Customer Reviews

Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman's Inspirational Story

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(51)

 

 

As a victim of bullying from grade school through high school, I wanted to like this book. In fact, I was annoyed when I read some of the negative reviews here. They seemed to be written by bullies themselves. Then I read the book.

Oh boy.

A great deal has been made of it being written in response to the Columbine shootings. Recent information, however, reveals the Columbine shooters weren't victims of bullying so much as they were contemptuous psychopaths who thought themselves superior to EVERYONE and planned to kill EVERYONE from the meanest jock to the lowliest nerd. I'm not sure "Please Stop" is going to help stop the creation of future Klebolds and Harrises.

Nor is it going to do much for victims of bullies beyond assuring them that lots of other people get bullied--some worse than others. I would ten times rather Jodee had expounded on the resources she had to draw upon to get through high school. I would like to have heard about the skills she developed to go from high school victim to real-world success story. (How DOES someone so hated and so downtrodden become a publicist for Muhammad Ali and Jim Carrey?) I would rather have read about what kinds of support she and her various outsider friends gave each other to buffer the cruelty they suffered.

Instead, we get 200 plus pages of graphic description of how mean everyone was, how clueless the world was, and (apparently) what a nice, saintly girl Jodee was. (I was bullied,too, but even I know that I wasn't Bernadette of Lourdes--I could be snarky and prissy and deliberately dorky. Does this excuse my tormentors? No. Does it explain their behavior? A little. Did I knock myself out trying to make them like me? Not on your life. I found my own strange little circle of buddies and together we got through it. Do I have days when I get mad on behalf of the teenager I was? Sure. Then I remember I am NOT the teenager I was and I get back to my real life.)

Would I recommend this to victims of bullies? Well, I'm a librarian and I know some kids who would likely eat this up with a spoon. Sure, I'd recommend it. I would caution them that it won't help them with their troubles beyond the "you're not alone out there" speech.

Would I recommend this to people who might be bullies? Chances are they are the ones reading it. I know waaaay too many kids who viciously pick at their classmates, peers and friends, yet read all of David Pelzer's books and comment on how much they wish they could save the child he was from being abused. They attend popular films in which underdogs overcome tremendous obstacles tossed in their paths by bullies--and they will root for that underdog. But even though their often do and say to their peers things much worse than Jodee suffered, they will not recognize themselves in the bullies at her schools. (Heck, almost none of Jodee's tormentors saw themselves as bullies, either. They remain clueless and, I suspect, some of them suck up to her because of who she is now and who she knows.)

I wish I could recommend it for the detailed descriptions of the inner resources Jodee discovered and the phenomenal skills she developed to become the person she is today. Sadly, I can only recommend it as a kind of "printed pity party" that will leave victims wondering how to heal themselves and move on.

Judging by the two comments on my original review below, I should have added more supporting information about my opinion of this book. Here it is.
I do not find this story enlightening, illuminating or useful, as the comments about my review imply I should. Here is what I have found to be the most useful writer on the topic: Michael Thompson, author of "Raising Caine" and the more relevant book to bullying: "Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children." Of course, he has the advantage of being a psychologist and expert on the topic of children's social lives.
Another detriment to the credibility of "Stop Laughing At Me" is the fact that Jodee's parents indulged her in ways that neither my parents nor any parents of anyone else I know who was bullied ever did. They let her change schools. They sent her to the Greek island of Santorini for months. Hey, there's a nice way to escape the bullying! I would have settled for just changing schools (in fact, when I entered college, the bullying was over for me).
My point about Jodee's book is that it offers no inspiration or solution to bullying if you don't have parents who can afford to send you to different schools or to an overseas resort. I sure can't afford to do that with my children. It does not address the responsibility of schools and adults in general to maintain a safe environment for children.
Here is my original review:
As someone who was bullied growing up and who now has children in school, I was eager to read this book. But I was disappointed and in some ways disgusted. Perhaps part of that is my own fault -- my expectations held all the way to the end that I would get some insight, just some little peak into why bullying happens, whether it can be stopped, what adults can do to stop it or negate its effects. Anything useful. I also grew up with the attitude that kids (and adults) shouldn't be bullying each other, period. They shouldn't be obsessed with popularity, wealth, beauty, social climbing. Just let me be me and stop laughing at me, and I'll let you be you and treat you with equal respect. Well, Jodee isn't coming from that perspective. Her entire book is a rant based on the assumption that she should have been popular among her peers and that cruel kids and cruel fate robbed her of this right -- the right to be one of the other bullies! And how does she deal with it? By becoming a narcissist for life and writing a book bragging about how she now hobnobs with celebrities -- while taking her jabs at her peers who didn't give her the status she felt she deserved. I'm sorry, but I cannot relate to that at all. It is disgusting and pathetic, and an injustice to see this recommended by so many people. How does this help kids? It tells them that they can be popular too if they fight, scratch, complain their way to the "top" of something, and write a book to say "see, I told you I should have been popular! Nyah!" If I could give this book a zero or negative stars, I would have.

I was bullied for my entire high school existence. Being a big red-headed kid with bad acne produced the same social results as a red-and-white bullseye does when mounted on a suitable target. So yeah---I know what being bullied is allllll about.

But what Jodee Blanco went through---I started doing more wondering about her state-of-mind than sympathizing: Why oh why did this girl decide over and over again to be included in the clique of people who did not share her values or interests? Why was it so important to her to intrude into groups where she a.) was not welcome and b.) should have realized that these groups were not healthy for ANYONE to be part of? Why did she have to keep switching schools? Why did she make the same overtures every place she went? Why did she immediately hone in on the "popular" group to join, when being a part of a group that shared her interests (volunteerism, teaching, advocating for the disabled) would have produced more positive results? Why did teachers "pick on her?" ( Frankly, I found the example of the wheelchair-bound teacher ridiculing her in front of the class to be so far-fetched as to be bordering on total fiction---and I went to school in the days of corporal punishment.)Why were her therapists all "clueless?" Why did she feel the need to go back to see the popular crowd at their reunion? Gloating, of course, is a recognizeable motivation for many to attend such events---but in her case--wouldn't she have WANTED to stay away from the people who had tormented her? Isn't "living well the best revenge," if your own success is the point you're trying to make?

Sadly, this book did not make me look at bullying in a new light. I didn't learn much new about the traits that make a child a "target" for bullying behaviors. I just heard a lot about Jodee Blanco's horrible quest for a social life on the top of the adolescent heap in about a half dozen different school settings, where she felt "entitled" to membership in the group she perceived as being "the best and the brightest." I would LOVE to hear from the people she passed by in her quest for elite status---those ordinary kids who would maybe have enjoyed socializing with her while also sharing experiences of helping at, say, Special Olympics events and volunteering at the homeless shelters instead of baking cookies for the football team on game days.

A college graduate? A stunning success in her very own PR business? An author and inspirational speaker? All I saw of Jodee Blanco in this book was an angry post-adolescent, still begging for acceptance of the people who, by her own admission, tormented her through her teen years, and still hitting her head against the stronger-than-steel Clearasil Ceiling that is the dividing barrier between all high school cliques.

When I was a freshman in high school, we had a two and half hour long special assembly that dealt with bullying with a special guest speaker. That speaker was Jodee Blanco.

Two and a half hours later, all two thousand students in the high school, as well as all one hundred and fifty teachers and other faculty members, walked out of that assembly with the same thought: what a bunch of bull. She had talked about how she was bullied, how other students threw dead pigs at her in her science class, how they took her possessions out of her locker and threw them into a toilet in the women's restroom, and how when she went to her high school reunion years later all of her bullies made amends and she married the one kid from high school who she was always too shy and self-conscious to talk to.

For summer reading that year, I decided to read Please Stop Laughing at Me over many other choices of a much higher quality, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis among other choices. And I believe I can say that this was the worst book I have ever read, bar none. She does not offer any useful advice to kids about bullying; rather, she wallows in her own self-pity for three fourths of the book, and then catapults herself to super-star neo-narcissism for the last quarter, where she talks about her experiences working as a public relations expert for the stars in Hollywood (Mel Gibson and Jim Carrey are named; she even talks about how Jim Carrey was in tears before her very eyes as Columbine unfolded on TV). And then we go to her high school reunion, where she's the toast of the class and everyone wants to be her friend and she goes clubbing with her former bullies and marries the love of her life! Where are the lessons? Where are the morals? Is Jodie Blanco God's gift to mankind? Or is she just so far up her own a** to realize that her folly is humor for those who see through her crap?

As a quick footnote, I have one thing to say that, if true, completely repudiates Miss Blanco's story, and that is the account of a neighbor of mine in college. She said that Jodee Blanco came to her high school, and that one of her teachers knew her. Knew her well, in fact; knew her well enough to know that she wasn't bullied in high school. She bullied him, and made his life miserable. And when he confronted her she snubbed him in front of the whole school, and left.

Jodee Blanco's story has more holes than a colander, and it's a crying shame that it's being force fed to students today.

For a writer and publicist I thought the writing was awful and why I give the book only 2 stars. I couldn't tell if she was writing as an adult reflecting on her teenage years or trying to write in a teenager's voice. Listen, my heart breaks for any victim of bullying including Jodee but I just didn't find this book very interesting. It actually seemed redundant after awhile and I am not a cold-hearted person. I was pretty horrified at the behavior of her peers in HS and was very suprprised that even after transfering to different schools Jodee had the same experience of bullying at each very different school. So I learned that and realize I must have had a very unusual educational experience.It makes me think about if you are "different" in any way other human beings "sense" it and as children and teens are threatened by it and attack it. It seems like some sort of pre-programmed evolutionary response or something. I too am "different", physically , due to a birth defect and had my share of stares, snickering, last one picked on gym teams and boys laughing at me now and then...but unbelievably I was able to fit in and in the end was very well-liked and popular.In fact, my friends "protected" me. Who knows why some misfits make it through school unbullied and others don't. I was quiet by nature but laughed alot at people's jokes(still do!) and this has always won me many friends. I guess I was just lucky and I'm very sorry for the Jodees of the world. As a parent of a teenager I'd rather have my son flunk each and every subject than EVER bully someone, ever.

I bought this book on a whim after picking it off the bookshelf, and I must say that I am a bit disappointed with my purchase. Jodee's life just seemed to get progressively worse, and I felt honest sympathy for her. The question I kept asking myself was, why do these children keep torturing her? As the book went on I seriously wanted an answer to this question. At the risk of sounding insensitive, I must say that bullies generally pick their prey based on some personal flaw, right? The author never seemed to identify what it was that made her so vulnerable to bullies. I was left confused. As a high schooler, I have never in my many years of school been exposed to the kind of cruelty that Jodee experienced. I honestly feel that (in general) the kids I have gone to school with for eleven years are incapable of such behavior. Am I that naive, to think that Jodee's was almost some kind of an alternative world? And while this review concerns the book, I must use some of my experience to explain my reaction to it. I am by no means popular, and I have had some difficulty in the past in trying to make friends at school, but I have never before been put in a situation remotely similar to Jodee's.
I think that it is definitely necessary, when reading this book, to use one's own personal experience to understand (or attempt to grasp) Jodee's experience. In the end, though, I felt like giving Jodee advice (Jodee is someone who could almost be my mother.) I wanted to just tell the author that being popular or being part of the "in-crowd" is not particularly important. It seemed as if this was all Jodee cared about, and it pained me to see such intelligent potential wasted. The truly sad part is that Jodee as an adult seems to still covet popularity, etc. Why?, I ask, Couldn't she see through it?
The disappointing part of the book is its lack of closure. Blanco never fully explains why she was preyed upon so fiercely in her school years. She never fully explains how to overcome such an obstacle, or how to prevent it from happening in the first place. She says that her parents erred in some way, but she never fully explains how they did.
In the end, this book left me with many questions. I felt that it addressed things like deceit, dishonesty, and cruelty that ultimately left me doubting my peers. I felt that this whole world of horrible behavior that I had never seen before had suddenly been thrust in front of me. Is this good or bad? I'm still not certain.

Like other reviewers, I picked up Blanco's book hoping for a balanced and self-reflective biographical read about the experiences and effects of bullying in one woman's life. I was looking forward to learning about the transformative process Blanco must have gone through as a result of her experiences (hence the subtitle, "One Woman's Inspirational Story"). I was even hoping to understand better the phenomenon of bullying and what we can do to address it. However, I was disappointed to discover that the book lacked these elements. Like other reviewers, I began to notice that something seemed "off" early on in the chapters.

Most glaring is the lack of objectivity in Blanco's retelling of her story. When we are children experiencing trauma, everything is subjective. We are in the mix of it, and survival itself is a triumph. However, since Blanco is putting her story out there as an adult, and in the form of an inspirational book, I hoped to discover an analysis of the role she herself played in creating and perpetuating her own experiences.

Nobody asks to be abused and shunned, and merely surviving this trauma can create compassion and depth in a person. However, it has been my experience that a key to healing, and to stopping the cycle abuse, is to realize that we are not the perpetual victim, that things don't just "happen" to us over and over due to bad luck, and that the "characters" who have played in the stories of our lives are not merely one-dimensional. While Blanco makes a couple of attempts to examine her own culpability in her experiences, her insights appear cloaked in self-aggrandizement (i.e., the other kids resented her because of her advanced vocabulary and speaking skills, and because of her elevated morals).

Children can indeed be cruel, and I am not diminishing or doubting Blanco's pain, the seriousness of bullying, or the emotional scars she still carries as a result of it. I have no doubt that many young people who are experiencing bullying will connect with the horrors depicted in this book; however, my question is: will the book offer them the tools, resources, and insights they need to become catalysts for change in their own lives? Blanco doesn't seem to be able to offer this yet. And since she is putting her story out there for public consumption, we, as readers, have the right to expect more.

I am a middle school educator, and I was excited to read this book when I spotted it. However, almost immediately I began to feel confused by the tone that Jodee selected. She certainly didn't seem to have risen above her experience, but rather to have developed an almost saintly image of herself as a young teen and to have become an offensively arrogant adult. (clear message presented: The bullying was done to me because I was an extremely kind and loving person who did everything right. Of course, bullying has no excuse. Don't get me wrong.)

I continued reading, because unlike Jodee, I experienced middle and high school in more of a perpetrator/bystander position than in the victim position...and because Jodee makes the point several times that denial is the biggest problem with bullying, I felt that perhaps my own life experience was leading me to respond negatively to hers. I admit I even doubted some of her anecdotes, or the severity of them at points. I struggled to keep my eyes open to her experience, and yet I could not get behind her "character". I found Jodee to be wholly unsympathetic and not at all a role model for my students who experience bullying. As an adult she appears arrogant and, though apparently financially and professionally successful, not at all kind, forgiving, mature, sensitive or insightful. Of course, I hope that Jodee herself is these things, but the book doesn't show it at all.

What put me over the edge was her "claim" to have made a vow to meet Mickey Rooney and to help him accomplish something important in his life....I thought--how odd for a 14 year old to have thought this--I teach 14 year olds and I don't think this is the type of "vow" they would make. I immediately looked at the end of the book, suspicious that perhaps Mickey Rooney was a client--hmmmmmmmmmm, no shock that he was. Looks like Ms. Blanco is skilled at writing history backwards...made me wonder what else she embellished.

I will acknowledge that this book seems like it might be useful for those who are experiencing bullying (though only the high school crowd, others are TOO young) as it is always helpful to know you're not alone. However, I feel if they modeled her "poor me" attitude it would be a detriment. A shame that this memoir has received so much attention.

Ms. Blanco--I hope you do find real peace someday. When you do, write again...

I felt that this book was not very well written. Jodee makes it seem that no matter what bullies have done that it will all be better if they like you once you are older. I just can't agree with that message. This book should have empowered those who are currently victims of the cruelty of others, to give them the motivation and mindset it takes to make it through and still be successful in life. I was bullied too and although I don't have any ill will towards them I certainly do not care to be friends with them now, nor do I care what their opinion is of me now.

I just finished reading "Please Stop Laughing at me" and I can't think of anything else. I am a Crime Analyst for San Diego City School Police Department and I deal with staticts regarding Battery and Assualts on Children by other Children every day. I don't always hear the details I just receive the numbers. After reading Jodee Blanco's Story I am more than ever willing to get involved with the teachers and parents to stop the bullying that still continues today. Her story was heart renching and made me want to reach out and help her any way I could. If I could speak with Ms. Blanco I would love for her to come visit some of our Jr.Highs and High schools to speak on the subject of Bullying and its effects. This story will truly stay with me for life.