There is so much peer pressure. I mean, not with drugs
or cigarettes or anything, but with the fact that everybody has to look
the same....
You wake up in the morning and go, "If I wear this, will I get made
fun of? Will I be criticized? You have to be really careful in order to
get people’s attention in the right way. Everybody's got to make
fun of somebody else. People make fun of me all the time because I’m
overweight. It’s just something you try to hide from, I guess. There
is a clique of popular people, and everybody else is not included.
Morgan and Lisa, both 13, during spring break, Sanibel Island, Florida.
Alli,
Annie, Hannah, and Berit, all 13, before the first big party of the seventh
grade, Edina, Minnesota.
Whether you think clothes are important sort of places you in a group. Our group has their own kind of fashion—laid-back, clean-cut outfits. We shop at about six different stores, and we keep up with the trends.
At our school, being popular is, for a girl, looking the best, having the best clothes, being liked by a lot of the guys.... Sometimes our friends can be really, really mean. In our group, people get criticized if you don’t look a certain way. If you have a flaw, then you will be criticized whether you like it or not.
[Where I’m from] in Long Island, you have to be beautiful and skinny and have a good body.... All the girls are really skinny, and they walk around in very seductive, small clothes….It’s hard because busty girls with chubby bodies can’t wear that kind of stuff. At home guys won’t even look at me. When you’re overweight, they look at you as a different kind of person, an outcast…Even girls don’t hang out with overweight girls, because guys would want them less.
Above: Marissa, 15, Nicole, 16, Jessie, 14, and Marin, 14, some of the members of the popular clique, during the first week of weight-loss camp, Catskills, New York.
Below: Marissa, Marin, and Jessie eight weeks later, on the last day of weight-loss camp, Catskills, New York.
My group of friends, we all have like bootleg jeans—not like really dark, not like really light—just like the regular blue jeans. And we mostly wear just black and brown belts with silver on them. We wear our hair in buns—not like full ponytails but not like a straight out bun—just a little hanging down stuff. When we wear our hair down, we wear it usually flipped out.
The popular clique in the seventh grade, Southview Middle School cafeteria, Edina, Minnesota.
In our grade, at lunch, you can see the cliques really clearly. There is one table where all of my friends sit at which is more of a popular group, I guess you would say.