Who are the "popular" kids at school these days

[terrywynne]

I was just reading a BBC article about whether Mean Girls the musical is going to work in 2023 or of it is too "noughties". The implication seemed to be that it is no longer the case that the popular kids at school are the thin, diet obsessed, conventionally pretty, sporty, not very academic ones, and that there is more body positivity and less slut shaming around these days.

So who are the 'popular' kids at high school/sixth form? Is it even still that cliquey?

It is years since I was a teenager and my own DC are not at that stage yet. My memory of school in the late 90s/early200s is of the popular kids being pretty, confident, sporty, average to above average academically, and also just a very close knit group. I don't remember there being a particular thin obsession but there was no real social activism or anything either.

I went to school in the 90's.

The mean girls characters weren't the popular ones.

People just were nice to them to avoid being their next victim.

Popular kids have always been the ones with nice personality. It's just not seen because the aren't egotistical nightmares!

DD says the 'mean girls' are the 'basics' at her school but they don't tend to be popular because they are so mean.

Two sets in my schools

The weed/vaping can't wait to leave school group, poor attendance and low level bad behaviour.

The sporty, health conscious.

I don't think there are mean girls in the same way.

Mean girls still exist mostly because people are too scared to stand up to them in case they become their next victim.

According to DD there are two sets of mean girls at her school - the wealthy ones, who dictate what's in fashion for girls who aspire to be like them. DD recently told me of an incident at school where one girl ( not her year group) had their shoes thrown in the pond by the ring leader of the wealthier girls because they were not VW shoes! Nasty little bitch of a y10 or y11 girl for doing this!

Then you have ( the hard) proper rougher mean girls. This group of girls are Into fake tan, boys, cigarettes and adapt their uniform, as well as heavy make up. They do not often get called out on anything by other girls because they have a reputation in school for being hard .

This is as old as day and mean girls were around when I was at school in the late eighties and early nineties .Back then the mean girls were the platform or adidas trainer wearing girls with school skirts short, wrinkle down or proper pringle? diamond ankle socks with Benetton duffle bags and naff - naff coats with bubble perms and a ton of elenet hairspray on their hair. Aka the confident wealthy girls!

Interestingly the mean girls left us goths alone mostly. Perhaps it was the black dyed hair, dark make up, leather jackets and Dms that did it!

Oooh, has there been any Mean Girls type of movie in recent times? I think we might need a new one!

Disclaimer: I only have DDs and nieces so can't really speak for the boys, but in girl world as always, it's the socially adept manipulative lasses who rule the roost. In my DDs school instaface, rolled skirt and sucking up to the 'official hot lads' (ie curly haired oiks in under armour who would rather be playing xbox) is the golden ticket. DD and her friends are mostly cheerful but sometimes sad and resentful awkward scruffy gangly girls and get alternately ignored and patronised but are overall happy doing their own thing.
My niece goes to a rather precious Steineresque school where (hilariously) the anti-bullying inclusion club became a Crucible situation and a Very Serious Letter was sent explaining that accusations of bullying had become actual bullying and so the anti bullying club was dissolved with immediate effect. DN didn't even notice because she was too busy with her odd little K-pop gang and drama club.
ETA: DD wants to add that spending all of break and lunch crammed 4 girls to a toilet cubicle watching tiktoks is a sign of social status. She is against this because it means there is only one cubicle in the whole building available for actual peeing.

In our school (in the 90s) the girls all just seemed to stick to the forms we'd been put in. There wasn't really a popular group. We all had our won interests, drama/sports/academics and would mingle with the other forms, but our main friendship group was our form. Each form group had a couple of girls who were 'outsiders' and they all seemed to find each other.
I think popularity is all down to confidence. That's true no matter your age.

The scummy naughty kids are the most 'popular' kids in my DCs school.
They vape, truant and spend their whole lives either in internal isolation, or on managed moves.
Constantly disrupt lessons, rude, the parents are all rough and don't really give a damn.

My two avoid the lot of them thankfully
.

My school was quite rough so to be popular as a girl you needed to have a broad Somerset accent and to shag plumbers in fields. Even at the time I was quite happy not being in the popular set. They were perfectly nice to me though I was called square and posh but not in a particularly nasty way.

This my ds has a big group off friends, he's not badly behaved they don't hang out in the toilets vaping or coursing trouble. However he is a class clown has them all laughing teachers included, he's had no issues with anyone and never had detention so no its not the naughty trouble makers.

As a form tutor in an average secondary comprehensive, I can confirm that some girls can be as vile and conniving to each other as when i was at school. Except now it's worse because often snapchat or tiktok is involved. So much of my time is taken up by online bullying.

I am a pastoral worker in a school. I'm a posh private school and a state school.
Boys seem to be the big factor in both. If you are popular with boys, you're popular with the girls.....
It's so sad. I spend most of my time telling the girls to avoid boys at that age....

Teacher here - still the petite, white, blonde girls in the mid to low ability sets who are enduringly popular.

Also the 'bad boys' - weed-smoking football supporting no-hopers with a few exclusions under their belt.

What's good to see is that being clever is not something to be ripped for anymore. And at my place, no-one's got a pot to piss in so the wealth thing isn't an issue thank goodness. Everyone's in Primark coats and Shein everything.

10 years ago... it was nerdy funny clever lads who could talk miles, having been considered too geeky & quirky in primary to ever be popular, but in secondary school the year11s love these quirky geeky lads & make them into perma-Rock Stars.

Now I'm not so sure. Still humour matters a lot, though.

In my school 80's/early 90's the popular girls were perceived to be the prettiest or/and the 'hardest - when we got to age 15/16 then on to 16/18 it changed - the most popular girls were the 'cool' girls - indicate by their music choice! But generally those girls that were nice/friendly/caring/funny were always popular and stayed the course in terms of liking back - who you remembered! My daughter who left about 5 years ago said the most popular were those girls who were friendly/kind/caring/funny and just normal in terms of not in any particular gang/scene!

This is interesting to read. My daughter isn’t that old yet, only Y4 but unfortunately it’s already the b!tchy girls who seem to be popular. Although by popular I mean ‘invite 40 kids to their birthday party and most of them turn up’. Sadly you can always spot their mothers at the gates too, eyelashes that look like they’ll take off if they blink too hard and the fakest smile you could ever imagine. I suspect the girls are popular because kids would rather be close to them than the subject of their bullying and nasty remarks.

Same. The super popular girls were all in the top sets, played county level hockey/netball/whatever and most of them ended up going to Oxbridge or a violently competitive redbrick.

They ironically called themselves the "Ugly Crew' even though they were all rail thin and gorgeous. (Hi if any of you are reading this!)

Yes, but their popularity was because of the popular kids. It was an unbalanced relationship

Probably the kids who are into the latest fads. Whatever they are these days? when I was a kid in the 80s it was about who had the latest trainers. These days it seems to be about politics and gender and being on the right side of the cultural zeitgeist. I feel a bit sorry for kids these days they take life so seriously. We had worries about nuclear war and greenhouse effect but we knew how to have fun too.

I'm probably just a judgemental old fogey though!

In my kid’s school the ones called’the popular ones’ were the most of the kids hated because they were bitchy and arrogant.

Yes, they weren't really the cool kids but just reasonably well liked . I went to a very academic old-fashioned girls school and although being nerdy would mean you weren't popular, you wouldn't be hated for it either. At least not amongst the other kids like yourself. You definitely wouldn't be one of the cool ones though.

The disliked ones were the quiet and shy (but not in a gentle vulnerable seemimg way) which manifested as them being a bit "standoffish" or sullen. I was one of them for sure!

Quite interesting when your kid is a popular one and you weren’t. Dh and I both quite studious and had nice normal friends at school sort of in the middle I guess dd1 the same. Dd2 on the other hand…a whole new world!

My daughter is in the popular crowd. She and her friends are all pretty, sporty , confident girls who are very much into the latest fashion trends and music. They're also all friends with the cooler boys. They all seem like nice girls, although they do badmouth some kids (mostly nerdy boys) from what I can hear of their chats. Some of the girls are more academic than others.

I was extremely uncool as a teen and although I had a small group of equally uncool friends, I was tolerated by the cooler kids because I was very academic and they copied my homework 😂 I also absolutely HATED PE.

My daughter is the polar opposite- always on trend, super popular and very sporty. She wants to take PE as her GCSE option 😳That would have been my hell.

I hope you pull your child/their friends up when you hear them badmouthing other kids?