The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [167]
If a student’s social aim is to build close friendships, then she is more likely both to have a positive attitude about school and to perform well. But the perceived popular student involved in aggression, according to psychologists, probably has another social goal: one of dominance, or having power over classmates. That focus is “likely to lead to disruptive and off-task behavior and low achievement,” observed University of South Florida professor Sarah Kiefer. This connection is especially strong for girls and for white students. Interacting with one aggressive friend outside of the clique doesn’t automatically lead to poorer academic performance. But when school disengagement is part of the popular group standard, the group, directly or indirectly, will push its members to follow that road.
This point raises another disadvantage of popularity: the pressure. The time and energy it takes to be popular—socializing in and outside of school, throwing or attending parties and other events, simply being, as explained in chapter 2, visible—not only detracts from school pursuits, but also can become a clique mandate. Bianca tried to pressure Whitney to go to a party even though she had walking pneumonia. The preps instilled a belief that people who weren’t out on a weekend night were losers.
Popular students told me they felt intense pressure to change themselves. “I wanted to date a ‘normal’ and my friends told me, ‘To date a normal is to be a normal,’ so I let a good opportunity pass me by,” said a popular Southern student now in college. Pressured by his clique to be aggressive and manipulative, he spiked a football player’s drink with steroids, then told his coach to test him for drugs. “We crushed dreams by mocking them to death. There was a girl who was a very good poet but she had flirted with my friend’s boyfriend, so we stole her poems and read them aloud at lunch and laughed [even when] she started crying. I regret being so mean because that’s not the person I truly am,” he says now.
For Brigitte, a popular Canadian, the pressure focused on her looks. “My weight is never good enough for any of my friends. I go to bed mad at myself for eating,” she said. “I was talking with one of my best friends and we were reminiscing about the first time she saw me. She said, ‘I remember seeing you and you were sooo pretty, I knew I had to be friends with you. Then we took you out with us, you drank a lot, the guys loved you, and we knew you were in.’ Then she said, ‘Why is it that all pretty people are friends? Like, do you think that if I was ugly you’d be friends with me?’ And I honestly responded to her, ‘Probably not.’ ”
An Illinois football player was able to hide from the rest of the populars the fact that he wore glasses—until his gym class had to go swimming. For as long as he wore glasses, his clique shunned him. “Deep down, I know it’s wrong to be in a group that is convinced they are so exclusive and important. Deep down, I know that who you hang out with should not be decided by money, looks, skills, or background. Deep down, I wish I could change some of the relationships I’ve made with people over the years,” he said.
Popular cliques are more likely to be characterized with negative traits than are other groups. Experts have linked popularity to “involvement in risky behaviors during adolescence, including sexual experimentation and alcohol use.” Well, sure. If popularity involves parties, and many parties include sex and alcohol, then it makes sense that the students