Jezebel 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 4:04 AM
Sat Nov 28
29 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
tips@jezebel.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
Email | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan
Email | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
Email | Twitter
Sadie Stein
Email | Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
Email | Twitter
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
Email | Twitter
Contributors:
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Latoya Peterson
Email
Jenna Sauers
Email
Lizzie Skurnick
Email
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
08/14/09
I did, however, attend a small private middle school; and I can say with all certainty that cliques absolutely do name themselves, or adopt names that others give them. Those girls were absolute SHARKS-- though in retrospect, I'm pretty sure that they were all really, really unhappy, too.
08/13/09
My sister watches that NYC Prep show, and in seeing it myself I'm really alarmed at the entitlement of these wealthy kids. That seems like the scariest thing- how they feel like they'll never have to work for anything. I really think that's just going to damage them in the long run- probably leading to drug problems and a general sort of unproductive life.
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
One thing I'm noticing now, though, and this is probably a product of age, is that I just don't remember so many things that were enormous in my life right up until the 10-year reunion. I went to that and found that all of the distinctions I'd lived with while in high school had flattened, that everyone was somehow diminished, that people remembered me who by all rights shouldn't have. It made me wonder if so much of it all was just in my head. Though there were certainly cliques and popular kids, it made little difference even ten years out. I have to say that the greatest power of Facebook so far has been to challenge my notions of just how those people saw me in junior high and high school. I saw myself as easily the least popular person anywhere. An awful lot of people have been glad to see me in the last year, for that to be true.
08/13/09
08/13/09
I also notice that you can't read a teen book nowadays without the characters being at least upper middle class. (Unless it's urban teen fiction- which is another discussion in and of itself).
08/13/09
That would be the "God Squad" at my school (This is what happens when you go to public school in the heart of the Bible Belt).
08/13/09
It's kind of like how no one wants to admit they were popular in high school. More than once I've known people who describe themselves as awkward dorks only to find out later they were on the homecoming court. I know everyone feels awkward in high school, but that doesn't make you Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club.
08/13/09
Yup. "Sweet Posse." And, yes: it was a prep school.
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
But, since it was a boarding school, and since this was just before the rise of the cell phone and the internet (we didn't even have phones in our rooms till my senior year), everyone was kind of equal, in the same boat.
You couldn't have a car, you couldn't buy clothes more than a couple of times a year, and so people really focused on grades, activities, sports, and, of course, the usual teenage dramas.
Maybe I had my eyes closed the entire four years, but it was hardly in the same category of ridiculous entitlement as, say, NYC Prep is. Totally different world.
08/13/09
These books are popular, IMO, because they portray what most people don't have but yet everyone allegedly wants, namely money, popularity and beauty (maybe athletic ability for men too). By portraying the "haves" negatively, we feel better about ourselves - though we may not be conventionally beautiful/rich and/or popular, at least we're not like THAT. Hence the prevasive stereotypes of the cruel, manipulative, pretty and vapid popular girl (or the meatheaded male jock) and the put down, "different thus unique and special," booksmart unpopular nerd.
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
I thought that happened at every high school.
08/13/09
Yes, my (public) high school had a group called "the Blondies." I actually talked with one girl about how she hated being part of the group. I was so socially out of it I had no idea that kind of thing was going on.
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
Doesn't everyone else remember that the popular kids never thought they WERE popular or mean? I can't tell you how many people I've run into who've said their school didn't have an "in crowd" only to explain to them if you believe that than you were apart of it.
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
08/13/09
By the way: Farm and Fleet! AHAHAH. They used to have the best licorice!