The Evolution Of An Uber-Bitch - It All Began With Self-Esteem And Being Sold A Bill Of Goods

Brandi Cookson was little girl of modest intelligence, modest looks, and modest talent.  She sailed along in her modest ways until she ran up against girls who were prettier, smarter, and a lot more gifted.  They of course teased her about her frizzy hair, her awkward walk, and her homespun clothes.  'What's the matter with me?', she asked her mother.  'Why do the other girls always tease me?'. 

Now, Mrs. Cookson was no beauty or shining light, and was lucky to be married.  She hoped against hope that her daughter would be the belle of the ball, the genius that everyone noticed, and the star of the volleyball team, but it was not to be.  Her husband was just as dull a knife as she was, slope-shouldered and short, and with little upstairs, so it was not surprising that Brandi came out the way she did. 

Brandi's teacher saw how the little girl was teased, and no matter how much she reprimanded her torturers or the more she tried to set them on a more compassionate, inclusive, and understanding course, the more the girls rebelled and redoubled their efforts.  

Mrs. Crandall, the teacher, was particularly concerned because this was the era of self-esteem where students were taught that they were all perfect little beings, all different, all special, and all valued.  Such education would give underlings the gumption to make a go of it in the real world and would send a stern message to the bullies.  

One whole class was devoted to self-esteem each week, and although the teacher had difficulty in finding anything special about Bobby Anderson, a nose-picker and dumb as a rock or Samantha Peters, a truly ugly girl that no amount of self-esteem was bound to help, Mrs. Crandall did her best to keep her composure and a smile on her face. 

She knew that the whole self-esteem thing was nonsense. She watched the Bobby Andersons and Samantha Peters get picked on mercilessly from kindergarten to sixth grade, leave Barker Elementary School as dreary and unwanted as ever and wondered why the school administrators had bought the cockamamie idea in the first place.  

The girls never taunted anyone when Mrs. Crandall was around and were models of respect and propriety, but when her back was turned, the innuendoes, snarky comments, and nasty asides came out in force.  On graduation day, the taunters looked beautiful in their pretty dresses, pumps, and ribbons; and the tauntees looked just as dismal and clueless as the first day of kindergarten.  

It was the law of the jungle, Mrs. Crandall concluded.  Human beings would always divide themselves into winners and losers, champs and dogs, and so be it. 

She did not realize, however, that little Brandi had actually taken her words to heart. In fact they were the only things she had to hold onto as she realized that she was exactly as her taunters saw her - an unattractive, ungainly girl whose prospects in the world were fair to middlin' at best.  'Find your inner greatness', Mrs. Crandall had told her. 'It's there and you only have to look for it'. 

However, try as she might, she found nothing; but that, she decided, was because she was always comparing herself to others.  She would never have Alexis' golden hair or Laura's perfect skin, or Leona's smile, so why set herself up for failure.  Get on with it, and.....And then came a moment of epiphany, that one defining moment when you, as Mrs. Crandall advised, discovered who you really were.  

It wasn't pretty, this newfound self, but survivalist to the core, and had Mrs. Crandall known, she would have been proud of her Darwinian instincts.  This put-upon, badgered little girl would challenge these privileged at birth, entitled bitches.  She would show them a thing or two, and although as she walked off the graduation platform to hisses and whispered jeers, no sooner did she leave Barker Elementary than she began her evolution into the anti-Christ of beauty, charm, elegance. 

 

'The Law of Unintended Consequences', Mrs. Crandall mused when she heard of how the ungainly Brandi Cookson had turned into a teenage harridan, a misanthrope, a rampaging terror, and the scourge of the school's best and brightest whom this in-your-face succubus called out for bourgeois privilege and coddled superficiality.  The tables were turned, and Brandi was on a roll. 

By high school graduation she had turned herself into a Bernal Heights tough girl, flannel shirts, shit-kickers, and leather jackets - not that she really was a lesbian, far from it, rutting as she did behind the tool shed, but it was the objectionable persona she cultured.  

As importantly, she became the avant-garde of the taking offense culture and put every one of these self-important twits in their place for using wrong pronouns, for whispering about dildoes and scissoring, and for cluelessness in general.  As was the ethos of the movement, the zeitgeist, she found offense with everything.  She bitched and moaned to teachers about exclusion and prejudice until she was chosen for everything, called on first, given a leg up in every event.  

It had worked, this persona, she both got what she wanted and made suckers out of everybody else; and she became the spokesperson for LGBTQ+ pride and 'Bitches Against Racism', a conflation of black and gender victimhood.  She was on guard for the slightest offensive racial and sexual slurs. 

When a white classmate cheered a black runner in the County Games, she hammered him for racism. 'Of course black people can run fast just like they can shuck and jive, you idiot' she yelled. 'Keep your foul racism to yourself and get out of my way'.   Or to a football jock who raised his little finger when a gay boy walked by.  'You fucking cunt', she howled. 'I will have you expelled for rancid homophobia, you retard'. 

There's room for everyone, decided Mrs. Crandall whose self-esteem class had gotten Brandi's ball rolling. She had hoped that Brandi would become a productive, reasonably happy member of an inclusive, diverse society; but it didn't turn out that way - just the opposite in fact, but so what? The girl had found a place where she could be top dog, which was all the feel-good exercises were about from the very beginning, and who was to judge who became what?