Entertainment
Jenny McCarthy says bullies used to light her hair on fire at school
Jenny McCarthy detailed the horrific bullying she endured while attending an “all-girls Catholic school” on the premiere episode of Kit Hoover’s “The Coop with Kit” podcast.
During Wednesday’s episode, McCarthy explained that she was really into “hair and makeup” as a teen — which she believes made her a target for bullies.
“I had my big giant 80s hair, my blond hair down to my butt, it was permed and lots of makeup,” the 51-year-old explained. “And when you go to an all-girls school, that’s not appreciated.”
The “Dirty Love” star explained that a “vicious” gaggle of girls would specifically wait after school to torment her when she was in the seventh grade.
“It was very scary because they would wait for me after school,” she recalled. “And they did light my hair on fire at one point.”
McCarthy never told anyone about the constant harassment out of fear it would make her look weak.
“I just bottled it all up because I was too embarrassed. I thought my mom would think I’m a loser,” she confessed. “Plus I’m a person who doesn’t like empathy. I didn’t like people feeling sorry for me because I felt like I could handle anything.”
The actress explained that her family “didn’t have much money” and she didn’t “want to be a burden” or add more pressure on her mom, who was already “stressed about how we were going to put food on the table.”
However, McCarthy said the “armor [she] built to get through those years” helped her in the long run.
“Looking back on that now it was almost like a training school for Hollywood,” she said. “Because it taught me resilience, it taught me how to not take things so personally.”
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“I figured out very early in my career that people that throw insults are really projecting their own level of consciousness on you and how I react to them will show mine,” she added.
McCarthy previously spoke about her experience with school bullies during an appearance on “The Ellen Show” in 2010.
At the time, the “John Tucker Must Die” star revealed that the girls used to “beat [her] up” with “pipes.”
“By the time I got to high school, the girls — even in the first week — were throwing pies in my face, ripping out my hair [and] spitting on me,” she said.
The bullying got so bad that McCarthy started to skip school and almost didn’t graduate due to her absences.
“I literally got a call from my high school saying, ‘If Jenny misses one more day of school she’s not going to get her diploma,'” she reflected. “And my mom was like, ‘You gotta go.'”
However, it wasn’t just girls that treated her terribly.
One of her first memories of being bullied was “in the seventh or eighth grade” when she got a little frisky with a boy for the first time.
“He saw my bra and he looked at it and went, ‘Oh my god, what is that?'” McCarthy recalled. “He looked at me and started falling on the ground laughing and calling me a dork and all these names — that I’m ugly and gross.”
The former “View” host, who ran home crying, said the boy broke up with her the next day.
A decade later, the “Singled Out” star saw her ex-boyfriend at a bar and he asked her to dance.
“And I go, ‘I don’t dance with dorks,'” she said triumphantly.
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