In popular culture, most novels, movies, and television shows depicting the pressure to be popular center around the middle school years. I know lots of us (myself included, VERY included), look back on that time with a collective groan. We remember the notorious “cool kids,” the dreaded gym class hierarchy, and the so-called friendly teasing that permeated our days. I recall many late night conversations with friends, sitting around a dorm room or a dinner table, bemoaning the pressures of those years and thanking our lucky stars that we managed to break free. Recently, however, I’ve been asking myself a question: Does this stereotypical middle school experience still matter, and have we really freed ourselves from it? In fact, I personally feel the pressure to be “popular” and “likeable” on a far greater scale today than I did in middle school. What has changed is my self-confidence, which has allowed me to disregard these pressures in my everyday life. However, it is a select set of privileges that have allowed me to get to this point.
Looking back at pop culture representations of the “cool kids,” they are almost always white, cis-het-normative, thin, able-bodied, and wealthy. Every once in awhile, a token person of color is thrown into this mix in a thinly veiled attempt at parading diversity. However, as a general rule, the prototypical queen bee and jockey are white, normatively beautiful, and largely inaccessible.
From what I’ve seen, these pressures and standards of likeability and popularity only increase in salience as we get older. In fact, as we get older, our lives start to depend on this social hierarchy. For example, most people in positions of societal or cultural power, from heads of CEOs to fraternity and sorority leaders on college campuses, are spitting images of the popularized representations of middle school “cool kids.”
Now, however, they are a little taller and a lot more dangerous. They exert unharnessed hegemonic power over parts of the population who do not fit the likeability mold. As a result, these pressures often force non-white, cis-het, thin, able-bodied, and wealthy persons into a life of attempted emulation of the normatively likeable person, complete with the omnipresent crushing knowledge that they will have to work twice as hard in order to achieve half the level of likeability and subsequent success. So, yes, those middle school stereotypes DO still matter and DO last beyond the awkward tween years—in fact, they end up turning into hegemonic prototypes of likeability in the adult world that severely limit the majority of the population. However, there are steps we can take in our everyday lives to combat their power. Of course, none of us are immune to societal influence and bias, but limiting its effects starts with eradicating as much of its existence within ourselves as we can. For example, we can and should critically examine our choices in acquaintances, friends, lovers, colleagues, and workers in order to discern the extent to which prevailing notions of likeability and popularity have influenced our decisions. When we examine these choices and become aware of our own societally reinforced tendencies, we can begin the active effort to overcome these internalized prejudices. Problematic representations of popularity will, without a doubt, remain prominent in media and pop culture in the foreseeable future. However, a dedicated effort to eliminate these biases within oneself can be the beginning of a grassroots and communal reimagining of notions of likeability. Remember the importance of your own role in shaping social norms and the expectations of those around you when it all seems too daunting, because your active participation is essential to the deconstruction of these widely accepted notions.