If it hasn't been obvious, I'm a total Gleek, but there are some things that Glee doesn't always get right (like the episode on teenage drinking that I blogged about here.) And there are some things they get very right (The episode with Kurt and his dad that I blogged about here.)
Lastnight was one of the times they got it right.
They deal with alot of high school kid problems, but lastnight was an episode that related to everyone: Domestic Violence.
If you read my Dear Teen Me letter, you know that I'm no stranger to that. (If you haven't read it, you can read it here.)
Glee didn't glorify it lastnight or put an unrelatable scenario out there. Coach Bieste a very muscular female football coach recentlly married Cooter after years of not loving herself and only getting her first kiss after she started at McKinley. It was revealed that he got upset with hera nd hit her. She didn't do anything back because she thought who else would love her or want her?
How many times have girls gone through this? Not just physical abuse, but emotional? Constantly we devalue ourselves and think we can't do any better, so we let them abuse us. The skater boy made me feel like I was nothing. I thought his words were justified and by the time they resorted to violence, there was no escaping. In reality, him breaking my heart saved my life.
I may refer to myself as the punching bag, but there is no way you should ever let someone use you as one. I was the verbal and physically punching bag for so many years of my life. This, my friends, is the reason I started this blog. To know that you can fight back. It doesn't have to be physical, it doesn't even have to be verbal, but sometimes you just need to look at your situation and know that there is always a way out.
I wish I had more resources for you all. Something more that I could give you. All I can say is watch lastnight's Glee episode and you will see why it gave me chills to my very core.
I was only half watching this episode because I was making my final copy edits to Driven, but I caught that and thought they did a particularly effective job with the subject. Why did it work so well? Because they'd done such a good job putting us in Coach Bieste's head. We lived her short romance right along with her, felt her pain in not believing she'd ever find a partner, and her joy in finally allowing herself that gift. So when it turned out Cooter was hitting her, we felt the same way she did: "oh no! This can't be real! She worked so hard to get where she is." We totally understood why she'd try to cover it up and pretend it didn't happen. For anyone who didn't understand before why a woman would stay with a man who hit her, they would after watching that episode. And that's good writing.
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