Burn Book

The burn book, a theme from the movie Mean Girls, is a book of gossip. The four girls in the film take time to write down all their little notions about other students in the school, usually nasty rumors or even poking cruel fun at something that is true.

My reason for writing today is that I have once again stumbled into the ugly realm of gossip. I had been doing much better, mostly in distancing myself from the dance department in general because I find I can't be involved in everybody's lives and keep my mouth shut. This last week was a bad one. I found myself partaking in the ugliest kind of gossip and shooting off my mouth with every swear word and vulgar phrase one could imagine. It was awful. I felt dirty and unattractive at a very deep, personal level. While brought on by an offense to justice, I did the worst job possible handling it with grace. In fact, grace went flying out the window at an alarming speed, making me question my basic personhood.

Being kind does not come naturally to me. I do much better at being harsh and hurtful. The person that I am often does not care in the slightest what people think and so I don't have a hard time behaving in a way that will make everyone hate me. Of course, this is a trait that could be, and is often, used for great good in that I am not afraid to speak the truth. But so often it is misused. It is hard to come to terms with this and face it as my challenge; it is always shocking when you discover the problem is with you, not the people around you. But still, I must square up to the problem and deal with it.

As encouragement to me, in the sense that I'm not the only idiot who fails on a regular basis, I found out my roommate had had as rough a week. Of course at the time that we were failing, neither of us knew the other was having such a hard time, but last night we bared all and revealed to one another that we are not nice people. We came to the conclusion that clearly, the only way change is going to take place in our department, meaning to change the fact that if you have information for everyone, you simply tell one person, is if a few of us, or even just two of us, take the initiative and simply STOP talking about others. We decided unanimously that something must be done. And the answer seemed simple: a burn book. Because we are mean girls, this seemed like the most likely option.

The idea came up as a gossip journal, which was said in joking but soon developed into a working alternative to talking smack. The idea is that if we have something negative to say about someone or hear something 'juicy,' that it will go in the gossip journal. At the end of the week, all the entries will get burned. As girls, we have verbal energy that has a need to come out. By doing a gossip journal, or burn book, we channel this energy in a constructive way, exuding the words in a location where no one will ever see them. In destroying the entries, we will reaffirm that those words are garbage and have no place anywhere, even in the privacy of a journal.

I don't want to be a mean girl anymore. I don't need to be friends with everyone, but it is time for me to stop tearing others down. Nothing is getting by me anymore. No words of negative opinion are coming out of my mouth. They are going straight into our burn book, because I don't want garbage in my mouth anymore.