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Original poster

What did it mean to be popular at your school?

84 replies

Tianatiers · 01/03/2021 17:46

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!

OP posts:
Cactus1982 · 02/03/2021 08:44

You had to be good at sport in my school.

singsingbluesilver · 02/03/2021 08:54

You have to remember that for many of the 'popular' crowd - who entertain their peers by disrupting lessons and are enjoying being the big I am - that this will be as good as it gets for them in life.

Once they leave school and enter the real world with poor qualifications, no work ethic, and without their adoring public, they will struggle.

How sad to have reached the pinnacle of your success by the time you turn 16.

Waxonwaxoff0 · 02/03/2021 09:02

@singsingbluesilver

You have to remember that for many of the 'popular' crowd - who entertain their peers by disrupting lessons and are enjoying being the big I am - that this will be as good as it gets for them in life.

Once they leave school and enter the real world with poor qualifications, no work ethic, and without their adoring public, they will struggle.

How sad to have reached the pinnacle of your success by the time you turn 16.

I dunno. The ones from my school seem to be doing OK. A lot of them set up their own businesses - one of the boys has his own successful landscaping business and one of the girls is a hair stylist and owns her own salon.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

General education
Equimum · 02/03/2021 09:17

At my school, the super popular girls were wealthy, condiment, stylish abs clever, but in a way that they made out they didn’t try hard.

KitBumbleB · 02/03/2021 09:39

At my school the "popular" girls were pretty but rough. Ethnicity didn't matter, one of the most popular girls was a tall, curvy, mixed race girl who had a stunning figure.
Popular boys were generally nice guys who were handsome and sporty, probably the most popular and genuinely well liked boy in school was Asian.

Looking back now though, the girls weren't actually popular, no one actually liked them or wanted to be like them, they were more intimidated by them.

One of the roughest, scariest girls joined my drama group and we got on well, she told me a lot of personal stuff and when I was kind to her she took me under her wing and looked after me.

NameChangedForThisFeb21 · 02/03/2021 09:39

@singsingbluesilver

You have to remember that for many of the 'popular' crowd - who entertain their peers by disrupting lessons and are enjoying being the big I am - that this will be as good as it gets for them in life.

Once they leave school and enter the real world with poor qualifications, no work ethic, and without their adoring public, they will struggle.

How sad to have reached the pinnacle of your success by the time you turn 16.

See, in my school this couldn’t be further from the truth.

It was a private school so probably that’s where the difference lies but mummy and daddy just bought them businesses (like golf clubs or a series of quaint country inns or hotels) or used their influence to get them into good universities (Economics at a Russell Group with a D and two Es...really?) and then used the influence again to get them positions at good firms upon leaving (or dropping out of) university.

They are doing really well and have blessed, easy, value free lives. And that’s before we get on to the ones in TV/Film and... politics/civil service Hmm.

Thecazelets · 02/03/2021 09:59

Highly regarded state girls' school in the very early 80s. Definitely a mean/popular crowd who fraternised with the boys' school. I think brands were less of a thing in those days and the uniform was very strict, but you had to have the requisite pointiness of shoe, flicky Lady Di hairdo, thick (forbidden) eyeliner and particular school bag. Lots of casual bullying, and a few of the teachers were bullies too; I can remember several incidents that would be worthy of dismissal if they happened today.

I was in the top stream/doing O-levels early group so luckily most of this passed me by; we had a special dispensation for being spoddy. And it's clear from later revelations on Friends Reunited (remember that?!) and FB that a few of the ones who were most feared at school actually had very difficult home lives.

It wasn't a very nice place to be really; to be fair it was 40 years ago and I think pastoral care wasn't really thought about in the way it is today.

HouseOfTheRisingMum · 02/03/2021 10:03

NameChangedForThisFeb21

singsingbluesilver
You have to remember that for many of the 'popular' crowd - who entertain their peers by disrupting lessons and are enjoying being the big I am - that this will be as good as it gets for them in life.

Once they leave school and enter the real world with poor qualifications, no work ethic, and without their adoring public, they will struggle.

How sad to have reached the pinnacle of your success by the time you turn 16.

See, in my school this couldn’t be further from the truth.

This is similar for those I went to school with (also independent). Lots of the girls who didn’t do well at school were buoyed up by considerable family wealth and/or nepotism. They’re doing very well 20 years on and I’m sure they’re good at what they do but they were handed exit plan from their school days mistakes...

TheYearOfSmallThings · 02/03/2021 10:12

You have to remember that for many of the 'popular' crowd - who entertain their peers by disrupting lessons and are enjoying being the big I am - that this will be as good as it gets for them in life.

I don't think this is true at all. The popular kids had really successful social skills, confidence and other traits which served them well at school and in life. I have come to realise that in many fields those traits are equally or more important than academic/intellectual ability.

Jayneisagirlsname · 02/03/2021 10:15

The popular ones were hard, didn't work, smoked, drank and were bullies. Extra points if you got pregnant with a 'half and half' 😳

This was a rough comp in the late 80s in a northern fishing town with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country.

Looking back, as a PP said, most of those kids were neglected and set up to fail in life. I feel sad for them now.

Worldgonecrazy · 02/03/2021 10:24

Popular crowd were attractive, appeared confident, reasonably good at lessons / top set, some of the sporty types were included. Looking back you needed to be either a good all rounder or excellent in one field. So a really good at sports was allowed to be in middle stream for lessons and top stream for lessons was allowed to be not so great at sports.

Everyone smoked and drank in those days so it didn’t make anyone stand out, and it was pre AIDS so we were all at it like rabbits from 15/16 onwards.

Only about 5% to 10% went on to university back then, so there was none of that pressure for most of the cohort. The top stream were expected to go on to higher education, but oxbridge was not on the menu for most. Some of the middle streams went to polytechnic (I feel old!) and the rest would go on to YTS.

Happy days .

MargaretThursday · 02/03/2021 10:45

It depended on the year group as to what characterised it. Our year was probably sporty more than anything else.

But really it was mostly just the big group of mixed boys and girls across the forms that decided they could tolerate each other while the rest of the year thought that boys had 2 heads and girls were just weird. Grin
In about year 10/11 the rest of the year normally decided they weren't too bad.

My year was quite nice and we all pretty much rubbed along without too many hiccups. The popular crowd would not worry if you sat with them if your group hadn't got to the canteen yet, and generally they'd be pretty nice. If one of the popular crowd found they were on their own and joined up with one of the others groups it wasn't an issue. On the whole people chose to stay in their group if they had the option, but if they didn't the other group accepted them for the time being.

My dsis' year was horrible though and they would never have thought of mixing between the 4 or 5 separate groups there were across the year. She never really fitted in to any, which meant they were all nasty to her. Not sure what did make the popular group, only thing I can think of was they were all as nasty to each other on occasions as they were to outsiders.

HouseOfTheRisingMum · 02/03/2021 11:32

TheYearOfSmallThings
The popular kids had really successful social skills, confidence and other traits which served them well at school and in life. I have come to realise that in many fields those traits are equally or more important than academic/intellectual ability.

Yes this too. We had our destructive with in hindsight low self esteems, but on the whole most of our popular girls had excellent social skills, confidence, and felt they deserved to be at the top. They knew how to spot and ingratiate themselves with other popular people as they moved through life. This was definitely apparent in the boys they dated and in turn ended up marrying. I was a sucker for the pretty indie boys who’d dropped out to join a band. They would all go for medical, law or economics students etc. I’m not saying any of them married purely for their partners earning potential, but it was always part of the package of what they found attractive. My floppy haired bassists would have been a massive turn off for them.

MaddeningtheUnhelpful · 02/03/2021 11:36

disruptive, string of boyfriends, dressing inappropriately, smoking, drinking, teenage pregnancy and parents who let them do whatever they wanted. I was invited 'out with them a few times are all mocked me for having to be in by dark and having to let my parents know where I was. As you can imagine, as adults they are real high flyers Wink

Alexandernevermind · 02/03/2021 11:41

At mine it was the pretty, confident, and very bitchy girls who were always fussing and fighting over some boy or another - the Jess and Marthas.
Apparently its the same at my DD's school. I've tried to get her not to call them the popular group, just the loud group.

goose1964 · 02/03/2021 11:41

I don't think we had a popular group, we all had groups but most of us would join up into larger groups. My late brother in law called me queen of the needs and was apparently terrified of me.

Manteo · 02/03/2021 11:51

Sporty, outgoing, trendy, attractive, middling academic ability. So not seen as nerds or thickos.

BreakfastOfWaffles · 02/03/2021 11:54

At my school it was socially well-connected, pretty or sporty, ideally all three.

Ilovelove · 02/03/2021 11:59

Secondary comp with a mixture of village children (softer) and town children (rougher).
Popular were a group who were the best looking, most intelligent and sporty. They stuck together.

What I never got is how come they smoked, drunk and were quite promiscuous and it was cool when they did it. When I did stuff like them (and I was not bad, I didn’t ‘do it’ until uni) I was really looked down on by them. Lots of rolley eyes, blatantly ignored.

So we roll on 25 years and I became a bit of a swan, with a gorge husband and family...but it took me quite a long time to shed the ‘I’m a b-person’ feeling... I think because teenage years are so formative.

blackheartsgirl · 02/03/2021 12:14

To be popular in my school you had to be gobby, hard, smoker and sleep with the lads.
Also shit at classes

Interestingly it wasn't a deprived area, quite rural with villages and farmers. The worst girls were the ones that came from posh estates where the girls parents had good jobs.

The more deprived kids tended to be nicer and stuck together

I wasn't popular at all. Was bullied for years

blackheartsgirl · 02/03/2021 12:19

It was very homophobic too. If you excelled at sport you were called a 'lesbian' and other equally unpleasant names

TheBigGreenDinosaur · 02/03/2021 12:20

The popular girls in my school were pretty, academic and sporty. They tended to come from well off families so could afford to go on nice holidays during the breaks and had the latest bags/fashion etc. The “hard” girls were respected but left alone to do their own thing really.

CookPassBabtridge · 02/03/2021 12:47

The popular ones at my school were the good looking, thin, clever, sporty ones. Definitely not the druggy rough hard types.

GrapeHyacinth · 03/03/2021 13:39

Girls' grammar in the 80s. I'd say the popular ones were funny, messed about in class and were the less academic ones.

GrapeHyacinth · 03/03/2021 13:41

Forgot to mention that the popular ones wore fashionable clothes and hair