What did it mean to be popular at your school?

[Tianatiers]

In my school you had to smoke, drink, have older boyfriends, not give a shit about school work and have a generally 'hard' demeanor that made everyone afraid of you.

I was saying this to DH and he said that in his school the clever, confident, good looking ones were popular.

Interested to know what the popular crowd were like in other schools and whether I just lived in a particularly rough area!

Very appearance based, so the girls who were blessed by mother nature and the boys who were allegedly generously endowed.

Mine was the same as yours op, had to be hard, naughty, smoke, drink and be pretty..

Mine was this and I'd also add taking part in an organised fight down the park on a Sunday and that was the girls!
I'm glad to report that from Facebook I can see that they mostly became a bunch of hard faced harridans who never travelled further than the end of their road.

I moved to a much nicer area and know for a fact that my kids will never have to put up with that shit.

Thanks for all the replies it's really interesting. It's definitely the case that the popular people in my school didn't do so well after school whereas the popular people from DHs school are mostly all doing really well now.

The ‘hard’ crowd at my school weren’t popular at all. Everyone avoided them like the plague. We referred to the popular girls as ‘the plastics’. They were all fake tanned, had bleach blonde hair, lots of make up and identical Jane Norman bags.

Sporty, confident and clever. Of course some right arseholes infiltrated the group because they terrorised people into ‘liking’ them, so they weren’t actually popular but believed they were until we all left school and it was obvious they got dropped.

In this order
Sexually active or appearing to be
Pretty
Rich
Clever

Weighted gradings 9/10 for first group way more than 10/10 for group 4

You had to smoke, drink, play sport, make no visible effort academically, be confident, and sexually active.

In fairness, you did not have to be good looking or come from an affluent family (pretending to be slightly rough was good). There was much less pressure on girls to spend hours or loads of money on makeup or clothes.

It was weird at ours. You were popular when your particular skill set was needed. So, the kids good at sport were popular in certain situations, the clever ones were popular when there were team quizzes or inter school quizzes, the ones good at art for school play etc.

Drinking, smoking, clubbing, boasting about having a very active sex life, swearing, doing no school work at all and generally being a total twat.
(Can you tell I wasn't very popular )

Mean, Cruel/Sadistic sense of humour, Sporty, Cold, No Empathy, White, Middle Class, parents that weren’t around much at weekends so you could throw cool parties, parents that didn’t react if you were mean/cruel/drunk/taking drugs/having sex young, if a girl slightly pretty in a “plain” way with straight shoulder length blonde or mousy brown hair, freckles, small eyes not too feminine and absolutely not exotic or looking like you made an effort, a sort of “Jack Wills” casual type of girl, if a boy bulky/stocky testosterone filled and not especially bright and astoundingly arrogant, usually with fat necks and bow legs.

Arty kids were bottom of the pile.

Arty, clever kids with strict parents stood no chance.

attractive but attainable (looking back there were some very beautiful girls who were ignored), academic but not nerdy, confident & sporty. No one was particular mean though or bitchy although certain areas were designated if that makes sense. I was in the group by default, what I found odd even back then was this weird rule you could only date boys from the same group.

Trendy, and bright.

Trendy and streetwise.

Alternatives.

Then me and my fellow misfits. Alternatives dis accept us by 6th form.

Good at sport/ drama/ music was an advantage.
I couldn't catch a ball and struggled to run fast enough to catch a cold.

My school was very rough. You were popular if you were semi-literate, good at fighting, and wore a lot of hair gel (it was, admittedly, the eighties).

(I was clever, and the only reason I survived my schooldays was because I was bad at maths (not the UK and maths compulsory straight through to A-level equivalent) and was in the lowest stream with the school scary girl, who was in and out of juvenile detention. We got on unexpectedly well when we had to share a desk, and after that she threatened anyone who threatened me if they saw me doing something provocative like reading a book.

We lost touch, and last I heard she was in prison, but she’s still the reason I made it through school.

Did your DH go to private school??

I went to a grammar school and popular people were the more outgoing, attractive and confident ones. Bad behaviour wasn't really tolerated and no one especially respected the "hard" kids. There weren't especially any defined cliques though

Pretty/handsome was number one, after that I’d say being sexually active at a young age/partying/smoking/drinking (but not taking drugs weirdly), and after that I’d say being sporty (especially playing for the school rugby or hockey team), I think it additionally helped if you were from a rich family also and if you had a confident outgoing personality. Being academically bright was an active hindrance to your popularity although the odd person managed to get away with it if they had enough other brownie points. And being gay (not that anyone would have admitted this back then but some people were suspected of it), an ethnic minority or fat was also an active hindrance to your popularity, as was having special needs of any kind.

I think i was pretty lucky with my year group at high school. I was one of only 3 from my primary school who chose that high school and again i was lucky that i had been involved in a number of sports for years and happened to know quite a lot of people through that and so was accepted into several friend circles.

I would say there was a group of girls/boys who were definitely more chatty and confident in class, chatting with teachers etc who some would have labelled the popular kids but noone was ever excluded if you wanted to join in or hang out at school.

It was different for my cousin who started there before me, she was in her last year when i started and it was definitely the tough kids/smokers etc that were the cool kids. Same when my sister started years after i had left.

Popular at my school was very confident, attractive intelligent, fun chatty.

My schooling was v mixed - each I’m afraid slotted into real stereotypes
Very rough state school popular meant - smokers, fighters (we had group of girls who organised fights after school - not optional if you were ‘invited’), not caring much about school work, generally getting away with stuff, girls early ‘sexualisation’, boys sporty and looks.
Girls private school - popular swirled around oxbridge places, acting talent (several children of extremely famous acting families), travel/international families, academic talent generally, looks and clothes generally, money.

Learned a lot from both.

Private all girls school. Mid to late 90s...

A group - pretty and aware of how to flaunt it. Fashionable. Smoked, had lots of boyfriends, didn’t care about school, had parents who have them lots of freedom at a young age. Very confident. Usually disliked by teachers.

B group. A more wholesome version of group A. Fashionable in a more age appropriate way. Steadier boyfriends with less sex. Sportier. Probably more wealthy. Cared about school although they might not have showed it much. Confident and teachers pet types even though they weren’t the brightest or highest achievers in the class.

I was into music and gigs and featured lower on the popularity scale, although I did have friends in both groups A and B - depending on the context.

Looking at us now, on the whole group B have done a lot lot better in life than group A. Big houses, Good careers and high incomes etc. Out of the sample I am in touch with still they have also done better financially than the incredibly hardworking oxbridge types too.

You had to be a bully who didn't mind getting into fights and dung things like throwing used sanitary towels at other girls.

I was a teenager in the 80’s and I am sad to say it was all about looks. Very attractive = popular.

Pretty, full on makeup and bleached hair, smoked, had boyfriends.
They basically all had children very very young and didn't do much else. I did notice that some of thier mums were similar older versions of them and pushed them into being 'popular.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows no he didn't go to private school but it was a very good church school in a very affluent home counties town whereas mine was a comp in quite a deprived area.

@LunaMay it's interesting what you say about different year groups, I do think I was in a particularly bad one. In the year above me, which I only missed being in by a few weeks, the popular crowd were lovely. Clever and nice people. I guess they just outnumbered the rough lot in their particular year group.

I went to a party a couple of years ago and one of the very popular 'hard' people from my year at school happened to be there. She hasn't changed at all although she was much less confident. She was perfectly nice to me on the whole but at one point we were talking as part of a group and I used quite a big word, can't remember what, and she laughed and said "I don't even know what that word means" and sort of rolled her eyes and took a drag on her cigarette. For a moment it felt just like being back at school where it was totally uncool to show any kind of intelligence. Except I actually felt quite sorry for her as an adult. She literally didn't seem to have moved on a day in maturity since school.

Pretty, rich and good at sport was the golden combination for popularity at my school (small all-girls independent school) in the 70s and 80s. Anyone “naughty” was regarded as a bit of a rebel and treated with respect but left well alone. Bright kids were tolerated unless they had a smug or superior attitude to accompany their intelligence.