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Catty girl hating mamas of daughters, we have a new hero. Her name is Jen McKendrick, and she owns her own photography business. But in the midst of a sucky economy when every booking counts, this entrepreneur is making news for turning DOWN clients. Four catty, witchy, BULLYING teen clients in particular.
Finally! Hitting mean girls where it hurts. Let's hear it for Jen McKen (her nickname)!
In a blog post on her company website, the Pennsylvania-based shutterbug explains she was bee-bopping around on Facebook when she found a page made by a kid in her community specifically to bash classmates. It sounds like a modern-day equivalent of the slambooks passed around high school back in our day. But what stuck out to McKendrick were the comments, the mean, cruel comments from four kids who were scheduled to have their senior portraits taken in her studio.
So she canceled on them. And explained that she won't photograph kids who are ugly ... on the inside. Bravo!
I did have a second's pause here in my revelry. OK, so she canceled and called kids ugly on her blog. Isn't that just her own form of bullying the bullies?
The good thing is McKendrick didn't just lash out at the bullies -- she shared with the girls' parents EXACTLY why she was cancelling. She shined a light on the ugliness that can be easily hidden by sly teens. That's the heroic act. Simply cutting the kids loose would have made her feel good without enacting any real change in their lives. But forcing parents to face the fact that their kids are tormenting their classmates enables said Mom and Dad to rein their little bullies in and give the poor victim some relief.
This is one case where parents NEED to have their kids' foibles thrown in their face. No one wants to think that their kid is the jerk, and no kid's going to come home and say, "Hey, guess whose pants I pulled down in the middle of the hallway today!"
If you asked me why I would NEVER -- not on your life, not for a million dollars and the ability to eat anything and have it completely bypass my thighs -- go back to high school, catty girls would have to land pretty high on the list. I do not miss a certain teenager of the female persuasion forever making up outlandish stories about me to rile up the rest of the girls in our class. I know for a fact her father would never have accepted that his dear darling was a monster. My parents couldn't tell him. But I wonder if an outside adult, say a senior portrait photographer, had put it straight to him, if he'd have forced her to stop trying to make my life hell.
It's too late to know, but it's not too late for the victims in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. I think Jen McKendrick did the right thing, how about you?
Image via Shermeee/Flickr
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
