Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by @Anastasia_Mikaelson

It was the middle of my 6th grade year in middle school. I guess I was picked on because I was very well developed for a girl in middle school (I had a big chest aka big boobs, was very tall, and was very skinny for my age).

It was a girl I had become friends with the year before, that for some reason had become really nasty to me over the summer and continued to be rude to me throughout the beginning of my 6th grade year.

Right when we got back to school from winter break, I started to hear a rumor about me floating around the school. "Meagan stuffs her bras with paper to make her boobs look bigger than they are, she's such a slut for trying to make her boobs bigger, she should go die," are just some of the things that floated around the school about me.

I had really low self-esteem about myself, especially about my body, and hearing those rumors didn't help. At times I really did want to just give up on living and die, but instead of killing myself, I would go home and cry myself to sleep thinking I wasn't good enough, even though I knew the rumors weren't true.

It was horrible going to school everyday, I'd walk through the hallways and people would just stare at me like a zoo animal. Then there were the people that would call me very rude names like 'slut, whore, stuffer, etc.' I was miserable, and to make it worse, all my friends had left me when they heard the rumors. Even though they knew me and knew they were false, they left me because they didn't want to be associated with the girl that 'stuffs her bra' or 'the slut.'

I was left to deal with this completely on my own.

Everyday was like that for the next two months. Even though I was at rock bottom, I never gave up in searching for who had started the rumor. I hoped if I found them, I could somehow convince them to tell everyone to stop spreading the rumors about me, and that they were all false.

That was just my wishful thinking.

I found out who it was, and it turned out that it was my friend Michelle (name has been changed for privacy reasons), who I had gotten to know as a friend last year, but had become really mean to me over the course of the summer and this year so far. It shocked me that she would do such a thing, especially to me, one of her friends.

It was too much to take in all at once, and I didn't know what to do. I went to one of my teachers, and told her what was going on, she told me to just talk to Michelle nicely and she was sure Michelle would put an end to the rumors.

My teacher couldn't have been more wrong.

I did like she told me, and the next day after one of my classes with Michelle, I pulled her aside in the hallway and told her nicely if she could please stop spreading the rumors about me. She smiled at me, and for a second I thought she was going to actually be nice to me and stop spreading the rumors.

Wrong, again.

Instead, she screamed out in the hallway for everyone to pay attention. I wanted to run away and hide, because now everyone in the hallway had stopped and was now staring at me and huddled around to watch what was going to happen. Not to mention the loads of people that were now running over to see what was going on. I looked around to see if I could get any help from a teacher who was passing by, but there were none. Where were all the teachers you may ask? Probably at lunch, which was where I was supposed to be before I had stopped to ask Michelle to stop the rumor.

Instead here I was in the middle of the hallway, with a ton of people staring at me, and also praying whatever Michelle was going to say wouldn't be that bad.

Who was I kidding? Like Michelle would say anything nice about me after all she had done.

For once I was right, and what Michelle said and did next made me want to go home and just crawl up in bed and cry. Michelle had reached out and grabbed my boobs in both her hands in front of everyone in the hallway watching, and to further add to my embarrassment and humility, she proceeded to say 'Yup, that is definitely either a padded bra or stuffed with paper.' Which might I mention was extremely not true, considering the fact my mother would NEVER let me wear padded bras when I was that age and also that even if I wanted to I wouldn't even know where to start or what to use to stuff my bras at that age.

Using the little confidence I had, I screamed in her face that what she said wasn't true. She laughed in my face, and said if I wanted to prove that she was lying so bad, I should pull up my shirt and show everyone the truth. Of course I would never do that, and even if I had done that, she would have claimed that even though I didn't stuff my bras I was still a slut because I lifted up my shirt and flashed my boobs to everyone.

So, instead of answering her back or doing what she had told me to do, I ran away to the office and told them I was being bullied and wanted to call my parents to pick me up. I called my parents and they came to pick me up and took me home.

I didn't talk to Michelle ever again.

I filled out a statement thing in the office of what had happened to me, but it didn't change anything but keep Michelle from coming near me again.

The rumors never stopped floating around school that year, but as time went on I stopped caring what the rumors were saying and ignored them because I knew they weren't true. I found new friends and Michelle moved out of town right after the school year ended.

By the start of my 7th grade year, almost everyone had forgotten about the rumors about me from last year. There were still a few people that would glance at me like before, and some that would call me those rude names like before, but unlike before it didn't bother me. I had grown stronger and knew that someone's words had no effect over me anymore.

6th grade had to be one of the worst times of my life, because not only was I dealing with everything I had just explained, but I was also being physically bullied by another one of my friends. This girl also had become mean to me like Michelle did, except I only had gotten to know this girl during the beginning of my 6th grade year and she didn't start bullying me till the same time as Michelle. I found out later that they were friends and had actually planned to bully me from the start together.

Years later, I graduated high school at 16 and now at 17 almost 18 years old, I am attending college and am no longer bullied. That experience made me so much stronger, and made me who I am today. I still struggle with some after-effects of that situation, like depression and low self-esteem, but I don't let those things hold me back. I am a confident young woman and nothing is holding me back from living my life the way I want to.

I'm hoping to write a story on my whole 6th grade bullying incident and post it to Wattpad soon. I hope to inspire more girls to stand up when they are being bullied and to learn how to avoid situations like what happened to me. I also want girls who are out there experiencing things like this to know that you are not alone in this. We've been where you are before and gotten through it.