Friday, June 8, 2012

Cliques

Social Stigma

Remember high school? The many "cliques" Like jocks, popular kids, rich kids, bullies, etc? Well, this post was inspired by a recent post I did on the movie Revenge of the Nerds, one of my favorite movies might I add.
This word is basically also to do with the term social stigma, meaning that is it the severe disapproval of, or discontent with a person on the grounds of features that make them different from someone else.
There are 3 forms of it, recognized by Erving Goffman. The fact of mental illness, a physical form of deformity or association with a certain race, belief, religion, etc.

Social stigma can come up from attribute or perception of, right or wrong, mental illness, physical incapabilities, diseases such as leprosy, illegitimacy, sexual orientation, gender, skin tone, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or criminality.

Comes in 3 forms:
  1. External deformations, such as scars, physical symptoms of anorexia nervosa, or physical disability such as obesity. (I.e. muscular dystrophy, clubfoot, cleft lip or palate.)
  2. Personal traits, such as mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal background. (I.e. homosexuality, imprisonment, suicidal attempts, mental disorders)
  3. Tribal stigmas, such as ethnic group, nationality, religion. (I.e being African American or of Arab descent living in the US after 9/11)
-This can also be noted as labeling. There are 3 factors to this: The first being the need to create groups, such as heterosexual and homosexual, black and white, sane and mentally ill, young and old.

-The 2nd factor is this can be linked to stereotypes. 3rd, linking negative attributes to groups makes us go into thinking about "us" and "them."
-4th factor is discrimination. Many disadvantages here, and people in groups can basically be labeled, by factors such as income, education, housing status, medical treatment, health, mental health

High School
In high school, cliques are everywhere! Every high school probably has the same ones:
-The Jocks, who think they rule the school, even though most of them are dumber than a post and couldn't pass a class to save their lives.
-The Cheerleaders. Girlfriends of the football players, some of whom might be the sluttiest girls you ever meet, that's not to say all cheerleaders are like that, in my school, only a small handful of the cheerleaders were like this, the rest were nice. Unlike some people, I do not consider cheerleading a sport. All it is id jumping on top of each other, no dancing or anything like that involved.
-The "Band Geeks". This refers to the nice group of people who play instruments and know all about music. Most of them tend to stick with other music band people. I actually made friends with these people easier than anyone.
-The nerds, or smart people. I was in this one, lmao. I was a smarty pants and had to help people in classes, especially Spanish. I translated for everyone so they could ace the class. Nerds in my high school did not dress like that, but they dressed in just regular clothes. They were called nerds because they were smart and did not talk.
-Tomboys. We had a few running around. Girls who dressed and acted like the boys, played rough and tumbled with the boys. Or just girls who went casual with their clothes, aka ME!
-'Gangsta' wannabes. Almost every guy here! They all wanted to be "black" like the hip hop stars they idolized when in real life they were whiter than Texas and didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of being black. Hell, half of the black people I know don't say things  like "Yo, what up, dog? How's my homie?"
-Preps. Millions of them, they were everywhere! Like a really bad infestation of them! These are the people who wear name brands all over themselves, showing off they can afford brand names like Abercrombie and Fitch, Aeropostale, American Eagle, etc.
Some of the preppy girls dressed like this
-What I call the "Rock Band" people. Ones who wore skin tight jeans, hair all messy and long or Mohawks, rock band shirts and Vans or Converses. They are the ones who want to be rock stars and they are not shy about showing it through their clothes. They also may have a tattoo or two and have brightly colored hair!
They would look like this, even the girls, sans the ripped clothing or leather clothing
BTW, this is Motley Crue in case anyone is curious
-And also, a sub one my school had. The "Retro" people who wore bell bottoms, retro rock band shirts or retro shirts in general, gym shoes, stuff with peace signs on it, stuff with retro rock bands on it and who would know about all things before the 1990s, such as music, movies, TV, etc. I'm part of this one too, lmao!!!

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