One Girls Triumph Over Bullies And Obesity

10 March 2007

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To look at Sammy-Jo, a successful singer and drummer, you would never guess the dark past that lies behind her beautiful confident exterior. Sammy-Jo tells us about her childhood of obesity and bullying.

"As a teen I absolutely hated school. At 5ft 8 I weighed 16 stone and I got bullied almost daily. I’d be walking down the corridor past a group of lads and they’d shout out things like ‘fat cow’. I remember once, when I was about 14, I was in the gym and had left my shoes in the changing room. When I went to put them on at the end of class, somebody had written ‘Wide Load’ on the backs of them in tippex. It wouldn’t rub off, so I had to walk all the way home from school.

I was mortified. I wasn’t always overweight. Ironically it wasn’t until I started school that I started to plump up. I loved school dinners, whilst other children avoided them, I’d eat burgers, custard, puddings, fish fingers. I loved it all. The more weight I gained the more I ate to comfort myself. It was a vicious circle. To make things worse, school blazers came in woollen or polyester. I was a size 20 and couldn’t get a woollen blazer in my size, so I had to have a polyester one from an outsized shop.

As the bullying became unbearable, I started to bunk off. I’d go to the local town and sit in a café and eat chips and smoke. I started smoking because I so desperately wanted to be cool. I was only about 13 or 14 but it was my way of controlling things. I had a couple of friends, but my gang were the overweight gang of friends. We banded together and were bullied together. When the bullying first started I used to cry. But after a while I’d say "I know, and?" I felt more empowered saying that than crying and I actually started to get quite mouthy.

At 15 years old, I’d been bullied for 4 years straight and had had enough. I needed something to escape to and it came in the form of music. Mum took me to Joy Reynolds school which was a room in an old Cathedral church on Tuesdays for half an hour every week to learn to sing. I absolutely loved it. It was something fun to do having had such a miserable day at school. I eagerly looked forward to my Tuesdays and began to get really good at singing.