Hey Guys!

We know there are a lot of you out there right now going through tough times because of bullying, but we want to let you know that you’re not alone!

We love our song, Kookie Girlz, because it talks about being yourself and being proud of the things that make you different from everyone else! We’ve all got a bit of kookiness in us! We think that it’s cool to just be yourself and always respect others for who they are – live and let live! Who wants to blend into the crowd when you can stand out and be your own person?!

Read about our own experiences with bullying and make sure to sign up on our fan base so we can make sure you’re the first with all the latest Kookie news! Be sure to email us, we can’t wait to hear from you!

Lots of luv!!

The Girlz!! XX

In some ways I was lucky. The kind of bullying I experienced wasn’t physical, that is no one at school ever hit me or threatened to hit me. I had always looked older right from junior school, I was tall for my age and I think that maybe I didn’t look like an easy target so possibly that saved me from physical violence. Just goes to show that bullies will only attack if they are sure the victim wont fight back.

What I experienced was probably the more common type of bullying, especially among girls, and that is the mind games and intimidation, (bet you guys know what I mean) being talked about, laughed at, and made to feel on the outside, one day you’re in, the next they cut you dead. It started in the last year of junior school and just progressed through secondary school but it didn’t really get hard to deal with till around year ten. I think it was around then that I finally realised how unhappy I was l, I missed more school in that last two years than all the rest of my school life put together. Looking back now I realise that at times I was quite depressed.

The strangest thing about this kind of bullying is that it is usually so-called ‘friends’ who are the bullies. In my case, girls I had grown up with. A small group with the top dog or ringleader surrounded by the weaker ones who would rather do her bidding to torment someone because that is better than falling out of favour and becoming the victim themselves. (This sound familiar, bet you have a group like this in your class) I spent a lot of time trying to fit in but couldn’t really handle the confusion of not knowing how each school day would go. Some days would be great then out of the blue, probably because queen bee was bored or feeling threatened by someone getting on well with me the games would begin. Rumours, sniggering, that awful humiliation of walking up to the group thinking everything was normal and then that horrible confusion of not knowing what to do when you realise you are being blanked. You know the drill everyone chattering and laughing about what they did last night just in case you didn’t get the message that you hadn’t been there because you hadn’t been invited. That was usually the signal that the next few days would be unhappy ones.

If this sounds familiar then I just want you to know something that I know now but didn’t really know then. This is bullying! Just as sure as if they had walked over and slapped me, only thing is it probably the most cowardly and secretive type. I still think I would have more respect for this girl if she had come up and just had a go, or told me what her problem was, at least I would have known where I stood but as with most bullies she was a coward.

I was lucky though because I had a good friend in my mum and we were able to talk about the bad days. She told me that life is full of bullies and that we can’t change that, but we can learn how to handle them better. I think I would like to thank my bullies because they made me tougher and more determined to do something with my life.

I never really settled into secondary school.

A year before I went there - when I was ten - my family moved from one end of the town we live in to the other. It wasn’t a really big move but it did mean I had to change junior schools. I was never happy at my new school, having left all my old friends behind that I’d had since playschool and trying to make all new ones. I changed overnight from a bubbly, outgoing and popular girl to being ridiculously quiet and shy. I was ‘the new girl’ for a whole year and I struggled to fit into all the tight knit groups of friends the girls there seemed to have.

When I moved up to secondary school the following year, it was just more change too soon and I hated it. I didn’t know anyone and I was a lot quieter back then so I found it hard to talk to people I didn’t know that well. Another girl and a boy in my class soon picked up on all this and started giving me a hard time.

It was never anything that major, which in some ways made it harder to fight back against. They would pick on every little thing I did. They laughed at my clothes, my hair, the way I talked, the way I did my work, the activities I did outside of school. They couldn’t understand why I’d choose to spend my evenings going to dance classes rather than hanging out in a bus shelter in the freezing cold smoking cigarettes! If I put my hand up in class to answer a question, I was a ‘boff,’ if I didn’t, then I was stupid. I could never win. They’d throw pieces of paper at the back of my head while the teacher wasn’t looking and pull faces at me across the table. They’d steal pens and rulers from my bag and stamp on them and grab my books and tear out the pages. I remember once having to do a ten-minute presentation for English class on a subject of our choice. I knew that whatever I chose to talk about, they’d pick fault with. I dreaded the project for two whole weeks beforehand and surely enough when I stood up to give my talk, they spent the whole ten minutes laughing behind their hands and pulling faces at me from the back of the room. My confidence took an absolute nosedive those two years.

I was lucky though that I had great parents who I could talk things through with at home if I’d had a particularly hard day. I never let the bullies see that they were getting to me but some days I’d stumble in the door at home and burst straight into tears. I still remember lying in bed one night. It was the last day of the summer holidays and we were due back to school the next day. I lay in bed for what seemed like hours that night, not wanting to go to sleep because I knew as soon as I did, it would be time to get up and go back to school.

I eventually got sick of being a victim though. I’d felt like the odd one out for nearly three years and I was sick of letting these people affect how I felt about a lot of things, including myself. When they realised they couldn’t get much of a reaction out of me (at least not a reaction that I’d let them see), they got bored and stopped. The girl never bothered speaking to me, but she did stop picking on me. My last three years of school were much easier. I fell in with a good crowd of people and started to relax a little. I came out of my shell a little more and people were finally able to see something of the real me. The more I relaxed the easier it became and the more friends I suddenly seemed to have. My school leaving book is filled with cheery, giggly messages from my friends remembering all the things we got up to in the last few years together. There’s even a message from the boy who picked on me for those first two years: “Good luck with everything, hope you do well in all that you do! All the best for the future!”

Bullying is something I can’t tolerate in anyone now. I pity people who feel they have to make other people feel small and worthless to feel better about themselves. Saying that, I think it’s important to remember that these bully’s usually have problems themselves, which make them to do the things they do. It doesn’t always help at the time, but it can make you feel better to realise that it’s probably not really about you at all. It’s not always possible to tell teachers but if you can find someone to talk to it really does help. That person may not be able to do anything to change the situation but having someone there to talk through your day with when it’s all over makes a difference. You know what they say: a problem shared is a problem halved!

The other thing it helps to remember is school doesn’t last forever! There is an end in sight and one day it will all just be a distant memory. The best thing you can do is learn all you can from any experience and always treat others the way you’d like them to treat you. The good news is you only have to spend a few years (at most!) worrying about these people, then you can forget them forever.

The bullies will have to live with their own company for the rest of their lives.

The thing is I was never bullied at school, which was cool; I had an older cousin who was a bit of a tough ‘kookie’ herself so I think that is why no one gave me a hard time. Even though I wasn’t actually bullied I saw a lot of that kind of thing and counted myself lucky not to be on the receiving end.

I was a bit of a geek though, you know just a bit average, not terribly trendy or part of the ‘in crowd’, I like to think I’ve grown into my looks (she wishes.. Nik ) I was fairly bright which isn’t always a good thing. Like Nik said when she talked about her bullying experiences, how come if you don’t do well in class you are thick or stupid and if you do then you are a ‘boff’. Can’t win, eh.

Still, speaking as someone who experienced fairly average and uneventful school days I just wanted to say that I think the song ‘Kookie Girls’ says an awful lot to people like me. I mean it’s not just about bullying it’s about liking yourself for who you are, you know, not looking around and thinking everyone else is prettier, smarter, more popular. I mean if you do that you don’t need to be bullied by anyone else in a way you’re kinda beating yourself up.

So I guess my message is, when you take a good look at yourself don’t think about what you can’t do or be, think hard about the stuff you do well and the kind of person you can be. Oh and if you think that you can’t actually do anything well then you aren’t looking hard enough, you might need a friend to help you see the stuff that’s under your nose.

By the way I know the song is called Kookie Girls but it really does apply to Kookie boys too so we want to be hearing from you lads as well. Anyway I’m off-ski now, don’t usually have so much to say because, well, as you’ve probably noticed I’m the cool silent one in the band. (Yeah yeah, dream on…Libbi x ) you guys take care and remember ‘It’s cool to be Kookie’.

Luv Leanne

(Aka Miss Pan)