What I learned about High School Popularity from my Teenage Daughter

I was not popular in high school. How bad I’ve felt or didn’t feel about this fact has waxed and waned over the years. Not that I didn’t have friends – I did. Other non-popular, smart kids I knew through high school band, of which I was a member. Kids I knew from the school’s honor society and drama club. And through the German square dancing club for those of us studying German. It was supervised by our German teacher. Fun, but still… Can there be any high school club more uncool that this? Probably not. As a middle aged adult, I have rarely thought about high school; ignore mailings about ten-year reunions; and have mostly lost touch with my high school friends apart from the annual holiday Christmas card from one or two of them. Life is full now with family and work.  

2017 is the year my perspective on high school popularity shifted.

Backstory: At the end of my sixth grade year, for parental work-related reasons my family moved from our working class town known mostly because it’s home to a prison. It was kind of a rough place to grow up, and most residents as I remember it were poor or poor-ish, including us. During my one year of middle school there, I remember daily fist fights, or at least the awareness that there might be a brawl. Somehow, I fell in with a fairly popular group of kids for reasons I couldn’t tell you now. Maybe because one of the ring-leaders lived near me, and had been my friend in fifth grade.

Then my family moved to a very different town in New Jersey. The socio-economic level of the new town was much higher. Adolescence is a hard time to make a geographic change. On top of that, there was a bit of a culture shock. The new town had a big class divide, and many of my new friends lived in houses. We lived in an apartment. They had designer jeans. (Remember Jordache, Sassoon, and Gloria Vanderbilt?) I had no such jeans. These kids played video games – even owned their own game consoles – which I had never heard of (Pac Man, Atari).

When I began school in seventh grade in the new town, I found friends but also quickly became aware that they were not part of The Clique, as it was referred to. What determined membership in The Clique, as far as I could tell, was not the ability to physically fight well (unlike in my old town). No, in the new town it was good looks, money, and athletic ability that begot popularity. The stereotypical jocks and cheerleaders. (The 1987 movie Can’t Buy Me Love starring Patrick Dempsey [later of Gray’s Anatomy fame] reminded me a lot of my high school climate.) I, on the other hand, was shy, smart, not rich, pale, prettyish, and otherwise a bit of a misfit. This is not a unique situation, I am aware. Fortunately, I made some new friends and found my place in my new school. I endured adolescence, survived high school, had a few boyfriends, graduated, went on to college, and life went on. High school was neither great nor terrible. It just was. And then it was over. Post-high school life has been much better.

Did I want to be part of The Clique? Not especially, only it bothered me to know that I wouldn’t have been accepted into it had I wanted to be. The exclusionary nature of it bugged me. This is the point of cliques, I suppose – it’s only fun if everyone can’t get it. (A friend’s daughter is currently coming to terms with not being accepted into the PPP – Perfect, Pretty & Popular – group, and being instead relegated to the Leftovers. Different year, different town, same idea.) What I knew of the popular girls from some classes I shared with a few of them was that they were pretty – some very pretty - but not particularly smart, or nice. They passed a lot of notes. They weren’t involved in any clubs I knew about apart from the occasional student council member. They did go to weekend sporting events (football!), and from what I heard threw exciting, booze-filled parties on the weekend. I’d heard there were drugs there. (This was confirmed years later when I befriended someone – by then a recovering drug addict – who used to sell drugs to them for these parties.) And sex happened at these parties, or at least that was what I heard. Oh, and the popular girls really liked boys. And shopping. And boys. And manicures. And boys. Did I mention they liked boys? A lot.

Fast forward 30 years and I find myself the mother of a high school teenage girl. (Young woman is probably a more accurate term, even if it sounds a little clunky. Female teenager, maybe?) Unlike me my daughter is pretty enough and funny enough and whatever-enough to be accepted into her school’s version of the popular group. This has afforded me an up-close look at what I was missing in high school.

Not much.

Comparing my daughter’s experience running with the popular kids – I’ll call them the Westtown Crew – to my own high school experience has shed some light on a few points:

(1) Less popular kids are more interesting. Girls in the Westtown Crew like to go shopping (Victoria Secret!), get mani-pedis, buy fancy Starbucks drinks, walk around Westtown and gossip, go shopping (Victoria Secret!), take selfies, flirt with boys, go shopping (Victoria Secret!), get mani-pedis, rinse and repeat. Non-Westtown Crew girls make independent films, sing in the State choir, travel to Peru as part of service learning trips abroad, and act in plays.

(2) Less popular kids are much nicer and make better friends. They’re actually concerned if you don’t show up to school or lunch one day. Popular kids gossip about each other and laugh at friends’ misfortune and spread mean rumors. For fun.  

(3) It’s all about the boys. Boys who are handsome, athletic, and mean. Even though girls are a vital part of the Westtown Crew, they spend lots and lots of time talking about boys, texting about boys, flirting with boys, agonizing about boys, etc., etc., etc. (Text message from the female leader of the Westtown Crew, 16 years old: “John [not his real name] and I r so serious now we talk about getting married having kids.” And then two texts later: “I love him very much but I know I was happier with Ted [not his real name] but what if he leaves again.” And then two texts later: “And there is stuff that John does that Ted doesn’t do.”) Despite all the female energy in the Westtown Crew, boys’ wants and needs and whims are of central importance to the girls, more so I suspect than the reverse.

I recall an incident from my own high school days. A class trip to some estate that had several acres of grounds that we all got to run around. We explored the nearby woods and played capture the flag. It was fun. Then I noticed the girls from The Clique, lying down on towels sunbathing in bikinis while the rest of us were running around in shorts and t-shirts. One Clique girl sat up at one point, looked around to see who might be noticing (perhaps she was wondering where the guys were), and then lay back down.

My daughter no longer runs with the Westtown Crew, to the relief of her dad and me. Even though it’s for the best, transitioning to new friends is never easy or quick, particularly for adolescents. I tell her that in the grand scheme of her life, what happens in high school will matter little, if at all. She doesn’t know this yet. How could she? But she will.

As for me, I no longer care – at all – about having been unpopular in high school. I was in the better clique the whole time, and finally know it.