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There may be no harder time to be a girl than during high school. Your body's changing, your hormones are all out of whack, and you're trying to figure out just WHO you are. And for girls at one Washington State high school, all that is being done with the added stress of a high school "hotness tournament."
It's everything the name implies: a tournament that rates teenage girls on their "hotness" factor. And parents in the Issaquah school district should be ashamed of themselves.
Technically, they don't run the tournament site. Neither does the school, which has been trying to shut it down for the past five years but been unsuccessful because it all happens off-campus.
The "hotness tournament," which pits the girls of Issaquah High School against each other each May, is run by teenage boys. Teenage boys who could use some lessons on misogyny and basic respect for humanity.
And for that, I blame the parents.
With a daughter at home, my instinct is to think of the girls' side in all of this. What are they feeling? How are their parents supporting them?
But in a case where the girls are the clear victims, the people we really need to be talking about are the boys responsible for this "hotness rating" project. What are they thinking? Who raised them to think this is acceptable? What are their parents doing to stop it?
I wondered today what I'd be feeling if my son were one of the boys behind the hotness tournament, and my stomach twisted. I'd be angry, but I'd be more embarrassed. I'd feel like a failure as a parent.
These boys are treating the girls in their school not as human beings but as objects to be mocked, to be lined up and judged. Sounds like someone forgot to teach their kids to treat others as they'd like to be treated.
Who do you blame here? Is it the boys? The parents? The school?
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