Image Credit: Michael Rozman/Warner BrosOn today’s Ellen DeGeneres Show, Madonna adds her voice to those supporting gay teens and calling for an end to bullying. “I know a number of people have spoken out about it, but I feel like I need to say something. The gay community has been incredibly supportive of me. I wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for the gay community … I have a teenage daughter and I have ongoing discussions with her about this topic, so I feel like I need to say a few words,” Madonna says, via satellite. The singer claims to knows what it’s like to feel isolated and alienated as a youth. When did things change for her? She tells DeGeneres, “It wasn’t until my ballet teacher, who was also gay, took me under his wing and introduced me to a community of artists of other unique individuals who told me it was good and okay to be different and brought me to my first gay disco and ironically made me feel I was part of the world and it was okay to be different.” How does she talk to her kids about bullying? “We talk a lot about the importance of not judging people who are different. Not judging people who don’t fit into our expected view of what’s cool and what isn’t,” she says. “Think about it across the board. The concept that we are torturing teenagers because they are gay … It’s unfathomable. It’s like lynching black people or Hitler exterminating Jews. Sorry if I’m going on a rampage right now, but this is America. The land of the free and the home of the brave….”
Madonna also issues a challenge, which she believes could be a solution: “I think it would be interesting for everybody to try one simple experiment … Try to get through the day each and every one of us … without gossiping about somebody. Without gossiping about anybody. And not only that. Not even listening to gossip. Walking away from it. Can you imagine what your day would be like? How much more free time you’d have? I also feel like you’d feel about better about yourself…”
What do you think? Could the Madonna Plan work? I don’t know that telling a teen they’ll have “more free time” gets the job done. But I like the idea of asking teens to walk away from people who are gossiping and bullying. Even if you’re not saying anything, by standing there and listening to it, you’re telling that person that what they’re saying is acceptable. I remember in high school, I found out that a close male friend of mine, who was dating my best friend, listened to another guy tear me down on a regular basis in physics lab. He never added to the conversation, which he thought was a good compromise because he didn’t want to lose this guy as a friend. But I could never understand why he wouldn’t at least tell him, “She’s a friend of mine. If you want to talk about her like that, don’t do it around me.” That’s a fair thing to say. (For the record: I still have no idea why that guy hated me … even after I interrupted an AP history class to announce to him — and the room — “I know you hate me. Why do you hate me?”)
Read More:
Justin Bieber speaks out against bullying on ‘Ellen’
President Barack Obama joins ‘It Gets Better’ project with video supporting bullied gay teens
Adam Lambert to bullied gay teens: ‘It gets better, but it’s up to you’
Tim Gunn, Ke$ha, and others join the It Gets Better Project
Gossiping? What? Oh, Madge. We’ve been thru so much together since I was introduced to your unique vision 25 some odd years ago. But when you’re worth $650 million, you tend to fall out of touch with the real world. And I doubt her daughter will ever be bullied by anything other than New York Post’s Page Six section.
Someone doesn’t know what gossip is…
Madonna. Please. So overrated. Anyone who is anyone knows that the most erotic song of the 80′s was “Come On Eileen”.
Dexy’s Midnight Runners were robbed out of their deserved fame.
I think Madonna was saying that she talks to her kids about not bullying others. Something every parent should do.
There’s a rumor going around that the reason Madonna didn’t sit in the same studio as Ellen is because she thinks Ellen was going to hit on her.
Pass it around.
I heard that she’s scared of Ellen for dressing like a man.
How nice of people to have never cared about bullying before until now. Ugh.
what do you expect people to do? and by ‘people’ I assume you mean the celebrities that are speaking out now against it. So what do you expect, celebrities to go around, constantly thinking of issues and preach about them? My guess is you wld have a problem with that too. Bullying is on the forefront of everyone’s minds b/c of the suicides. So, if you were a celeb, would you sit and do nothing b/c you had not done anything til now?
Like anyone’s going to care about what celebrities say. Bullying happens they grow up with parents who are bullies.
Nothing anyone says is ever going to change that because we live in a country filled with bullies. Coming from someone who was bullied in school, it’s pretty clear it’s never going to change.
My question is are suicided from bullying up or just coverage of them. Growing up I didn’t hear about kids committing suicide because of bullying or is it just the T-Ball generation?
with that attitude whatevs, it never will.
It has been a pretty traumatic year for bullying… beginning with Phoebe Prince in January and all the gay suicides these past few months. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that people are speaking up about it.
I’m not surprised but it’s seems like they are overly focused on just the gay aspect.
I wonder if it’s because “gay” is one of the most common insults that bullies use?
Really? Is that a fact or personal opinion.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s been any actual studies. But if you go to Youtube or any other sites where bullying is prevalent, you’ll see that gay gets used quite a lot as an insult.
Phoebe Prince hardly got any coverage, probably because she wasn’t gay.
Might be close with overweight or just being “nerdy”
I found a site called cyberbullyinghelp.com that says: “While a boy’s favorite taunt is ‘gay’ or ‘f-g’ a girl almost always goes for the physical attributes. So the dreaded taunt of the female is ‘fat’ or ‘ugly.’”
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Why do people feel the need to just limit it to just gay people.
they don’t, it is just the most serious of the bullying. There is nothing more humiliating for a boy, straight or gay, than to have bullies calling you faggot all day, every day. I was a victim of this type of bullying, I am not gay. I remember wishing I was poor, ugly, overweight, anything to just get them to call me something else.
Because I don’t think teens being taunted over having too many freckles, having to wear eyeglasses, are too tall, too short, overweight, underweight, are adopted, too poor, not attractive enough, etc. are killing themselves. When kids are taunted day in and day out that their whole lifestyle is one to be ashamed of or you keep getting beaten up, you can feel defeated. I admire celebrities like Madonna that have shared how gay people have influenced their lives.
You can’t generalize, all people are different and handle situations differently.
Fat people, nerdy people, poor people – yes, all of these people are bullied. However, only gay people are told they are going to hell for being who they are, and that can be hard to live with.
Uh ok ok how ’bout this. Hey did you guys hear about Rob Schneider. Somebody told me he goes down to Home Depot and pays the migrant workers to go to his house and choke him in the shower.
I got stuck watching an episode of Ellen yesterday in a restaurant and cannot understand how it stays on the air. She is seriously unfunny, has no chemistry with her guests, and the show itself is just inane.
myself, millions of viewers, and emmy voters disagree with you.
A nation of idiots then.
Go figure.
I think the Madonna plan is a good experiment. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Gossip is definitely an “ingredient” of bullying. Abstaining from gossip can raise one’s awareness of how often it’s done in a day and how negative and detrimental it is. There’s no downside to giving up gossip and not partaking of it, actively or passively, for a day.
So we’d have to stop visiting EW.com for a day?
Yup, let’s see them shut it down for a day.
Sheesh…what you all should give up are where people post those anonymous or monikered ‘comments’. Of course, don’t boycott EW…that would be stupid. Some of these comments are quite nasty.
You are all anonymous. So you use the name Rob, I have no idea who or where you are.
The only issue I have with this article is the writer saying “Yeah, teens, what’s up with the gossiping…just walk away from it.” How about if we, as the role models and examples of what we want them to be, are the first ones to stop gossiping? It’s up to us to create a culture where gossiping is unacceptable.
I didn’t see the show, but I didn’t get the sense that Madonna was just addressing teens.
Cool Madonna. Thanks for a great idea. Lets Pay it forward! No gossiping on these blog posts for one day!
It’s astonishing how utterly moronic she sounds.
I’m guessing the families of lynched blacks and holocaust survivors might disagree with her equating bullying to the murdering of tens of millions of people.
And to the the madge-apologists who’ll respond by saying, “what she meant by that was….”. You’re wrong. If someone of her age, experience, and PR staff cannot express herself without others having to explain what she “really” means, then she should keep it to yourself until she can intellegently express a thought.
One’s comment is rendered mute when one cannot spell intelligently.
I believe you mean “rendered moo”. Like a cow’s opinion, it’s moo.
Uh, Offensive Beyond Words, some of us can figure out what she means without PR staff or anyone else to explain it for us. She merely gave examples of extreme bullying situations in which those in power abuse other people who are unable to defend themselves.
ok ok ok I know I am going to get some nasty comments thrown my way but here we go….. I don’t understand what the big deal about bullying is lately. Yes I know that there have been some kids that have killed themselves because of it lately. Here is my point, bullying has always been a way of life for everyone growing up. I challenge anyone to say that they were not bullied ( and if you say you weren’t then I don’t believe you ). It is part of growing up. You learn to be who you are and what you want to be regardless of what others think or say about you. That is how you learn to be truly happy in life it to live if for yourself and no one else. I think that if they truly have killed themselves because they were bullied then we need to look at the self worth that their parents have or in this case have not instilled in them. I fully believe that if those kids would have had a supportive stable household with parents that taught that them that there is NOTHING worth killing yourself over then the outcome might have been different. Yes bullying is a horrible thing but it is nothing new, different maybe because of technology but it is nothing new. I think we need to teach our children that it is okay to be different and if others don’t like it then tough… to live their lives for themselves and to be there for them and help them develop a little bit of a tough skin against all of the “bullies” they will encounter throughout their whole life.
Agreed.
I think you make some good points, Jen. Bullying has definitely always been around. So why does it seem like more kids are killing themselves because it? That’s a good question. Part of the “It Gets Better” campaign is about telling kids who are bullied that other people have been through it and you can survive.
Because we try to overly shield our kids from dangers and disappointment and when they encounter adversity, they aren’t emotionally prepared.
Hehe, so it’s parenting that’s changed? Not growing up.
Of course, don’t you think? Parents are afraid to spank kids because some do gooder will call social services.
Just like kids playing sports growing up. Parents were upset that their kid who was bad at sports developed T-Ball where everybody gets to play and everybody gets to hit a ball off a tee. Really? Can’t keep your kids sheltered from disappointment.
Ok, I get your T-Ball reference now! I’m not a parent so I probably can’t add much. But this discussion reminds me of that book published a few years back called The Dangerous Book for Boys that was basically a response to parents no longer letting boys go outside and play in the dirt and have adventures.
Exactly, the world really is that much different, just the way it’s covered and the access to more media. Their were kidnappings and dangers when we were growing up.
meant to say really isn’t that much different.
The “problem” with bullying nowadays is that it just doesn’t end at school. Kids can now bully someone online, over their phones, in chat rooms, etc…Bullied kids are constantly picked on. There is no safe haven anymore. Not even at home. It IS a lot worse than it used to be.
i think that is the fundemental reason why bullying is different now. when i was bullied at school, i went home and that was it for the day. no one was able to set up a facebook page called “tina is a slut” and post hateful messages about me 24/7. even after one of these girls killed herself, kids were posting what a dumb whore she was even after she died.
i think parents are having to play catch-up on how to teach, educate and handle this type of online bullying.
People are talking so much about bullying now because in many ways bullying has changed, particularly because of new innovations like cell phones and the Internet. Also, people are tracing more suicides to bullying now, but we have no idea how many teens have killed themselves in the past because of bullying. I have a feeling that many teen suicides could be traced back to some form of bullying going back decades, if not centuries or even millennia. So, I doubt that this is just a new problem, but perhaps we’re just better able to identify it today, so it seems as if the instances have increased.
You said it yourself: there have been some kids that have killed themselves because of bullying. That absolutely makes it a big deal. The heightened attention allows everyone: kids, parents, teachers to learn more about bullying in order to remedy it. That is how children, and adults, are taught – which I think, is the point that you ultimately came to. There is no downside to the increased attention when people are getting hurt.
Bullying should not be a normal part of growing up. It is harassment. If you honestly think being shoved in a locker, having your head forcibly shoved down a toilet bowl or being called nasty slurs builds character, then it is quite obvious you have never been bullied yourself. How about we teach our kids that it is not okay to harass someone for being merely being different? People who bully as children grow up to be bullies as adults, and they pass on that behavior to their own offspring, and so on and on. The cycle never ends. Perhaps if we had taken the initiative of teaching kids that bullying is wrong generations ago, we wouldn’t even be discussing this now. And people who commit suicide are people who are probably emotionally/mentally unstable to begin with. Some people can’t endure difficult situations as well as others, I don’t think it has to do with upbringing so much as it has to do with temperament.
I agree. Like I said above, I call it the T-Ball generation. Now, I’m not condoning bullying, but certain aspects of growing up will never change and it would be irresponsible and naive to think it will.
Instead of boycotting gossiping, how about sitting down with your kids and talking to them about it, whether they are doing the bullying or like mentioned instilling some self worth, that will have a bigger impact.
Just say no.
To Madonna’s horrible music and Ellen’s terrible show.
There’s probably no chance in that.
After some 300 million records and singles sold, I’d just get over it and realize she’s here to stay.