Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
In the pop culture today, anti-bullying has become synonymous with Lady Gaga–and it’s no surprise. The freakish-looking pop star who, when interviewed, acts like a complete wallflower, was the victim of bullying in her childhood.
Now that she’s a millionaire with an incredible base of devotees–nearly twenty million Twitter followers and fifty million Facebook fans–she and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, have launched the Born This Way Foundation which will, in conjunction with the MacArthur Foundation, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the California Endowment to Empower Youth, educate kids in the ways of anti-bullying. The purpose of the foundation, formally unveiled Wednesday at Harvard University, is “building a braver, kinder world that celebrates individuality and empowers young people,” according to its website.
The Born This Way Foundation represents much that is wrong with our pop culture and its insistence on defining the moral agenda of our lives. By coddling young people by fetishizing “acceptance” and “individuality,” Gaga’s foundation will sideline the kind tough-minded sandbox wisdom that young people only learn by facing up to their cruel peers on the playground during recess. But more than that–and more importantly–its agenda will deliver yet another blow to the idea that people should take personal responsibility for the things that they do.
Most adolescents want nothing more than to simply be normal and to blend in with the crowd. That’s why they all shop at the same stores, wear the same backpack brand, speak in the same colloquialisms, play the same few socially acceptable sports, and do their hair the same way. Those who break from this social code–those who stand out in one way or another–get bullied and ridiculed. This is not an ideal situation, but it is a fact of life, and it used to be a fact of life that the bullied had to learn to deal with. If they were different, they either stood up for themselves or learned to conform to the prevailing pressure to be normal–an incredibly valuable lesson for later in life. That’s what I mean by tough-minded sandbox wisdom.
Now, the bullied have a breathtaking array of institutional support telling them that they don’t need to deal with their social problems head-on. They simply have to be who they are, be themselves, and that’s good enough. When being themselves pushes them to the brink, as it did with the gay Rutgers student who committed suicide in 2010 after being videotaped kissing another man by his roommate, then the onus of responsibility falls not on the “victim” (here, the gay student), but on the villain (here, the roommate who “bullied” him, now facing up to ten years in prison). Ditto this week's Ohio high school shooter, with whom Gaga's mother empathizes.
In yesterday's New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof reports on the launch of Lady Gaga’s new group by highlighting an experience she had being bullied:
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When she was in high school, Lady Gaga says, she was thrown into a trash can.
The culprits were boys down the block, she told me in an interview on Wednesday in which she spoke — a bit reluctantly — about the repeated cruelty of peers during her teenage years.
“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point,” she said. “I didn’t want to go to class. And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was.”
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Gaga’s mother has another story along these lines:
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As for whether Gaga herself was ever bullied, her mother recalls one anxiety-ridden weekend that became a defining moment. Her daughter, whose given name is Stefani Germanotta, was “purposefully not invited” to a party one weekend by some of her classmates, her mother says. “On Monday, they asked her what she did over the weekend, knowing full well that she knew about the party. It comes down to meanness and cruelty,” she says. “Exclusion is a form of that.”
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These don’t sound like life-altering traumas to me. These sound to me like the petty antics of immature high school students, which are a routine part of the rigmarole of being a young person.
Yet, anti-bullying has become the cause of the day in our pop culture. How? Very simply, it is consequence of pop’s belief that feeling good is a human right. But don’t take it from me. Kristof, in his ode to Gaga in today’s New York Times, observes that we are ”born to not get bullied.” He means that the right to not get bullied is something inherent in us, something that we are born with–what used to be known as a divine, God-given right. In today’s pop culture, not being bullied is the closest thing to a natural right that we can all gather around: “Bullying and teenage cruelty are human rights abuses that need to be higher on our agenda,” he writes. Anything that violates that right–that makes us feel bad about ourselves–must be done away with.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Ask a teenager why they are doing something and they will most likely answer, "To express my individuality! Besides, everybody is doing it!" Duh...
Aug '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Emily,How much of this stagecraft is really just cover for a gay rights agenda ?
Dec '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Nobody has a right to social acceptance.
On a larger note, the more we mainstream our delicious subcultures, then less they mean, and ultimately the more bland society becomes, and the desire to stand out requires more and more extremity. When everything is covered in garlic and red pepper, they no longer have the impact they had.
Jun '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Well I jumped in to say... What E J said. Except that it is not just teens. Expressions of "individuality" and "rebelliousness" are now the norm. Tattoos, piercings, the preferred music (unshared because of ear-buds), etc. The bad guy (chaos) in the insurance commercials is a nice looking white guy in a suit. I will say that all of this (especially teen status seeking through the abuse of others) appears to stem from the tribal impulse. I do not trust the tribal impulse so, while I recognize it as inevitable, I am suspicious of the hierarchy established on the playground.
Feb '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Emily, does this mean that you are against the results of this?
(I don't care about the results one way or another, but I was praying no one would take it to court.)
Jun '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
I further think that a lot of how the left/media operates is based on bullying, ridicule, and isolation. Why do the young vote the way the way they do? Fear of being uncool.
Apr '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Wow, Ok. Time to take take on the thankless task of defending Lady Gaga before the next "Amen" is posted.
Seriously, bullying is not a problem? What does it say that we raise children who would be so petty and cruel to others. If you found out that your kid had publicly humiliated another child, what would you do? Have we given up on teaching our children to be nice and polite?
People who are bullied may be strange and socially awkward, it may be that it will be hard for them to make many true friends, and that they need to change their behavior or project more confidence, that is no reason for them to be targeted for torment.
It sound like for Lady Gaga it was not so much about not fitting in, as being personally targeted for not fitting in. How can we properly teach and ingrain humility and charity in our children if we fail to punish them when they are petty and vain?
I would not be proud to find out my child was a bully, would you be?
Nov '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Well said, Carver. While I am not in sympathy with anything Lady Gaga does or thinks, l think it would be unfair not to recognize the problem as a serious one, and to recognize that some children and parents need substantial help with it. Unfortunately the kind of help that is sometimes needed, such as this, might end up resulting in an arrest and an apology.
Jan '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
The true purpose of this corner of the anti bullying movement is telegraphed by its name "The born this way foundation". This name screams "victim". I would be less likely to view this foundation with skepticism if it were named the "lets be kind foundation" or the "golden rule foundation". Something focused on changing the behavior of the bullies which is of course the problem. Naming it that would not serve the victim focus. and the "golden rule foundation" would keep it out of schools fearful (not without reason) of the ACLU.
Edited on March 2, 2012 at 3:23pmJun '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Americans that survived the poverty of the Great Depression, and fought for their lives in World War II, decided--for some strange reason--that their children would want for nothing, and enjoy all that life had to offer. How'd that work out?
Jun '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Valiuth: Wow, Ok. Time to take take on the thankless task of defending Lady Gaga before the next "Amen" is posted.
Seriously, bullying is not a problem? What does it say that we raise children who would be so petty and cruel to others. If you found out that your kid had publicly humiliated another child, what would you do? Have we given up on teaching our children to be nice and polite?
· 1 minute ago
Wow, what a confusion of concepts. First of all, there are bullies in this world; there have always been bullies in this world; there will always be bullies in this world. (Newsflash -- it's not limited to the human species. We take our very sweet Golden Retriever to the local dog park with the sign "No bully breeds"). Generally speaking, the prescribed cure for a bully is to punch him in the nose.
Attaching the label "bully" to every teenager who gossips or treats someone badly or excludes someone from a party is just debasement of the language. And "celebrating" freakish dress and behavior as a way of "standing up" to bullying is really just . . . well, celebrating freakish dress and behavior.
May '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
How many of these wussies who have to sue over beung taunted will graduate high school and willingly subject themselves to hazing to join the greek system at a university?
Imbeciles. All of them.
Apr '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
John France: It also fits nicely into the left wing mime that you are born Gay a "fact" that has no basis that I know of in the biological sciences or even the social sciences after years of striving by sympathetic academics toward proving that idea. · 11 minutes
Edited 7 minutes ago
There is on real prof that it is a conscious choice either, or that once established people can alter their sexuality.
Nov '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
It strikes me that Lady Gaga need to spend some time in Haiti.
Apr '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Colin B Lane
Wow, what a confusion of concepts. First of all, therearebullies in this world; there havealways beenbullies in this world; there willalways bebullies in this world. (Newsflash -- it's not limited to the human species. We take our very sweet Golden Retriever to the local dog park with the sign "No bully breeds"). Generally speaking, the prescribed cure for a bully is to punch him in the nose.
Attaching the label "bully" to every teenager who gossips or treats someone badly or excludes someone from a party is just debasement of the language. And "celebrating" freakish dress and behavior as a way of "standing up" to bullying is really just . . . well, celebrating freakish dress and behavior.
· 6 minutes ago
There has always been theft and lying, we work rather hard to discourage both from happening and we certainly do not celebrate it when it occurs either. Especially in our children. I also fail to see the problem in one small group of people celebrating their strange, yet non-harmful dress, music styles, etc...
Jul '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
When I see nonsense where we glorify victimhood instead of teaching children how to stand up to bullies, I wonder how these same people will be able to stand up to hostile regimes as adults who haven't been raised in a culture that coddles everyone and tells them how special they are. It's like we're blithely fattening ourselves up for the slaughter.
Mar '12
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
I was badly bullied in elementary school, largely because I was academic, sheltered and had strict parents. On the balance, these were GOOD things. Being academic paid off, being sheltered kept me emotionally healthy, and having parents with high standards has benefited me. It didn't feel like that when I was 11. My "lifestyle" and non-conforming habits were strange, but I'd also wager they are the ones many conservative parents would choose for their children. The proposed "solution" here, to conform to the dominant culture of my school would have been detrimental to me in the long run, and it was with that in mind that my parents ended up pulling me out of the local school.
That being said, I'm highly skeptical of how well these anti-bullying crusades work out. My school had these sort of programs, and I'm not sure they did squat for me. But even if I was weird, is it that unreasonable to believe I was entitled to go to school (a place where I was legally required to be) without being terrorized? Children are still learning how to be civilized human beings, and they can be very cruel.
Jun '10
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
It's going to be a big shock to young "Arthur," when he shows up for his first job interview wearing only blue spiked hair and a diaper. He's going to wonder what went wrong? Should he he have chosen a warmer color for his hair? "That's probably it."
Edited on March 2, 2012 at 3:45pmJun '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
Valiuth
Colin B Lane
Wow, what a confusion of concepts. First of all, therearebullies in this world; there havealways beenbullies in this world; there willalways bebullies in this world. (Newsflash -- it's not limited to the human species. We take our very sweet Golden Retriever to the local dog park with the sign "No bully breeds"). Generally speaking, the prescribed cure for a bully is to punch him in the nose.
· 6 minutes ago
There has always been theft and lying, we work rather hard to discourage both from happening and we certainly do not celebrate it when it occurs either. Especially in our children. I also fail to see the problem in one small group of people celebrating their strange, yet non-harmful dress, music styles, etc... · 4 minutes ago
I'm sorry? Who is talking about celebrating bullying? The point of the main post is Lady Gaga's celebration of the "bullied." I deliberately put that term in quotation marks because, to the extent it encompasses anyone and everyone who has ever been slighted, insulted, or excluded from parties, it truly no longer has any meaning whatsoever.
Jun '11
Re: Lady Gaga & The Anti-Bullying Crusade
etoiledunord: It's going to be a big shock to young "Arthur," when he shows up for his first job interview wearing only blue spiked hair and a diaper. He's going to wonder what went wrong? Should he he have chosen a warmer color for his hair? "That's probably it." · 2 minutes ago
Edited 1 minute ago
I don't know E; it appears there are some on this thread who believe that any prospective employer who would decide not to hire young Arthur is engaged in bullying.