woman posts response to group that taunted her for wearing bikini that exposed stretchmarks

Until those kids grown up enough they'll never hear it. Wouldn't have done mattered if she yelled it, they would not have heard it. None the less, it was kind of her to cry for them.

not react to them. Be better than them. Their actions are to get responses. Same here in DU when posters use ridicule.

Telling my daughter and son in law as they were ready to jump out of the car in a dispute of a parking spot, "The ones who stay mad the longest lose. Forget them"

We watched the scorn and rage on their faces the whole time as we waited for our ice cream cones inside the same store. The others probably still haven't learned how to act.

I say that but it isn't easy. When I was in grade school I got in fights with bullies regularly even though my mom told me to ignore them. And my fight record was dismal.

ignoring bullies, in grade school or anywhere else, usually doesn't improve the situation. They tend to escalate. These creeps on the beach will probably be nastier to the next person they decide to target. In the past, they probably only laughed and pointed from a distance. This time they pretended to kick the victim. In the future, they may actually physically assault someone.

The victim is really in a no-win situation - and the bullies know that perfectly well.

Doing that reminds the bully that he can get hurt, too, and that you're not easy pickings like the other kids who are still trying to ignore him.

But you do have to land one punch, even a sucker punch.

gotten a good shot of their faces to accompany her essay.

That's how ya do it. Up the shame game to the next level.

People can be real tough when they're anonymous--once people start recognizing them, though, they aren't so tough.

It doesn't do any good to give the bullies that satisfaction that comes from knowing they got to you.

Whether it is done to feel like something has been won, or done to make another feel a loss are different approaches altogether. Too many don't know the difference and dismiss the bullying as normal, an indication that the weaker party can't deal with things. They also think that the eight year old putting snow down the back of a smaller kid is the same thing as what happened on this beach. Worse yet are those who create an atmosphere of intimidation or shame in order to reach an objective, often with the victim making excuses for the bully. A victim accepting the blame for a bully's actions doesn't help to stop the problem. (do not read as victim blaming here)

These infantile assholes can fuck off.

So Americans can get used to real bodies and get over this obsession with perfect bodies.

that women are to be judged for their looks by anyone who beholds them that's the root of this ugliness.

It's only a short stretch (mark) until women have so internalized this, that groups of them will cruelly assess another woman aloud, in public, for her failures as an object, not a woman, an object.

Street harassment is based on this same assumption: That women are their looks. That the way women look or more precisely, a woman looks, is a public commons. Feel free to comment, ogle, gesture, scold, scorn.

This is the consequence of culture that sees Sports Illustrated photo-shopped covers as what women should be.

in encouraging us all to believe that women are "less than; not quite human." Think Aretha Franklin feeling the need to remind her lover that she's flesh & blood & has feelings just like a man. Respect. 1967.

There are millions of reasons, rationales, the one that crops up tonight is that whenever sex is deemed by tptb to be dirty, then women become the receptacles of men's projected desire, they become sluts, sex objects, dehumanized. And the people, all of them, get controlled. Don't look now but sex has been dirty around this here culture for a long time. For a few decades the sexual puritanism seemed to be licked (sorry), but the authoritarians have forced the pendulum back to where birth control, which was an overwhelming hit, a modern miracle that not only allowed women the same sexual freedom as men, but allowed families the means to reliably plan, is controversial.

Thanks for responding BainsBane. Roger & out before I get (more) carried away!

Sexism was the 1st ism.

not sex.

Sex/sexuality is often the medium.

Kinda gets us where we live.

Some are doing the controlling.

There are controllers. Look at the most patriarchal controlled countries on this earth. All promulgate that sex is prohibited, that it is dirty, & that women are the reason for the filth. It's the entire point behind the burka, to protect men from the "uncleanliness" of women.

The more sexually repressed a country is, the more certain types of violence occur. Rape & suicide bombing come to mind.

It's no accident that some early 2nd wave feminists (Germaine Greer in particular) were all about sexual liberation.

I think young people have no idea what real bodies look like because they simply don't see them...all they see in the media are perfect bodies. They just don't know what happens to most of us eventually. I guess we can take comfort in that they will one day have gravity take over, too, or have children too. Let's hope when that happens they remember this incident and are ashamed.

I was wondering where this was...do you have a link to the story?

Alberta beach is the name of a beach nearby but I wasn't sure if there were other beaches with that name. It seems the woman is from Sherwood Park. I live very near to there. Thanks.

Considering the obesity epidemic in the US, chances are that a good amount, if not a majority, of those making nasty comments wouldn't look much better in a bikini. But what they ought to realize is that that is totally beside the point. If a woman wants to wear a bikini, she should be able to do so and feel good about herself, no matter what.

But there are times when a one piece bathing suit is called for. Also, five kids, the poor planet.

She's not Michelle Duggar. Give the woman a break and stop judging women on their choices about how they manage their own fertility. Isn't that what we tell others when we advocate the pro-choice stance? Choice is exactly that... *choice*. Hers. Not mine, yours, or the poor planet's.

And at what point is a one-piece bathing suit called for? A bit of a pooch and some stretch marks? Morbid obesity? Where do you draw the line, and who is to be the end arbiter of who gets to wear a bikini?

And considering the fact that poster Swedeatlanta called for all Jews to be forcibly removed from Israel and sent "anywhere but here" a little earlier today you had some pretty stiff competition.

What a mean spirited post.

And use it to fertilize the organic garden growing behind your solar panel-covered house?

You know, considering you feel you have the right to criticize her carbon footprint.

amirite?

then learn how to hold your tongue if you are thinking something ugly.

When I was about 14 yrs old, my mother asked me to bring lotions and other products that she had left in the shower in our home. I returned to her room and observed her belly looking just like that. Shocked, I said eeew, what happened! She said, that's what happens when you have four children. At that point I promised myself that I would never have so many children that my stomach would look like that. She said...keep living.

Well, after my first child, it happened to me too and not my sister. We both have two children. I wish I had remembered to ask my mother if it happened to her also after the first child, me being the oldest, to late now.

What I learned from that if you tease someone about something, it will probably most certainly happen to you or yours. (something that I just believe). So,I don't tease people about anything.

My mom didn't get many stretch marks with her first pregnancy (me). She said she had a few on her hips, but her tummy was nice and flat. She wore bikinis. She was judgmental with other women, thinking how they must've gained too much or something. Then with her second pregnancy (my brother), she gained less than she had with me, but she was one big walking stretch mark, from ribs to thighs.

Each pregnancy is so different.

I got ALL of my stretch marks with my first pregnancy. She stretched me out so much that I never got another stretchmark with my other 3 pregnancies. They are ALL from my first. I didn't even get any with my 10 lb 3rd baby (my first wasn't quite 7 lbs).

Thankfully, my mom was pretty open showing hers to us (my parents were semi-nudists around the house, lol) so I had no illusions about what could happen. I knew it would probably happen. And I was okay with that. I do wish, though, that others weren't so judgmental about it. Some people are just more prone to getting them. There's nothing you can do about it either (believe me, I tried it all with my first, LOL, and that's when I found out I was allergic to something in the vitamin E oil. Let me tell you about THAT hellish day at work with an itchy pregnant belly, lol)

and thanks for sharing!

Three kids here, no stretch marks on my belly at all. Of course, I'm heavy, so I CHOOSE not to wear a bikini unless it's my and my husband on the dock alone. But I would never tell anyone how to dress.

Thanks for the thread, Liberal_in_LA.

The losers who made fun of her will get their comeuppance some day. Gravity always gets its due, eventually.

Five kids?

Consider that this woman got their "2.5" kids.

And, one of her kids may one day grow up to cure cancer. Her choice to have five kids, just like it's my daughter's choice to have none.

We'd all be happier if we did.

i could cry for her. what's with the gratuitous meanness?! who does it help?

Pretended to kick her becomes pantomimed assaulting her. That phrase should have appeared on a warrant.

simply ridiculing people from a distance. They were ignored. Then they got more and more bold, as bullies who are ignored tend to do. I expect sometime in the future they'll begin to physically assault strangers for fun.

...when they f**k her 3 times a week and pay all of her bills, THEN they can tell her what to do!

PEACE!

...and I'd be happy to have her wear a bikini if she wanted to.

Publicly mock others anymore? That is the height of rude and cruel.

Whose only meaningful sexual experiences probably involve their fists, and internet porn.