Unwritten rulebook of school says attraction equals social status
The unwritten rulebook of school never changes, regardless of which era you attended. The 1980s and 2020s are exactly the same in one realm.
Look back at your yearbook and ignore the usual propaganda that school was a blast. Yearbooks are notorious for filtering out the monotony of school, but they’re horrible at filtering out who was and wasn’t attractive.
It’s only when you look back will you find faces you never appreciated. In my case, there are girls present-day TC Marti would’ve found stunning, kind, interesting, and, most importantly, authentic. As for high school TC? He’d probably have told present-day TC to go fuck off when it came to women.
Why? Because high school TC Marti did what most status-seeking high school boys do. He followed the herd mentality. If his friends didn’t find that geeky girl with glasses, a Plain Jane fashion, and hair that she rarely fixed attractive, neither did he.
If he dared to speak otherwise, they’d have ridiculed him. Her? Who in their right mind would ask her to a dance? She doesn’t talk to anyone.
That girl would’ve been my first-round draft pick. Or, should’ve been, if the wisdom of present-day TC could’ve gotten through to his high school counterpart.
Unwritten rulebook of school dictates lives
Like most kids, I valued fitting in more than following my own independent mind. And the girl in question was never popular enough, she didn’t have the right friends (or any, really, besides her sister), and looked like she bought every stitch of clothing she owned at a thrift store.
As for me and those I associated myself with, and I say “associated” because I rarely hung out with anyone outside of school even if I was invited on numerous occasions, we were the athletes who shopped at the “in” places. I’m talking Hollister, American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, you get the gist of it. Not Goodwill.
Attraction was never about beauty, but herd-sanctioned beauty. That’s why the other girl who aced every class got the glory. She was a 12-time letter winner, was class vice president, and found time for seemingly every extracurricular activity.
The kind of girl you found attractive because that unwritten rulebook of school demanded it if you wanted to keep your status. If I publicly said I found that Plain Jane girl attractive, I risked social demotion, and my stupid 17-year-old self wouldn’t have that.
It’s another sick truth about public school
Not only do they tell you what to think in class; that same herd mentality exists in the cafeteria and anywhere that didn’t have a dry-erase board. All I learned in school and in the years following it was how to correctly signal.
I never owned my preferences. Instead, that unwritten rulebook engineered them. It’s why I, someone who hates polo shirts and blue jeans, wore polo shirts and blue jeans. The “preppy” fashion, might I add.
It trickled down to talking in the accepted dialect, and basing preferences on accepted opinions. Outsourcing approval like that meant lack of thought diversity and rewards based on conformity.
How many girls were never truly seen?
I went to high school from 2005 to 2009, and I obsess over those yearbooks. I look at them daily, picking out girls who I said, “What the hell, TC? Why didn’t you ever consider them?”
Not only Plain Jane Girl and her sister; several. One who always wore a hoodie to school and hung with those kids who were just…there. Then there was that cute Italian girl (not from Italy or else I’d have lost my virginity when I was 14 because you know how much I love purebreds; her last name was Italian) who also rarely talked. But hot damn, that smile was infectious, and I’m not just saying that.
I could write an entire blog post on them. And best yet, most of these girls never saw the need to wear a ton of makeup. They never needed to be the center of attention, nor did they need to play three sports and pack their schedules beyond school. Those girls were real.
Unfortunately, that unwritten rulebook said, “You better keep those opinions to yourself if you love your status.”
That conditioned me and so many others not to see people, but social labels. Every girl I mentioned above was a label, and nothing more. Until I saw reason years later.
Public education is a factory of perception
The same goes for mainstream private schools, which I’ve always called public schools with a price tag. But since most of us went to public schools, I’ll pick on them. Either way, that normie factory of perception rarely produces critical thinkers.
Just validators, and the teachers, administration, and everyone involved with them encourage it. It’s why I lol’d when I read the superintendent’s latest newsletter, where he acted like he cared about all students. Bro, that’s never been the case, and you know it.
Whether inside or outside the classroom, most kids grow to stop thinking for themselves. Instead, they look for cues that tell them what’s funny, offensive, attractive, who matters, and who doesn’t.
Real education doesn’t tell you what to think
People who are truly educated aren’t those holding diplomas, college degrees, and PhDs. They think they’re educated because it’s what they’ve been told to think. In actuality, these people can’t think for themselves because they’ve rarely taken a minute to consider that education doesn’t need to reside inside a classroom or State-approved credentials.
Truly educated people see patterns. And when they spot those patterns, they may value what most people don’t. They see beauty without asking for permission, and they see human beings, not labels. That physical attractiveness is subjective, not objective truth.
And that falls to the individual, not the herd, or the unwritten rulebook of school.
Yote Diamondback isn’t very good looking for a reason
In my young adult academy fantasy, The Arcane Prophecy, I intentionally made Yote Diamondback look like a Plain Jane. She’s got somewhat frizzy rust-colored hair that stops at around her shoulders. Hair that she can’t tame when it gets too humid.
Her skin’s a pasty white, and her brown eyes are so large that they look better equipped on an owl, not her face. She has freckles, and not in a cute way. She’s also flat, lacking those shapely curves that girls her age are developing.
She’s that hoodie and jeans kind of girl, and her sister, Jett, always overshadows her. No, not because Jett’s a better athlete or a more gifted student. Instead, Jett’s got straight, shiny, raven-black hair, ivory skin, almond-shaped green eyes, and developing curves. She seems to glow even when she’s not trying.
Meet these two girls in the first three chapters of The Arcane Prophecy, and catch just how gifted both of them are. Despite this, you’ll quickly discover that Jett meets the societal threshold, even if Mom and Dad treat both girls the same. Check out the first three chapters right now.
