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!

Mid 80s. We lived in a very nice area. Never noticed the rich but the poor kids really stood out as I think we were mostly middle income households. There were 3 distinct groups in our school

1. Rockers, hippy types, clever but interesting kids rather than needy possibly with left wing Liberal parents. These were the largest group and the most popular, very sociable and full of confidence and most likely to go on to FE. Lots of home parties allowed. Most likely to include the poor kids in stuff.
2. The good looking, frequenting nightclubs and pubs with girl/boyfriends from 13/14. Most of these ended up with decent jobs.
3. A small group of rough ones, a few tried to act like bullies but there weren't enough of them to properly take hold so easy for other kids and school to deal with.

Nerdy not needy

Confident high achievers, particularly good at sports and drama. This was an all girls private school in the 2000s.

I was in high school from 2003 to 2008

Same as many posters we had 2 popular groups. One was full of girls/boys fighting, smoking, skiving school and the other was full of high achievers, well off girls and boys. The two groups got on well with each other though

I remember one girl really clearly, she was friendly, sporty, pretty and seemed popular with the girls and boys alike. I haven't stayed in contact with many people from school but she came up in conversation with someone who is still friendly with her, and my goodness the intervening years have not been kind. It was quite sad actually, at the time we were all so jealous and thought she had the world at her feet.

I dunno, I wasn't one of them.
I believe they had more social life & dressed better (than me).

People hung around in groups according to their personality. Some people had more friends than others hence were popular. Hard girls not particularly popular as most people gave them a wider berth.

Confident, clever, funny, occasionally outspoken. Dressed well and trendy hair.

I think it depends which sort of school you were at. Ours was a girls' grammar.

I went to an 80s girls' grammar and you had to have fashionable clothes and hair to be popular. The less academic ones who messed around in class were most popular. The most academic were called "swots"