Who's your class president? Prom court members? Homecoming queen? Student counsel members? If you step back and take a moment to think about it, high school is a popularity contest. It's a time and place where you are most wanting to fit in, and people think that requires appearing cool and confident, letters on their jackets, a large group of friends, a boyfriend/girlfriend, and getting chosen for the right activities. People rarely care about a person's qualifications, but about that person's social rank.

I think it's a little unfair because there are people who may not be the best looking or the most popular, but they work hard, and they usually don't get a chance to do what they want, such as becoming prom queen/king or joining student counsel. These people usually don't approach these kinds of opportunities. This is because of fear of being rejected by their peers or because they already know the outcome of the results and don't want to waste their time. This is also unfair to part of the student body. They don't benefit from anything because the ideas for all school events and programs are usually biased and there aren't a variety of ideas, as counsels and organizations are made of the people from the same 'popular group'. I think students just go along with everything because, first of all, they can't do much about it since the majority of the student body participates in this 'popularity contest', and second of all, they don't want to the one to take a stand because, let's be honest, no one wants to be the odd one out.

So who decides what's popular and what's not popular? I think media has a lot to do with this categorizing people into the popular and unpopular groups. Movies such as High School Musical, Mean Girls, Bring It On, and Grease. Who are the popular ones? The jocks, the cheerleaders, and the physically beautiful ones. People watch movies and shows like these and learn how to distinguish what it means to be popular and unpopular.