New youth craze: Self mutilation! Michelle Malkin on media stars inspiring kids to cut themselves

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 10 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.

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 two homes (mine and her dad's) with supportive, loving families in each. Her own friends cut, too: four of them that I know of now between the ages of 11 and 14 ... [a]s do her two 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 percent 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 third, 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 1 "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.

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 two homes (mine AND HER DAD'S) with supportive, loving families in each. Her own friends cut, too: four of them that I know of now between the ages of 11 and 14 ... [a]s do her two cousins, ages 11 and 15.

Yes, popular culture is to blame for her tragic circumstances.

WHEN WILL THOSE SOCIAL MISCREANTS IN HOLLYWOOD EVER LEARN???!!!

(Prolonged eye roll.)

Angelina has the Japanese symbol for "death" tattooed on her shoulder, and the Latin words, 'Quod me nutrit me destruit,' on her stomach, meaning "What nourishes me also destroys me."

Angelina Jolie no longer hurts herself as a way of coping but she freely admits to using knives during sex play.

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In a 1995 BBC television interview Diana revealed to the world that she was a self-injurer. She said that she had cut her arms and legs, explaining, "You have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help." "Diana: Her True Story," a biography written on the princess said that Diana had thrown herself into a glass cabinet at Kensington palace at various times, slashed her wrists with a razor, and cut herself with the serrated edge of a lemon slicer. Once, during a heated argument with Prince Charles, she picked up a penknife and cut her chest and thighs. Her husband still scorned her, and thought she was faking her problems, that it was melodramatic attention seeking. During a fight on an airplane, Diana locked herself in the bathroom, cut her arms, and smeared the blood over the cabin walls and seats. Another time she threw herself down the stairs.

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Christina, a compulsive talker and smoker, is known for her outspokenness on a large number of controversial topics.

In a US magazine interview Christina explained a small, smile-shaped scar on her hand. "I was trying to impress Gaby [Hoffmann, her best friend]. So I heated up a lighter and pressed it on my hand." She revealed other burn scars on her arms and said, "I wanted to see if I can handle pain.

In a 1998 Rolling Stone interview she explained where each scar came from. When she was angry about "not looking very good" Christina heated up a lighter and held it to her hand to impress some boys.

Christina also developed anorexia when she was fourteen but has since recovered. In a 1999 Mademoiselle interview she said, "In a way, I was trying to get rid of my breasts. Everyone my age wanted them, so it was like, whoo-ooo. Then I started hating them. And for all of my movies, I was supposed to be younger, so I'd have to strap them down."

It's a horrible way to feel better. But there are two parts of your brain- one that really wants to destroy the other. And sometimes the idea of self-destruction is very romantic.

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On May 15, 1991 Richey carved "4 Real" on his forearm with a razor blade. The wound required seventeen stitches, and was done while Richey was involved in a discussion with an NME Live Reviews Editor at the Time. The next day he called and apologized and explained his behavior, "I tried talking to Steve for an hour to explain ourselves [The Manic Street Preachers]...I didn't abuse him or insult him. I just cut myself. To show that we are no gimmick, that we are pissed off. That we are for real." By the end of 1993 he had started stubbing cigarettes out on his arm and was drinking heavily. Also, at an April 1994 concert in Bangkok, Thailand, he appeared with his chest slashed open by knives a fan had sent him. In July of 1994, after having been missing for forty-eight hours and drinking and self-injuring during this time, Richey entered a rehabilitation clinic and stayed ten weeks.

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http://www.self-injury.net/doyousi/famous/

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