analyzing the reasoning of their attackers. This could be a pivotal point in Blanco's narrative but it's missed.

But Blanco does recognize when she makes mistakes. Throughout the narrative, she worries about fitting in with the most popular kids in school. She never talks about trying to make friends with "less popular" kids. When Blanco comforts a mentally challenged high school student after being teased by the football team captain, however, she wonders if maybe she is looking for acceptance and friendship in the wrong places. She finds meaning in helping the special education kids organize a senior prom. Later, she becomes friends with Annie, the school's tough girl, who like Blanco, is an outcast looking for acceptance.

There are other bright events in Blanco's narrative. At one of her most hopeless moments, Blanco takes a trip with her family to Greece and makes friends with the village teens despite a language barrier. Later, she gets the opportunity to attend a two-week conference for writing at a local college. There, she meets other kids who are outcasts at school. Both of these incidents show Blanco that there is a much bigger world than the microcosm of high school and give her hope to go on.

Ultimately, this is the point of Blanco's narrative. As the things Blanco faced still go on in schools across America, Please Stop Laughing At Me is a story to motivate its readers. For outcasts, it is a narrative that inspires strength and lets them know that they are not alone. For bullies and their lackeys, it is a wake-up call to see outcasts in a different light. For parents, educators, and child psychiatrists, it is a reminder not to romanticize the very painful social challenges all adolescents and teens face. Hopefully, a serious discussion of events like what Blanco experienced will prevent a tragedy like that at Columbine in another school.

from: http://www.literarypotpourri.com/003_06/br_02.html