I wasn’t the most popular guy in high school by a long stretch, but enough so that I’d often learn about girls who’d never met me but had crushes. I knew where all of the good parties were. My school was new so the stereotypical cliques were not well defined. Best description of me would be maybe student/athlete, with student definitely coming first. I’m also sort of a natural smart ass, good at getting people to laugh, even the teachers, organized a large ongoing KAOS tournament and edited sections of the school paper. So there were definite geek elements there, but not enough to weigh me down.
I voted no. I was in the “comes from a dysfunctional family” clique.
I put yes, but it’s complicated, I was, but I had no idea.
I was in ballet class 20-35 hours per week (on scholarship) and always had a job or a paper route to pay for my gear. I was on the track team, (indoor and Spring) in the school choir, the Church choir, and taught Sunday school every Sunday (Unless my choir was singing, we had three).
My Friday and Saturday nights were spent with “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.” I’ve since been informed that this was because everybody was intimidated by me, and assumed I was “out of their league.”
One woman even tried to blame me for her poor self-esteem (apparently because I didn’t notice her.) Hello? When did you walk past? Was I by any chance desperately trying to finish some homework while I walked to class? She also accused me of not showing up for her birthday party - to which she hadn’t personally invited me because “everybody” knew about it. OK, yeah.
I was also the girl other females hated on sight, as I had the absolute nerve to have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a svelte figure. Never mind that I was dancing and running, and constantly hungry; this appearance apparently equivalates to an “easy” life. Every female I encountered felt I needed to be “taken down a notch” and so felt free to be quite nasty. This includes the adults and even the teachers.
Honestly, I was just hungry, sad, lonely, and exhausted.
Yeah, it was a lovely existence. Still, I’m informed that this was “popularity” i.e. The females hated me because the males wanted me.
The only guys I dated were the ones from my Church - because they actually asked me.
I’m with you. I had my circle of friends, and the rest of the school never got too involved with me either way. Some people got to know me and discovered they liked me, while others got to know me and discovered they hated me, but for the most part, I was just that girl. I got good grades, was on the Academic Decathlon and the whole nine that tends to get kids beat up, but I wasn’t known as Queen Nerd, and nobody ever picked on me. I was (and am) not exceptionally good looking, so there was no wild adulation from boys.
What surprised the heck out of me, though, was that I was asked to prom by two different boys. I didn’t even know one of them. He was that guy from my Spanish class, but we’d never even spoken. Odd.
I can’t answer the poll as stated because I went to two different high schools and had vastly different experiences.
You see, in the middle of 10th grade our family moved from Montreal to Los Angeles. Two more contrasting urban environments could hardly be imagined. And, as it turned out, my social life was one of the things that changed. In Montreal I was not one of the popular kids at all – I was always being picked on, etc. In L.A. for the first year I was unknown, being the new kid and all, but by the time I was a senior I was a member of the “in” group, and was quite popular.
I was exactly the same person in both cities, so I have come to the conclusion that popularity is largely a matter of luck.
I was popular with the 2 guys and 3 girls I hung out with, but other than them…no.
Oh I suppose I was likable enough. I didn’t really identify with any particular 80s high school Breakfast Club sub-culture. More like a Lloyd Dobbs type, but more of a smartass.
When I think of “Popular” I think of this guy, we’ll call “Mike”. He was (and presumably still is) one of those guys who you just automatically considered Popular without question. The guy was like captain of our hockey team and the soccer team, co-class president, prom king, and football mascot. And a pretty nice guy at that. Not at all pretentious or douchey. Joined the Marines after graduation and has been there ever since.
I was not popular in high school. Active bullying ceased by the end of Grade 9, but I never bloomed socially until well after I entered university. I never had a girlfriend, a car, or a date; the few times I asked someone out, I got shot down. I had two or three good friends, but I spent most of my time doing solitary artistic things.
I didn’t have a date to the senior prom, either, but I still went, mostly out of a feeling that things were about to change and I wnted to be there because it was the last of our old life. I remember feeling terribly lonely and awkward, especially when various happy couples departed for private celebrations.
I left early and walked home.
I was not, but I was clueless enough to not even know until after I graduated. I changed myself quite a bit when I went to college and was much better-liked - but still clueless.
I was bullied in ninth grade, but when my biggest bully moved away that year, it mostly ceased.
My high school wasn’t as cliquey or polarized as it seems like a lot of schools were. I had a lot of friends, but they weren’t the cheerleader/athlete type - we were the sort that wore plaid and Doc Martens and had dyed hair. (It was the mid-90s.) A lot of us were in band. But at the same time, I was in honors and AP classes and was on the tennis team with the preppier sort and I got along fine with them, even if we didn’t hang out on weekends.
But hell, a guy in my group was the King of Hearts (sort of the male equivalent to Homecoming Queen, done in February) my senior year, and my junior year the ASB president was a long-haired grungy pothead.
I don’t really identify with the stratified version of high school that is so pervasive in pop culture. It doesn’t resemble my experience.
I certainly didn’t feel I fit with the In crowd. But looking back on it, I did have quite a few friends - many of them labelled “loser” by the In crowd.
But the In crowd was so, so… vanilla to me.
I was pretty much the definition of “popular guy” in high school. Not in the dumb-jock-dating-the-head-cheerleader way, but I was friends with everyone, and I was blessed with good genes. I was an athlete, the only white guy on the varsity basketball team and second leading scorer. I was a very good baseball player, and was invited to two professional tryouts. On the other hand, I was a good student who was in all the advanced classes and the teachers liked me. I was asked, very sheepishly, by the school’s uber-nerd, to join the math team for a competition, which I accepted.
I did date a cheerleader, but not exclusively. I wasn’t the senior class president, but I did sleep with her (after graduation.) You couldn’t classify me as a member of any clique - I ate lunch at different tables almost every day. Sometimes the jocks, but just as often with the stoners (my next door neighbor was their king and I drove to school with him every morning), the nerds, the blacks, or the band members.
I lived overseas until the middle of 11th grade, so I came in as a blank slate with no baggage. I was a very lucky youth, but at the time I was completely unaware of how lucky I was. I was just living my life. It wasn’t until a few years later when reminiscing with classmates that I was made aware that I really did have an easy life in high school, really free from any negativity. That being what it was, I never have been nostalgic for those days. I’ve never been to a reunion, and I don’t think back on those days with any fondness. I don’t think back on them at all, really. There are only a handful of classmates that I kept up with, although in the Facebook era, I have a lot of them as friends, not that I communicate with them.
So yeah, I was popular. Did it mean anything after the point where I threw my cap in the air? No.
I wasn’t hated and reviled, but I wasn’t the BMOC by any means. Fortunately, I met some great guys with whom I’m still good friends. One of them visited us, along with his family, this past weekend, almost 27 years after we graduated.
My school was smallish (graduating class of 200), and I was the class secretary, captain of the Hi-Q team (TV high school game show thing), assistant editor of the yearbook, on the school paper, drama club member, went to most of the parties, and so forth, so I guess I was popular. But that was in the 70s. If I were in high school now, something tells me I might not be so popular. In the 70s, hippieness/differences were celebrated–at least in my school.
Popular? no.
I was that kid the teachers nominated for class secretary, but no one actually voted for. Not hated, just not cool. I transferred my senior year, and kind of reinvented myself. I was still not popular, but made some great friends.
I have more to say - but I can’t figure out how to say it correctly.
That’s really par for the course in high school, IME. I know quite a few guys who liked certain girls, but were afraid to even speak to them for fear of rejection. That is, until prom, which could be their last chance.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of guys would focus on one girl to the exclusivity of all else. But come prom, they find out that that girl already has a date, so they finally get the blinders off their eyes, and finally notice the other people around them.
And then there’s just the fact that a lot want to go to prom and are willing to do what they normally wouldn’t do to go. I’m not saying they don’t really like you (although that’s possible). They can also not really be into dating, or be so shy as to never ask anyone. It’s just that Prom is such a big deal that they finally get over whatever’s been holding them back.
Isn’t it more of a continuum? I was not one of the Popular kids, I don’t think… or maybe I was. I dunno. I mean I wasn’t elected to the Homecoming court or anything, but I didn’t get swirlies in the boys room either. I had a lot of friends and no enemies I can recall. I was an honors student but not a total dweeb.
I guess I’d say “not popular” but I never felt unpopular either.
I went to three different high schools. I was bullied in the first one, unnoticed in a vast sea of other fish in the second (I had friends, and wan’t harrassed or anything, just one more invisible kid among many). The third was a private American school overseas in which most of the kids in my class were non-Americans who I never saw outside of school or talked to much. I had found a clique by then, though, as a long-haired, early 80’s metalhead, pothead guitar player, but most of the other people I jammed with and hung out with were out of high school already. I wasn’t disliked or unpopular exactly within the insular little community of American Embassy brats I lived among, but I wasn’t exactly the leader of the pack either. It was a pretty non-conventional teenage environment, so the normal kinds of social strata didn’t hold, but I think the kids who were not my immediate friends would have just categorized me as one of the “burnouts” (as my clique was called even by ourselves) without much other detail. I was pretty quiet and didn’t stand out much.
Actually, this might be a good way of gauging popularity. No one ever picked on me. I was reasonably cute - if I had more gumption I probably would have had a few boys ask me out. But other than the mandatory alphabetized picture of me, I was never in the yearbook.
I was not popular at all. I had maybe three friends and a few people I talked to. I hated school so much I didn’t spend much time there.