- Fifth grade.
We went camping and my little bikini bottoms fell down,
and someone yelled, "Gorilla woman."
I was a hairy child, so what?
(upbeat music)
- What?
- Bowling?
- Have I ever been bullied?
- Oh man. - Oh hell yeah.
- Yeah. - Yeah
- Yes. - Yeah!
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yes. - Yes.
- I would get called "kharoof,"
which is "goat" in Arabic because my hair was super fluffy.
- I was told that I was not pretty.
- I have a heart condition,
so that kind of stunted my growth when I was younger.
I got picked on a lot because I was significantly smaller.
- Got bullied for having big ears.
- About my lips. - Red hair.
- Braces.
- When I was younger I used to have this
cavity on the front of my tooth.
Kids would always make fun of me for that.
- Having bad skin. - Acne.
- Eczema.
So whenever I wear like short sleeves
it was always like, "Eww!"
- I got made fun of my last name a lot.
- Bodily. I got made fun of a lot for that, so...
- From like preschool all the way
to like senior year of high school.
- Kindergarten
- Elementary- - Element-
- School.
- I can't even really remember exactly why,
but they took like an apple, and they like put it in mud,
and they wanted to give it to me to eat.
It wasn't even that bad, just traumatizing.
- Yes. When I was in middle- - Middle-
- Middle school.
- I had this girl in middle school that
like would literally steal my lunch.
- People photoshopped my name onto like
incredibly offensive posts and started circulating them.
- Someone sprayed, "Randy has buff ass cheeks,"
on the like wall as you walk into the gym.
So like everybody was just like,
"Who's Randy and let me see her butt cheeks."
- I was like quintessentially pushed up against the lockers.
- Grabs me by the sweater, puts me up against the locker,
and then a random Japanese kid with long hair grabs him.
He says, "You don't fuckin do that!"
- Yeah.
- My weight. - My weight.
- Weight.
- That's the easiest thing, right?
I feel like bullies always pick on like
the thing that they see first.
- When I first came over to the States,
my English wasn't really good.
I remember a teacher making fun of me
'cause I didn't understand the
difference between hand and head.
- Because I moved here from another country,
the language is very new to me,
and the girls here were like very mean
because like I was a new kid and I like
didn't really know what they were saying.
- Some ladies bullied me because of my accent.
- And just making fun of the way you like speak Vietnamese.
- After 9/11 people kept joking and
saying that Osama bin Laden was my dad,
which was super hurtful because this is
someone that you see on the news as like this super villain.
- For some reason the teacher wanted
everybody to go around and compliment each other.
It gets to this girl and her only compliment is,
"Your eyes aren't that c***ky for an Asian person."
- I was bullied a lot for being Asian as a kid.
- Lot of generalizations about Asians.
- And I was just like super like kind of ashamed with it.
- I was bullied for looking Asian,
for being Asian, even though I'm not Asian.
- I got teased because I have a Black brother, and...
Just so we got a lot of like racist names at us.
I still get emotional talking about it.
It's so stupid, but those little things hurt.
- I was hanging around like a group of
people that didn't have my best interests in mind.
- At the time I didn't see it as bullying.
And then as I grew older, that's when I realized.
- I allowed myself to be treated poorly.
- There was this kid, Nick, he said, "Your shoe's untied,"
and I looked down and he comes up
with a fist right into my nose.
- When I was little, I used to run home and cry.
And my dad said to me, "They hit you, just hit 'em back."
And one day there was this, just heard this kid crying,
and he was like, "Oh, here she comes, here she comes."
And it wasn't me, it was a kid I hit. So...
- I got bullied when I was a child.
Her name was Judy and she kept pushing me in the gravel.
So I saved my allowance and I bought an Ivory bar of soap,
and I frosted it and I gave it to her.
She took a big bite out of that thing.
And it was soap, and it was the best.
I saw her do it, and then I ran.
- As soon as you like fight back,
usually they go find somebody else to pick on immediately.
- I dodged a lot of bullying purely out of the fact
that people were afraid that if they said shit to me
that I would be like, "Say it again."
- Have I ever been bullied?
- No. - No.
(sighing)
- I mean like, what are we considering a bully?
Is making a song about someone sticking
a jar of peanut butter up their vagina being a bully?
- I was the one who was doing a lot of bullying growing up.
- I became a bully because I got bullied.
- I was the bully of the bullies.
- Probably made the situation worse when it came down to it.
- This girl was bullying this boy.
I must have been having a bad day, and I was like,
"I'll slap that hoe."
And then we got in a fight.
She did not come back to school after that.
- I would kick some kids that like
that were too fast for me, you know, just to tag them back,
and maybe that was a little bit bullying, but...
- Insecurities. - Insecurity.
- I was very insecure.
- I was a little jealous.
- If you remember being at South Gate Elementary,
and remember Olivia being mean,
and like having kids ignore you, I really apologize.
- Yes.
- Being gay. - Gay
- Gay. - Being Trans.
- I definitely was bullied for being super flamboyant.
- I received a fair amount of homophobia
even though I'm straight.
- But because most of my inner circle is LGBTQ,
they just go, "Oh, well Jordan's gay."
- When I was in college, I went to a party at a fraternity
This guy pointed at me and said,
"Get the out, you flaming f****t."
And then they scooped me up, went out the front door,
and literally threw me out into the lawn like a movie scene.
- No.
- I think I did. Just being happy is my revenge.
- I guess the revenge would be that I
didn't let it like get me down to the point
where I wasn't still able to be myself.
- I never really got back at them.
I just kind of live my life,
and do what I do, and excel and succeed,
and I think that's kind of revenge enough.
- I'm young, hot, and successful.
And that kind of is the perfect revenge.