Judging a book by its cover

I recently went to this leadership camp retreat known as Camp LEAD. I thought it was going to be like a 6th grade summer camp where you sit around the fire, hold hands and sing “kumbaya,” but it was nowhere near that. It was actually really intense, and I got extremely emotional at some activities. One lesson that really stuck to me was don’t judge a book by its cover.

I like to think of myself as a nice person and I never really knew myself to judge people prior to the camp, but I realized I made silent judgements in my head without me even knowing I was doing it. We all do it, it is part of our nature as humans to make first judgements. What I saw though, was the amount of people who made negative judgements so quickly because they were envious or threatened. People were judging others and hadn’t even heard what they'd been through.

This camp also allowed me to see that I was not alone, and it opened my eyes to see how many people had been through so many things; things I had not expected. I was in a group of all girls, 71 to be exact. We all took the same anonymous survey and at the end our leader calculated our results.

There were many results that shocked me, but one that really stuck was the number of girls that had been sexually assaulted. 59 out of 71 girls had experienced the same thing I had, which was like reality knocking me in the head with a hammer. There were 59 girls who had been through the same pain and horror, yet when I looked around the room, I would have never guessed any of those women had gone through that. And that right there is a first judgement.

The camp taught me that so many people go through so many things which are not shown on the outside. It also made me realize how horrible some first judgements can make others feel. That girl with shorts and a crop top on is not a slut. That girl who wore the same pants twice in a row is not dirty. Everybody has a story that you most of the time cannot see.

I think we can help support the women in our community by celebrating our differences, cultures, style, beliefs, instead of putting our sisters down.