02/22/2005
Have you heard of "cutting?" If you're a parent, you'd better read up. "Cutting" refers to self-mutilation — using knives, razor blades, or even safety pins to deliberately harm one’s own body — and it’s spreading to a school near you.
Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses," and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds, and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as Thirteen). There is even a new genre of music — "emo" — associated with promoting the cutting culture.
In Britain, health care researchers estimate that one in ten teenagers engages in addictive self injury. According to psychiatrist Gary Litovitz, medical director of Dominion Hospital in Falls Church, Va., the growing trend here in America has alarmed school guidance counselors around the country. [A Cry For Help What Parents of Teens Need to Know About Cutting February 2005]
It’s not just delinquents and social misfits who are doing it. A concerned parent sent me the following letter recently:
"I just found out this week that my 14-year-old daughter is a 'cutter.' She has a 4.0 average, 8th grade, goes to a good school, and is well-liked by all who know her. She is popular, has 2 homes (mine and her dad’s) with supportive loving families in each. Her own friends cut, too: 4 of them that I know of now between the ages of 11 and 14…[a]s do her 2 cousins, ages 11 and 15.
"My daughter cuts herself with a safety pin. I found this out on her own personal website which I discovered she had been hiding on a hidden account she used at another relative’s home. She had links to webrings about cutting, suicide and broken hearts as well as images and poetry. Her friends all feature cutting/suicide links, icons and song lyrics as well.
"The counselor at her school told me this: At her middle school, '70% of the kids here cut or know someone who does. It’s cool, a trend, and acceptable. Boys do it as well but are more public about it … . you're not even the first parent this week: you're the 3rd and just today a girl received stitches in the hospital for cutting herself so bad.'"
While many public schools deny the problem exists, public health advocacy groups are warning medical professionals of the cutting craze — and have even declared March 1st "Self Injury Awareness Day."
This madness would not be as popular as it is among young people if not for the glamorizing endorsement of nitwit celebrities such as twentysomething actress Christina Ricci. Several of the websites I researched highlighted the same quotes from Ricci describing her experiences with self-injury:
In an US Magazine interview, for example, Ricci blabbed about various scars on her hands and arms: "I wanted to see if I can handle pain. It’s sort of an experiment to see if I can handle pain." In another interview, she described putting cigarettes out on her arm and answered questions about whether it hurt: "No. You get this endorphin rush. You can actually faint from pain. It takes a second, a little sting, and then it’s like you really don’t feel anything. It’s calming actually."
And in Rolling Stone, Ricci prattled about scratching her forearms with her nails and soda can tops: "It’s like having a drink. But it’s quicker. You know how your brain shuts down from pain? The pain would be so bad, it would force my body to slow down, and I wouldn’t be as anxious. It made me calm."
It may be all fun and games for a Hollywood starlet like Ricci, but her mindless stunts have inspired countless young girls to carve themselves into a bloody stupor. Hollyweird strikes again.
Michelle Malkin is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin’s website.
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