Our Absurd Fear of Fat

[eridani]

38. Nice rationale there for being an accessory after the fact to bullycide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Kelly_Yeomans

In evidence to court, Yeomans was described as a pleasant and friendly girl. However, she was reported to be the victim of repeated harassment and taunting, particularly about her weight. Her parents said that the incessant bullying had left Yeomans feeling miserable. Her mother asserted that she had gone to her daughter's school, Merrill College, Shelton Lock, thirty times to complain about the issue, but received no assistance. School officials, however, claimed they had received only one complaint.

Matters came to a head in September, 1997, when a group of youths reportedly gathered at Yeomans's home on several consecutive nights, on each occasion throwing food at the house and shouting taunts aimed at Yeomans. Her mother later said that the incident prompted Yeomans to tell her family, "It is nothing to do with you Daddy, nothing to do with you Mummy, and nothing to do with you Sarah [her sister]. I have had enough and I'm going to take an overdose."

The parents said they were worried and sought help for their daughter's obvious depression, but did not believe she would carry out her threat to take her own life. However, Yeomans was soon found dead in her bedroom after taking an overdose of painkillers.

Tough to get enough exercise if you can't do it in public for fear of constant vicious abuse.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/1997/03/23/met_205736.shtml

Jacqueline Graham still can't bring herself to show her son's room to a stranger, but you don't need to look past the photos in the living room to see who he was: He was the fat kid who didn't have any friends. The easy target. The mark. It's all there in his eyes: The sweetness. The shyness. The hurt.

At 5 feet 4, 174 pounds, he wasn't the heaviest kid at his school. But he was sensitive, and when others teased him about his weight, when they chased him down the street or smacked the back of his head when the teacher wasn't looking, he sometimes cried. In the social hierarchy of fifth grade at Westwood Heights Elementary School, that put him squarely at the bottom.

WOULD THINGS HAVE been any different at Parkway Middle School? Sammy was to have started sixth grade there that Monday, the morning his father cut him down from the tree.

<snip>

He was logical and precise, gifted not only at puzzles but at music and math. He could dissect complex arguments with lawyerly skill. Yet he liked the same toys as his cousin, an infant. And he was awkward and clumsy; he couldn't even clap. Josh rode a bike before he could.

In the water, his awkwardness vanished. Not in the daytime - he was too ashamed to let anyone see him in his bathing suit. He had to swim in long pants and a shirt. But at night, it was magic, like shedding his body. In the water at night, he was free.

<snip>

He can only imagine how it must have happened, how God must have watched Sammy steal into the yard with a flashlight, a rope and a step stool, having pieced together his final puzzle: The body he hated. The school he feared. The perfect place that awaited his soul.

He could go there. He would go there. It would be easy, like swimming. Just position the stool and climb up, toward heaven. Then step into God's waiting arms.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/09/marilyn_wann_bullycide.php

Teens who perceive themselves as "too fat" -- regardless of what they actually weigh -- are more likely to think about suicide and attempt suicide, according to a 2005 study.

In April, two 14-year-old best friends in Minnesota, Haylee Fentress and Paige Moravetz, died in a shared suicide. Haylee was teased for her weight and her red hair. Haylee's aunt, Robin Settle, said that although Haylee wasn't "severely overweight," she was so self-conscious she rarely ate at school.

Brian Head was 15. One day, students were pulling his hair and slapping him. He had been bullied for his weight since seventh grade. He shot himself. In a poem discovered later, Brian described himself, "as an insignificant 'thing,' something to be traded, mangled, and mocked," reports Barbara Colorosa, author of The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander. Brian's father successfully lobbied for a law in Georgia that makes bullying a crime.

Brian's death wasn't the last weight-related bullycide. In 1996, I heard about 12-year-old Samuel Graham, who hanged himself from the family's backyard tree rather than start junior high and face taunts about his weight.

In 2004, eighth-grader April Himes skipped 53 days of school to avoid weight-based bullying. School officials were unable to stop the harassment, but they also informed her she must attend or face a truancy board and possible juvenile detention. At that news, she hanged herself.