Rick "Zombie Boy" Genest drops by The Ric & Suzanne Show!
Posted By: CJAD 800 · 11/30/2012 11:37:00 AM
Actor, artist and model Rick "Zombie Boy" Genest, best known for performing with Lady Gaga, joined Ric & Suzanne today for a chat about bullying and tolerance.
Rick is tattooed over 80% of his body, and the ink is made to have him look like a corpse. Earlier this week, the Montrealer spoke to Marymount High School students about being comfortable in their own skin.
Listen to the chat by clicking here
photo: Terry Richardson
Photograph by: Dave Sidaway, The Gazette
MONTREAL — Sounding younger than his 27 years, Zombie Boy, a.k.a. Rick Genest from Châteauguay, told Marymount Academy students Tuesday that it is “not very nice” to make fun of each other for being different. “We’re all different,” said Genest, who was at the English School Board of Montreal high school to urge students to stand up to bullying.
“Being pushed around is not cool, whether it’s at school, on the street or at work,” said the heavily tattooed model who appeared last year in Lady Gaga’s video Born This Way. Zombie Boy was also on hand to film an anti-bullying commercial.
In a classroom at the N.D.G. school that had more media present than students, Genest was asked several times if he had taken up the cause of combating bullying because he himself had been bullied in school. Genest replied by saying: “I’m kind of different and I feel like I’m in a good place to tell people not to judge others because of their appearance.” He said even before his tattoos, he was always “different,” and his mother could attest to that.
Marymount students Nicolas Trotman, 17, Massimo Di Iorio, 16, and Shakeira Bernicky, also 16, said they liked having Genest speak out against bullying. “He’s really cool, he’s really original,” said Trotman, a Grade 11 student. The three students said bullying was not a problem at their school. “We’re a close-knit family,” said Bernicky. Di Iorio added: “The school has a good program in place against bullying.”
Marymount Academy’s progress against bullying makes it a bright light in an otherwise grim provincial picture. A Léger Marketing poll published last week found that close to 40 per cent of the 652 adult Quebecers surveyed feel that bullying is on the rise. The Nov. 5-8 poll was conducted for Association for Canadian Studies and the organization ENSEMBLE, whose anti-bullying program is presented yearly in 80 schools across the province. Anne Lagacé Dowson, head of the not-for-profit group, said: “What is most alarming is our discovery that bullying leaves victims feeling paralyzed. Most people who report being bullied also report that they did nothing about the incident.”
Among young people, age 18 to 24, more than one in four reported being bullied frequently, the study found. Women were three times more likely to be insulted over their physical appearance than men. Lagacé Dowson said that among schoolchildren, many say they already know that bullying is a bad thing, but what they lack are tools to deal with it.
In Ottawa on Nov. 22, meanwhile, the Harper government defeated an anti-bullying motion from NDP backbencher Dany Morin, 26, the openly gay MP for Chicoutimi-Le Fjord. A Canadian study in 2009 found that gay and lesbian students are far more frequently bullied than heterosexual students, both verbally and physically.
After last week’s vote, Morin said the government had “missed an opportunity to take a leadership role in the fight against bullying.” Morin’s motion called for the creation of a national anti-bullying strategy. The federal government is holding hearings on cyber-bullying, said Lagacé Dowson, adding that her group has accepted an invitation to take part in the hearings. Telecommunications, including the Internet, fall under federal jurisdiction.
Provinces are adopting anti-bullying legislation, with Quebec’s law to prevent and combat bullying and violence in school among the most recent. The bill, which became law in June, requires every school to draw up a plan of action to combat violence and bullying. Schools must also draft a code of conduct.
British Columbia has moved quickly to introduce an anti-bullying program in its schools after the Oct. 10 suicide of 17-year-old Amanda Todd, a Vancouver student who had endured five years of mainly Internet-based bullying.
