That people romanticize and glamorize cutting pisses me off. There's absolutely nothing romantic or glamorous about self-harm, so there's no need to be setting up such a pretty scene for a picture when you're slicing into your skin, hurting yourself.
Stop drawing hearts and flowers on your arms, thighs, etc around your bloody cuts. Stop taking pictures of your arms whilst undressed in cute lingerie. Stop the pictures of you and your friends cutting together, smiling and laughing. Stop trying to make it look artistic.
It's not cute. It's not funny. It's not art. It's not a fun activity to do with a friend. It's not sexy and exotic. It's not something that needs to be made to look whimsical and romantic or set up to look tragically beautiful.
I'm not being judgmental. I used to cut, a lot and often. I mostly cut on my thighs so no one would see them and sometimes on my stomach and upper arms. Anywhere I could keep hidden in regular clothes worked best for me when I was cutting because I didn't want anyone to see what I was doing. I wanted what I got out of it without having anyone know because I knew it wasn't healthy and wasn't good for me to be doing. I knew if people saw the cuts and the scars they would question how it happened because it's not fun, cute, silly, romantic, sweet, pretty or anything other than ugly, dangerous and harmful.
I hate seeing pictures like that pop up on my dash on Tumblr and hate seeing it on a blog as I'm browsing stuff on blogger, wordpress, etc. There's no need to try and glamorize cutting or any other form of self harm. There is no tragic beauty in what you're doing and a lot of people don't do it to get attention. By glamorizing it, you're only helping people who don't understand it continue to treat it less seriously and think of it less as a real problem. And that's not helping anything, only hurting even more and making it harder for people who wants to get help for it to do so because it's so often seen as a "cry for attention" instead of a real problem. So stop this bullshit.
5 comments:
Wow I wasn't aware of this at all. I think I will do some research and do a post about this on my blog. Thanks for the story. You are talented.
504dablogman.blogspot.com/
Thank you for posting this. Your last paragraph, about how romanticizing it or doing it for attention is going to prevent people from taking it seriously and thus prevent those in need of help from actually getting it, is especially spot-on.
Thank you for this. My youngest fell into this 'scene' and bears the scars.
Someone, somewhere, must have self-harmed with no peer influence, I guess. But for certain, my daughter started because it was the done thing in the circles she had stumbled into.
Glamourising it is repulsive
I am a prior cutter but I am oblivious to this glamorization and glad you wrote about it. I always saw from my own experience that cutting was a way to inflict physical pain I could deal with to mask emotional pain that I was too weak to handle. I never wanted anyone to know - it was not about attention or pity but more a a secret coping mechanism.
My oldest (15 going on 21) has put me through the ringer and I found her cutting one day about a year ago. Fortunately, she was doing it out of curiousity because all her friends do it and not to self-harm. She has not cut since thank Goddess! I never understood why she did it to be like her friends but this glamorization certainly seems pretty accurate as the culprit! I learn so much reading here :)
This is so accurate. I see it plastered all over tumblr, and quite frankly, it disgusts me how it is portrayed as cool. Really well written :) Thanks for this
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