ABSTRACT
Children with disfigurements are twice as likely to be severely bullied as their counterparts without visible difference. 1 Many more who do not have a disfigured appearance fear teasing or bullying about appearance in school. 2 Three-quarters of children whose parents or care workers report bullying to their children’s teachers found that the bullying continued or got worse. 3 Many pupils with disfigurements report feeling that staff have not taken their complaints seriously.
If it was racist name-calling, the school would be down on it like a ton of bricks, but staring or pulling faces at me or snidy little comments or calling me Scarface, it just doesn’t register with them that this is not okay.
Appearance concerns that are not linked to a disfiguring injury or condition, but merely ‘normal’ teenager worries about skin and hair, spots and body shape, clothes and shoes, are also apt to be dismissed as superficial or trivial concerns.