Glee - can we learn from it?

"Pretty, pretty please.  Don't you ever ever feel that you're less than, less than perfect.
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel like you're nothing, you are perfect to me."

Pink's song (granted, the "clean" version) says what I would love to say to every single person.

I started watching Glee last year.  What first drew me to the show was pretty simple, the music.  I love how they take both classic and contemporary songs and re-do them.  For example, the did Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and made it into a ballad.  Way cool, didn't recognize it at first, yet I know every single word!  I love the experimentation and the joy of the music.

These kids are unlikely friends, all outcasts for some reason or another.  The idea that for these kids, music is making school tolerable, that music is their savior to making it through school.  That music is giving them a peer group, a group of people who accept them.

I grew up feeling that way.  I felt safe in music and drama activities.  I wasn't ridiculed, bullied or made fun of by my fellow music geeks.  It was a save place.  We loved music, we loved making music, we had safety in numbers.

I know my daughter feels that connection to music and drama already as an 8th grader.

What is it about the arts that allow people to feel accepted for who they are?  That makes people feel safe and allows them to just be who they are?

The more I watch Glee, the more I love it.  Yes, I still love the music, but I love how they show the horrible things that people do to others who are "different" and who live their life the way they want to.  It extends past the students to the adults in the show as well.  There is the bully teacher, the OCD nervous teacher, the shy over-weight teacher, the popular good-haired teacher, every group that we see in the students, we see in the teachers.

The show does a fabulous job of showing how people who choose to love themselves for who they are treated by the "mainstream" people.  They are ostracized daily by other students and except for a few caring teachers, the other adults allow it to occur.

I know that the show stereo-types and exaggerates, but it highlights what IS happening to our students.  It may over do it in their presentation, but they deal with real issues that are really happening.

One of the girls in the show says: "Everyday just feels like a war.  I walk around hating the world.  But I don't want to fight any more.  I just want to be me."

Shouldn't every student be able to stop fighting and be allowed to just be who they are?  Kids shouldn't have to feel like every day is a war, that every day they are are fighting against the people around them.  Kids should be able to be themselves and be loved and accepted for whoever that is.

And honestly, I say kids because I'm referring to this show...but I really mean people.  ALL people should be able to love themselves for exactly who they are.  ALL people should be accepted for who they are, whoever that is.

Adults, just like kids, hide who they are, hide what they feel and want.  NO ONE should have to pretend to be someone they aren't.  NO ONE should have to hide what they feel, what they want.  Everyone deserves to know that they are not alone, that they are loved and accepted for exactly who they are.

I have spent my life pretending to be okay with being over weight.  On the outside I have always seemed happy and "jolly."  Then at home I would find solace in food.  Being teased and made fun of and made to feel less because I was fat, played a huge toll on me.

I may have pretended that I was okay with it but I am not okay with it.  Not because I don't like me, but because I want to be able to do things I see other people do.  I want to be able to ride in an airplane and not need a seat belt extender.  I want to have the seat belt fit so I can ride on the roller coaster with my children.  I don't want to have to pretend that I don't want to go for a walk with friends because I won't make it very far before I am huffing and puffing and embarrass myself.  I don't want to have to pretend to not hear people making fun of me.

I'm 43, and if I feel that way after years of dealing with my weight, how hard must it be for kids who are being teased and made fun of daily?!  Kids don't know how to process their feelings, how to deal with everything that is happening to them.  Kids are merciless to each other.  We, as adults, need to stand up for those kids.  We need to help those kids deal with what is happening to them and most importantly, we need to help those kids LIKE WHO THEY ARE.

The best lesson we can teach our students, the kids in our lives, is to LOVE THEMSELVES for exactly who they are.  Don't make excuses, don't try to change...be who you were made to be and love yourself for it.