An Argument For Being A Poser

Clicks in high school are what label’s a person’s self-identity. Being in a specific click is how students and their peers view the individual. For example if a person plays football during the fall time and is on the swim team during the winter, that person would be considered a jock. In Mean Girls, Cady quickly learned people in clicks only talked and hung-out within their groups. On Cady’s first day of school, when she went into the cafeteria and tried to talk the black kids because she thought they were from Africa, the black kids looked at her like she was insane. At first Cady didn’t know what click she belonged too, but then when she stated hanging out with the “Plastics” she knew she was in an elite click that everybody wanted to be in. The Plastics were a group of materialistic girls that only talked to certain types of people and didn’t allow anyone into their group. Cady achieved high social statues when she became apart of the Plastics. Cady went from being an outcast to high school

Oftentimes, in the public, people have to be “normal” to be successful and accepted. Author William Saroyan believes that society steers people to be conformed and fit in, but he wants people to be able to be diverse. In the short story “Gaston,” Saroyan shows that carving a unique path can turn out to be erroneous. Through symbolism and contrast, Saroyan conveys the theme that society does not always accept people’s differences.

Media has influenced a lot of today’s trends and ideologies. Adolescents, being on the psychological level of self-identification, bring this deceptive notion of fashion and social classes to school. The problem comes when this trend affects the performance of students and their personal lives. We all remember our days back when the talk was “Who are the jocks, the cheerleaders, the rick kids, the geeks, the losers, etcetera?” Believe it or not, the status quo in schools is always composed of them. These cliques have identities exclusive for each. Students who do not look, act, or dress the same as one group are, more often than not, left out. They could be hurt physically and or psychologically with cruel teasing and rumors. Bullying and

Ana is a girl who followed trends and participated in activities the “cool kids” attended in high school. At first, she follows trends because an abundant amount of students claim it seems entertaining. However, that was not the case for her. Ana came to the conclusion that the activities were not amusing; she only followed trends because she thought it would create a popular reputation for herself. She decided to be unique and became determined to achieve what was best for herself. Such a follow-the-leader type situation is not uncommon in high school as it inhabits people to follow others’ actions to fit in. Fortunately, a person like Ana will always strive to be an individual and live the way he or she assumes is best. Unfortunately, a willingness to practice nonconformity such as Ana’s takes time to develop, and other individuals in society frequently then overlook their freedoms and are commonly unaware of living in censored communities. In this type of restrained community, people follow laws blindly and shield themselves from reality. Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 to protest such societal censorship depicts Guy Montag as an evolving deviant, rebellious protagonist.

Many spend their lives learning how they are “different” from others to define their uniqueness, but these differences sometimes spark an internal wish to join the others. For example, most United States citizens know their country’s economic position exceeds Canada’s, yet some U. S. citizens want to move to Canada due to political preferences. Likewise, the speaker in Lucille Clifton’s “There is a girl inside” wants youthfulness despite current elderliness, which contrasts with the speaker in Clifton’s “in the inner city” who ponders many times about another position, the “Uptown Girl,” but maintains interest in the inner city due to the freedom and dangerousness correlated with lower class downtown housing. Similarly, the speaker in Gwendolyn Brooks’ “a song in the front yard” wants to reside in an impoverished area since it is free and wild. The speakers in Brooks’ and Clifton’s poems discuss how life is for people on the “other side” through contrasting

It was not until tenth grade when I realized that I don’t need to fit the stereotypes or expectations that others may imply on me. This decision to take a stand and become my own person first started with how I dressed. Having my own style, whether it was wearing what I wanted or following new trends that not everyone liked, I felt like I was becoming my own person. Along with my development of my style I also started to voice my opinions about topics that mattered to me. My views on the world have earned me the title of an extreme liberal among my

In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette’s life is one that may seem hard to relate to, but it’s actually not that much different than mine. Thanks to today’s society, the constant need to “fit in” molds more people’s personalities and looks than them actually wanting to be themselves. If I don’t dress a certain way, I’m not beautiful. If my personality is different and unique, I’m weird. If I care about my grades and strive for success, I’m a nerd.

In Murray Milner’s: Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids, chapter three mainly talks about conformity and how it really takes place in school, specifically high schools. Throughout the entire chapter Milner talks about what these students do in order to conform with the rest of the “school society”. The basic rules and regulations these teens have to go by in order to really fit in with certain groups. Milner talks about different topics throughout the reading which breaks the entire aspect down for better understanding. He goes from the idea of crowds and their rankings, clothes and the styles that are in demand, speech and different language, all the way down to body language. The status of how a person displays themselves equals the status they are with a specific groups and idea. The idea of a person being broken down

“Mean girls, jocks, band nerds, geeks, and freaks” are all terms used to stereotype and group teens in the 2004 movie hit, Mean Girls. This film created controversies in the content that it delivered. The credibility of adolescents is questioned greatly in this film. Mean Girls taught us that popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in fact, they taught us that it’s actually meaningless. Through extreme character development, this movie shows the viewer that at the end of the day, all of the teens are the same. They all struggle to fit in, and that’s really the moral of this hilarious, but raunchy story. Mean Girls captures the struggle that every teen seems to have at some point of where they belong and how they relate to everyone around them. The film takes those stereotypes and melds them into what all high schools should aspire to be: a community.

An aggregate of the populace envisions one sole thing: to be distinguishable. Being an idiosyncratic is an alleviation of the “misfit curse”. 37% of teenagers classify themselves in this “misfit” category; they have not properly discovered one’s self, thus, they have not properly adjusted themselves to a higher level of maturity. To figure out one’s passion is difficult to apprehend; it accentuates, and then releases itself into a higher form. This is presented in Leila Sales’ exuberant novel, This Song Will Save Your Life. The main character, Elise Dembowski, is familiar with being a misfit. Her life suddenly has no meaning after another fictitious friendship attempt. For that

Alexie Shermie’s story of Junior is about being a part of multiple subcultures. Each subculture defines our experiences and us individually. Our experiences create subcultures for us. Do we have individuality if our relationships define us? Shermie explains different cultures within society, and how each culture has different experiences for all types of people, in a narrative manner.

Nonconformity Being an outcast feels like a curse. It causes unrelenting pain. Yet misfits often play the most meaningful roles in a society. Art, music, literature, and many other creative fields are dominated by those who just do not fit in, who create new ideas, and who often question the world around them. In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, controllers dictate the utopia so that everybody fits in neatly.

Making yourself different from the rest of society is a huge step to take in life. There are many risks that come with being different, especially judgement from others. Even with that being said, writers like Audre Lorde, and a poor fellow described in Judith Butler’s, ”phylosophe”, behaved differently than the way their society allowed them to because it is who they are.

One need not look far for the heroes, or anti-heroes, of modern adulthood, even though they appear in forms vastly different from preceding generations. The fumbling invoking sympathy associated with Woody Allen and Boo Radley feels like a relic now, shelved away and neatly categorized as a neurotic case of social anxiety. In its place stands an emerging band of triumphant, self-righteous young adults. They haunt our screens and urban crawls *with* yellow tights, square glasses, and an unending series of sarcastic jokes tinted with self-deprecation and pop culture references. Suddenly it seems as though awkwardness is a concept to embrace in place of its use as a label for outcasts.

From Shakespeare to the Stonewall march, the art of drag or female impersonation has always had its place in popular culture. After centuries of actors performing and perfecting this craft, drag and female impersonation has found its way into the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) communities. In New York City during the 1950’s, the LGBTQ communities embraced drag, and female impersonation in underground competitions and celebrations called balls. Here gay men and transgender people would dress in elaborate costumes, and couture outfits in order to live fantasies of superstardom, to win locally renowned titles such as: Butch queen, Realness, or Eleganza. Until the 1980’s, drag remained an underground “gay” performance art style, and was viewed as weird or abnormal by the greater public. In 1983 a gay man named RuPaul Andre Charles emerged in the Atlanta City punk scene, originally as a member of a grunge group called Wee Wee Pole. The group played around with many different looks, but became known in the scene for their “genderfuck” look.