Whitney’s experience, however, shows that perceived popular girls can be both mean and stuck-up without losing their status. The preps practically flaunted their snobbishness. So what changed in the decade since Merten conducted his study? Or, if Merten’s insightful anthropological observations still hold true, what could be an alternative explanation for the change?
It became cool to be a bitch.
Whitney chose the identifier “The Popular Bitch” herself. Late in the year, I asked her if she had been proud to be a bitch. She said, “Yeah, I was proud. I would feel like I had power when I could get what I want and people feared me. Bianca especially loved it. She would always be like, ‘I love being a bitch.’ ”
Why has contempt become a tolerable quality? I am not the type to blame video games for violence or music lyrics for attitudes. Yet popular girls agreed that shows like Gossip Girl, 90210, and the Real Housewives series make bitchiness seem glamorous. The rush of reality shows that have become an inescapable part of regular programming highlight the notion that to stand out, even as a villain, could make you famous. Fame equals celebrity. Celebrity equals perceived popularity. Bitchiness is viewed as an acceptable strategy if it gets you what you want.
Even the word “bitch” has gained increasing acceptance in the public sphere. Broadcast TV networks can air it without repercussion; the word has even hit the Today show. Books with “bitch” in their titles surface on best-seller lists. Celebrities like Paris Hilton openly call their friends bitches. Hollywood diva tales are ubiquitous, and what is a diva if not a euphemism for a bitch? We have come to accept diva behavior among celebrities as not only expected but, sometimes, deserved. This attitude has trickled down quickly to the student world. When I asked a popular sophomore in Maine what characteristics made someone popular, she answered, “Shopping at only designer stores and Hollister, dating older boys, being known for rumors and sex—and being a bitch to other people.”
During the first month I followed Whitney, I asked her about the influence of media like Gossip Girl and Mean Girls. She answered, “Those definitely make it desirable to be the mean girl. Even though those girls get what’s coming to them, it still isn’t enough to make them seem bad. I have been three-way-call attacked, I have been kicked out of my lunch table for stupid things, and I have had friends go after guys I said I liked. That scene when they are all walking down the hall like they rule the world is definitely true. They are all pretty, skinny, worshipped, get all the guys, get away with anything, and seemingly have no cares in the world.”
Whitney unwittingly broached another reason why popular people can be mean: Often, they get away with it. Unpopular kids might be too intimidated to retaliate, wannabes might tolerate and support the cruelty, and even teachers and administrators might be less likely to punish a girl for meanness if she’s popular. (Also, relational aggression can be difficult to punish because the meanness is indirect or the identity of the perpetrator isn’t obvious.) Some studies even report that students reward populars who engage in relational aggression, because mean kids can become more popular over time.
This behavior isn’t limited to girls. Several popular boys told me about utilizing relational aggression. A Missouri eighth grader who said he was popular because “I throw a lot of parties, and I’m fashionable, and a gossiper,” added that his group “usually knows things before most people, and we usually write them on our Facebook statuses to humiliate our enemies.”
When I asked a popular boy from Arkansas how people at his high school treated students who were different from others, he said, “We crushed their dreams. We had a kid who wanted to be cool but he wore eyeliner, so we invited him to a party and got him drunk and pushed him into a fire and then some guys peed on him when he passed out. He moved the next week. [Supposedly due to technicalities, charges against the aggressors were dropped.] We cut off a Pentecostal girl’s hair and hid her skirt in gym class, just because we were all Baptist and thought Pentecostals were weird. We felt like it was our right to do whatever we pleased. Part of being cool was uniformity and anything that isn’t part of our hive mind needs to be mocked.”
Granted, populars are certainly not the only students who are mean. Many teens told me about members of various other groups dumping kids in trash cans Glee-style, shouting insulting racist or weight-related comments, and cyber-bullying. Violence and burning books have not disappeared from American high schools, despite anti-bullying campaigns. Female athletes described teammates who gang up on newcomers they don’t like, “accidentally” causing black eyes, sprained ankles, nosebleeds, or concussions at practice until the target quits the team.
Whereas being likeable involves simple gestures of friendliness, the fight to get and keep perceived popularity is a competition. Contenders must strategize, wheeling and dealing their way to the top, all the while watching their backs. Their maneuvering may involve realigning relationships, finding followers, or casting out less loyal members to shift their support base. From the populars’ perspective, meanness can be an effective way to execute these tactics. Meanness is a language that allows a girl to enjoy her popularity, protect her status, wield her influence, display her seemingly invincible power, and force peers to recognize her dominance. It is a technique that some students believe is necessary to manipulate the confusing social world in school. I don’t aim to defend meanness, but rather to explain it from a less common view. From the populars’ perspective, the question might not be “Why are we mean?” but rather, “How can we afford not to be?”
BLUE, HAWAII | THE GAMER
In leadership class, which Blue took only because the student council had appointed him the school Webmaster, the substitute teacher was talking to two class officers. Other students crowded around the teacher’s desk.
“Nobody could ever possibly take over Google,” the substitute said.
Blue looked up from his iPhone. From his seat in the back of the room he called out, “Hey, you know, Facebook has the potential to take over Google.”
“Shut up,” the senior class president said. “You’re stupid.”
Wow, you’re not a critical thinker at all, are you, Blue thought. He persisted, wanting to share a provocative concept. “No, just listen. Facebook is the only place on the Internet where people use their real names. And Facebook is gathering more new users a day than any other site right now. And what they have that Google needs is personal info on each of those people,” Blue explained. “Google only has what you type into the search box. If Facebook were to start something like AdWords, it would be more effective at selling you things, thus generating much more money than Google, and therefore being worth more in the future, ruling the Internet, Facebook being the hub.”
The substitute looked down her nose. “I was on the Internet before you were even born,” she said. “You can Google anybody’s name and find all their info.”
The students laughed at Blue. “How could Facebook possibly take over Google?!” they said.
The sub continued, “Sorry, I just don’t see the point of chatting with people you don’t know.”
“That’s not even what I’m talking about,” Blue protested. “That’s such a small portion of the Internet. You’re thinking too closed-minded.”
One of the students butted in again. “Okay, sorry, Mark, we’re not talking about whatever it is you do on the Internet. We’re talking about normal people.”
Blue should have been used to this sort of treatment by now, but it still angered him. Although he was generally reticent, he was not shy about vocalizing his opinions in class, no matter how unpopular they might be. As he put it, “I’m different from everybody else in almost every respect and I’m not afraid to talk about it.” Blue was that student who played devil’s advocate, who enjoyed defending viewpoints that dissented from the majority. Often, he could appreciate both sides equally, and therefore found it interesting to argue whichever one was underrepresented. In some classes, like AP Government, his
classmates and teacher liked to engage him in debates. In other classes, students told him to shut up.
A few nights later, Blue, Stewart, Ty, and Jackson were stargazing at a local playground. The 2 A.M. sky was so clear they could see the faint cloud across the area that Blue called the edge of the galaxy. They lay on top of the jungle gym and talked about girls and the usual introspective subjects they discussed when they were sleepy but not ready to go home.
While the others conversed, Blue thought, I wish I had a close friend. Blue couldn’t even trust Jackson completely. Initially, gaming together had cemented their friendship. When Jackson and Blue, who had won a few thousand dollars in gaming tournaments, teamed up junior year for their first tournament together, they not only lost, but, worse, they lost to noobs (inexperienced newcomers). Jackson refused to speak to Blue for three months.
From the top of the jungle gym, Stewart lazily turned to Blue. “Would you rather have stayed in the closet?” Actually, most people didn’t know Blue was gay. Sometimes students didn’t even believe him, because, as they insisted, he wasn’t effeminate and didn’t appear stereotypically gay. He came across as tough, having been in several fights (always to defend people he cared about).
Blue was still working up the courage to converse with Jimmy, whose sexuality was unclear. If Blue had a puppy crush on Jimmy, however, he was thoroughly infatuated with Nate, a senior at Jackson’s school. The best gamer on Blue’s tournament team, Nate had quick reaction times, superb aim, and a rough style of play. Blue believed there was a chance that Nate was gay because Nate knew Blue liked him yet was still nice to him. On a recent, rare group outing to the movies, Blue happened to sit next to him. Halfway through the movie, Nate’s arm brushed Blue’s on the armrest they shared. Blue could feel his body heat.
“No,” Blue answered Stewart, “I don’t have any regrets, because otherwise I would have never been satisfied with myself or with my relationships with other people.”
“It’s not like you talk about girls or anything, anyway,” said Stewart, teasing him. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
But to Blue, it did. While Blue knew that his credibility among his friends had dropped along with Arwing’s demise as a gaming club, Jackson had told him point-blank that he took Blue even less seriously because of his sexuality. This admission hurt Blue more than he let on. Now Ty and Stewart ganged up on him more frequently, mocking his alternative perspectives, advanced technological gear, hyper-organized bedroom, and aspirations to compete in a Modern Warfare tournament in Sweden next summer.
As Blue lay on top of the jungle gym, staring toward the edge of the galaxy, he realized now that they probably weren’t targeting him because he was gay, specifically. They targeted him because he was different.
ELI, VIRGINIA | THE NERD
The summer before Eli’s senior year, he was one of sixty students selected to attend a three-week intensive academy known informally as Spanish camp. The campers attended classes, gave presentations, did homework and projects, and were forbidden to speak English. Eli had viewed Spanish camp as “a second chance at starting school again.” He said, “In my high school, everyone already knows who I am, so it’s hard to branch out. So I figured these people don’t know anything about me and I could be who I wanted, outgoing and friendly with everyone.”
The first three days of the academy were exceedingly awkward, even by Eli’s standards, as the campers tried to get to know each other while speaking only Spanish. But by the fourth day, Eli felt as if he’d known the campers for years. By the end of the session, Eli said he had made “the best friends of my life. I know them better and they know me better than my high school friends. I’ll even call some of them family. It was refreshing to meet people who actually cared. I’ve never met people like that before.” The campers gave him the Nicest Guy superlative award. Eli called those three weeks the “number one best experience of my life.” On the last day of camp, Debra, the only other attendee from Eli’s school, asked, “So are you going to talk more in school now? This is completely different from the Eli I know!”
Once he returned home, for much of August, Eli IMed with camp friends until two in the morning. He met up with a few fellow campers a couple of times. When school started, the contact dwindled, chats tapered off, and enthusiasm waned.
In the fall, Eli and four other campers convened for a mini-reunion, sprawling out on couches at a local mall. Eli had been excited to see them, but now that they were together, he felt a familiar sinking feeling of being excluded. Whenever he began to speak, someone would cut him off after approximately five words. They talked about Spanish class. “Oh, yeah! In my Sp—” Eli began, then was cut off. They talked about their high school football teams. Eli asked, “Do you know if th—” and was cut off. They talked about Virginia. Eli started to say, “Have you ever noticed how—” and, again, was cut off. Eventually he gave up. Half-listening to the conversation, he stared ahead with the same fixed face he adopted when he was bored while driving.
Eli left with Raj, his closest friend from camp. “You are so awkward,” Raj said when they were out of the others’ earshot.
“What do you mean?” Eli asked. He hadn’t expected a camp friend to say so.
“We were all sitting there talking and you didn’t say a word! You were just sitting with your legs crossed. You were even in the center!”
“Yeah, well, every time I tried to say something, I got cut off, so—”
“Whatever,” Raj interrupted. “You need to talk more. Like what do you do at parties?”
“I’ve never been to a party,” Eli answered. No one had ever invited him.
“We need to change your social life. Lesson one: Talk more. You are going to have a party.”
“Hahaha, no I’m not.”
“Well, you need to start going to parties.”
Eli gave an exasperated sigh. “What am I going to do? Invite myself?”
“Start by talking to people more in school,” Raj suggested.
“Okay, I’ve been going to school with these people for years and their opinion of me isn’t going to change if I try to start talking to them again.”
“Just talk about something. Do you watch any sports?”
“No.”
“What about movies?”
“My taste in movies is different.” Eli preferred thrillers and Hitchcock-era black-and-white films.
“Music?” Raj tried again.
“Okay, so I’m just supposed to walk up to someone and go, ‘Hey, what do you think of so-and-so?’ ”
“Yeah, why not?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Just talk to people.”
“Okay, you have no idea, do you?” Frustrated, Eli was on the verge of tears. This felt like one of those conversations instructing him on how to be “normal.” Eli got enough of that at home. “I try. Like I say, ‘Hey, what’s up’ to people in the halls and stuff, but—”
“It’s not the same. You need people you can depend on.”
“I depend on myself. It’s high school. I’ll be fine,” Eli said as he pulled up to Raj’s house.
Eli thought about the conversation for the rest of the night. He explained later, “The fact that he was telling me that my social life was a failure wasn’t necessarily true, but the fact that it holds such importance to him bothers me. I don’t think being on the social scene is really that important.”
Everyone else seemed to think so. Even Eli’s mother had been jubilant that he was leaving the house to meet with camp friends. Eli was convinced his mother thought he was “nerdy,” he said, “because she always says, ‘Honey, why don’t you ever go out on a Friday night? No normal teenager sits at home with his mother.’ ”
Eli’s mother had played the ‘normal’ card for years, even when he was small. “Honey!” she said, “normal guys don’t study maps, do they?!” “Normal guys don’t spend that much time coloring!” “Normal guys don’t study on weekends.�
�� “Normal guys don’t watch cooking shows.”
Sometimes Eli believed his mother was embarrassed by him. “I swear, my mom thinks if I do one thing differently than the average person, I’m weird,” Eli said later. “It’s like she thinks I’m a freak or something. No matter what I do, it’s not ‘normal’ enough for her.”
ELI LOVED ACADEMIC BOWL more than anything else at school: the anticipation of the questions, the slap of the buzzer, the pride when he answered correctly and swiftly. Sure, sometimes teammates told him to take it easy and stop “freaking out on the buzzer,” but that was because he occasionally was so eager that he slammed the button frenetically.
Radiating excitement, Eli sat at the ready, nearly bouncing with anticipation for his first Academic Bowl practice of the year. Because they had only eight buzzers, most students shared with a partner. Eli got his own buzzer because he used it the most.
About halfway through the practice, the first geography question came up. The teacher began, “The Galapag—”
Eli buzzed in. “Ecuador!” he shouted. He couldn’t contain his wide, childlike grin.
The teacher declared, game-show-host style, “Yes!” He then turned to the rest of the room. “Pay attention to what happens here with the geography questions.” For every one, Eli buzzed two or three words into the question and answered correctly. The rest of the team marveled at his speed. “How do you even know this stuff?!” they asked. To their astonishment, Eli nailed five answers in a row.
At Academic Bowl practices, Eli was in his element. (He liked competitions, too, but he became so nervous that he would get the shakes.) When he watched game shows like Jeopardy and Cash Cab at home, he answered most questions accurately, but no one saw him do it. Showcasing his talent in front of people validated that the seemingly obscure trivia he picked up was a way to “actually make myself useful,” he said. At practice, he was an object of wonder, not derision.
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School Page 10
