I was talking with two seventh-grade girls last night after youth group and they were talking about how much they hate that they can't wear what they want to school. This is not because their parents restrict their wardrobe choices, but because the popular kids do.
They said that mostly it sucks to be popular becuase your social standing is extremely unstable and your friends basically suck because they are constantly talking behind your back about you. But one good thing about being popular is that you can start trends. A. said, "I want to wear high heels to school but none of the popular kids have yet - so if I do then I'll be made fun of."
This reminded me of how much this was true in middle school. Trends that were rocking the entire world and every other school in your zip code might completely miss your school if the popular kids didn't jump on board with it.
Everything was subjective to the power of the popular kids. If they weren't stylish or creative then the entire school wasn't either.
p.s. - it must suck that whenever someone google image searches you it turns up home-shot photos of you and your pasty belly that you sent some dude three years ago. Sorry, Miley.
p.p.s - when you google image search me you just come up with photos from this blog. weird.
This reminds me of something I was thinking about last week. I'm sure I've blogged about it before, but, in my experience, the prettier a girl is, the less likely she'll pursue and succeed in activities unless they are also directly relate to her attractiveness.
ReplyDeleteI think of girls I know who are considered popular and they're invariably quite attractive. People constantly compliment their beauty and this leads to tragically stunted development as they grow to depend more and more on their beauty for social standing. The areas that seem to be most stunted are creativity and intellect. Fashion-forwardness, aside from creativity, requires a certain amount of confidence and gumption because if a look is not conventionally attractive it could prove a risky venture for a person whose self-value relies on being conventionally attractive.
I remember this type of thing from way back in elementary school.
I think this is why I have an aversion to complimenting females on anything physical, especially females who are empirically attractive and receive compliments in excess anyway.
However, attractive men seem to have no such limitations pursuing and succeeding in arenas that have nothing whatsoever to do with their appearance. They might be emotionally stunted assholes, but that's a little different. And, for the record, I don't compliment attrative men either.
Anyway... this is clearly an unscientific assessment, but I'd love to have someone analyze this scientifically.
*sorry for typos
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