The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [19]
Joy ate lunch with Natalie at a table in the library, within eyesight of a group of Natalie’s Asian friends, who shot Joy dirty looks. Joy immediately assumed they were angry because Natalie was eating with a black girl instead of with them. She supposed Natalie sat with her merely out of curiosity about the new girl.
Joy had never before felt like so much of an outsider. Everything about her was different from her classmates: her walk, her speech, her mannerisms, her looks, her clothes. She wasn’t “highty-tighty,” as they would say in Jamaica; she was “just a together person.” It was going to be difficult to be herself here, she could already tell. She wondered if, one day, someone at school would see the whole of her.
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EMOS, INDIES, SCENES, AND BROS: TODAY’S STUDENT LABELS
Imagine, for a moment, that like Joy, you are new to your high school and as yet unlabeled. You can manage your classes because they are structured and supervised, and you can survive the five minutes between them by focusing on getting from one place to another. Then you enter the overwhelming landscape of the cafeteria, where unspoken rules and assumptions overshadow what is, in terms of opportunities for social growth, the most important part of the day.
When the bell rings, you enter the cafeteria, lunch sack in hand. In some schools, preps and populars are virtually indistinguishable; an Alabama middle schooler described, “Preppy people [are] basically like the popular people, but you wear a lot of pink and you’re really hyper and squeaky.” A substantial percentage of the students I interviewed mentioned that the populars shop at prepster stores such as Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, and American Eagle when they’re not focused on more high-end designers. (Among students at one Texas high school, a new trend is to keep the price tags on their clothes so classmates can see that they paid full price at a non-discount store.) When a Midwestern eighth grader transferred from private to public school, she felt so pressured to fit in that she not only revamped her wardrobe, but also changed her email address to “hollisterlover.”
You scan the tables for an empty seat. A few Goths are engaged in conversation in a corner. They might favor boots, spikes, piercings, or dog collars, and dye their hair black or bleach it blond. They’re often perceived as artistic or creative writers. A Texas teacher observed, “We get a lot of Goths in the art department and they are generally very pleasant and quirky children. They are almost always very well-mannered.”
Nearby, the reclusive emos brood; they are clad in black and therefore commonly but wrongly lumped together with Goths. Emos don’t bother erecting the prep façade of perpetual chipperness. “Emo” is short for emotional; one running joke is, “I wish my lawn were emo so that it would cut itself.” A Maryland freshman observed, “Goths wear all black and talk like they’re depressed and suicidal but they’re really not. Emos wear all black and actually are depressed and cut themselves.”
In some schools, emo boys might wear tight pants and the girls might wear thick eyeliner. Their hair might be dyed or partially shaved. An emo in Florida said that emos are misunderstood. “People constantly criticize kids for being emo, like we’re trying to keep up an act, but really, the kids who are more normal-looking are the ones who have the most problems,” she said.
Students can confuse emos with scenes because of the eyeliner, tight pants, and attention to music. Scene is a relatively new label,