It's Not Just Bullying, It's Slut-Shaming: The Case Of Phoebe Prince

The mainstream media's narrative of Phoebe Prince's death goes like this: Irish girl arrives at Massachusetts high school. Girl is pretty, nice, gets involved with a slightly older boy. "Mean girls" bully the girl incessantly. Torture of bullying becomes too much, and tormented girl kills herself. Town/local D.A take action to bring criminal charges against bullies. Town angry, grieving.

This is a tragic story, and the more you pry into it, the more tragic it becomes. Emily Bazelon has written an excellent, well-researched and thoughtful article about Phoebe's death for Slate, in which she fleshes out the circumstances leading up to Phoebe's death, exploring the conflicts between Phoebe and the students who bullied her, Phoebe's emotional and psychological history, and the decisions and attitudes of the South Hadley school district and the D.A's office both before and after Phoebe's suicide.

Bazelon covers a lot of ground, but neither her article nor many others about Phoebe address a serious issue in both this case and others: slut-shaming and girl-on-girl bullying that focuses on sex and body image, and that seriously, disastrously affects teenage girls' self-image and esteem.

Phoebe apparently got emotionally and/or physically involved with boys who were ending or still tangled up in relationships with other girls. These girls began slut-shaming her, calling her an "Irish whore" and telling her to "close her legs." They degraded her on Facebook, Twitter, and cell phone texts. They yelled at her in the hallways at school. The boys Phoebe had been with either joined them or distanced themselves. Phoebe did not retaliate at all; she instead attempted suicide in November, swallowing a bottle of pills, and continued to cut herself. The bullying got worse, culminating in one afternoon when several girls drove by Phoebe on her way home from school, called her a "whore" and chucked an empty drink can at her. That afternoon, Phoebe hung herself.

Then the media storm began, producing the narrative highlighted above. The main moral quandary being addressed now is whether or not the bullying students should be prosecuted. The actual nature of the bullying, most of which was clear slut-shaming, seems to have been largely overlooked.

Where did these girls calling Phoebe an "Irish slut" get that rhetoric from? Why is there so much "girl-on-girl" fighting at South Hadley and other high schools? Could it be because the media so often pits women against one another, derides women as sluts or bimbos, and offers them and their bodies up as far easier objects of easy, cruel criticism than men?

If South Hadley and other Massachusetts schools are really serious about instituting anti-bullying programs, they need to look further than research on teenage psychology. They need to look at a culture that sexualizes women at an extremely young age and then castigates them for their sexuality, and that consistently engages in the victim-blaming of girls and women.

A high-schooler interviewed for Bazelon's story said it best: "The girls found out she'd been with the boys, and true to high-school girls, they got mad at the girl instead of the boyfriend." This isn't just "normal" behavior for high school girls. It is something taught by our media and our society, and something that has been largely ignored in the case of Phoebe Prince.

Photo credit: Eddie~S