Every high school movie portrays it. Every high school is painted with students who portray it. Teachers try to ignore it, and every student strives for it. Popularity. A word defined as the favor of the general public or of a particular group. I do not define this however as the popular kids in my high school.
Typically, the popular girls are portrayed as the gorgeous girls with the nicest clothes, hair, smiles and the best looking boys wrapped around their fingers. They represent what every girl wants to be and what every guy wants to have. Then there are the popular boys. Everyone knows them. They walk around school sporting their football jerseys while making obnoxious scenes in the hallways with their jock buddies. As they walk together in the halls, they sneer at those with perfect GPA’s and those who walk alone without a single friend. And these are the people by definition we favor so much? The ones who can give you a single glare that makes your skin curl and make you never want to show your face again in school? The ones that define anyone out of the ordinary as freaks, losers, nobodies?
The way I see it, this definition is false for almost any high school. The rest of us normal kids do not favor these popular kids at all. There’s way more to high school then being in the popular crowd. So many different students, different personalities, different goals, people who would rather be individual and love their lives than people who are the same as the rest of their friends. These popular kids may appear beautiful and happy from the outside, but how do you think it feels to know that you don’t have true friends and if you wear anything less than designer, you could become a freak in a mere second. Then where would you be? Would you fit in with the stoners, art freaks, goths, preps, geeks, nerds, or class clowns? The truth is, you wouldn’t know because being apart of such “popular “crowds doesn’t allow you to be your real self and express your individuality.
In my eyes, the popular kids at my high school are not the ones everyone generally favors. They are the freaks. The losers. The nobodies. Because in a sea of students, being different and accepting others for who they are expresses true bravery. It’s easy to be popular, wicked, and act the exact same as all your friends, but it takes courage to be different and be yourself.