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Image, Identity & Indviduality

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The high school experience can challenge you to face issues of identity, image and individuality, When is it best to stay true to yourself? When is it best to conform? Who decides who you are? Is it your friends, your teachers, your parents? Or do you get to decide? What if you don’t all agree? Are you being challenged by the same concerns as the teens below?

NEW! You walk into a room and see a person all in black: black clothes, nail polish and eyeliner... the whole sha-bam! Do you walk away with out a second glance or do you sit and for once in your life take a chance?
In this situation, may would have walked away because it is believed by some people that appearances shape one’s identity. I would strongly have to disagree with that statement arguing the fact that who you are does not have anything to do with the way you look. To back, um, my belief, I shall use examples from my own life.
I am one of those people who I have described earlier on; you know, the one who likes to wear all black. I know how it feels when you are the outsider looking in; when your heart sinks many a time when the person you want to talk to walks away with a disgusted look on their face. I am a normal person just like everyone else, but I happen to have a style all my own, so I remain the outcast, the “strange one,” the girl no one wants to be around. How normal am I, you may ask, if everyone treats me like an outcast?
Well let’s see—I wake up every morning and shower; find something to wear that I feel comfortable in (it is usually something black), and then I go to school just like everyone else. So yeah I’m pretty normal, but not a lot of people see me that way and don’t give me a chance. I wear black like I said and I’m generally a quiet person, because of this many view me as a “freak” or something else in a negative manner.
To clarify this more, I shall tell about my lunch experiences. I go to lunch and as I walk in, I pass a group of people who are “cooler” than I am. They spot me immediately, and begin chanting “eww eww eww”, and when the lunch room falls silent people stop and stare, making me feel more of an outsider than I already am. I have dealt with people treating me like this all my life because I have always been the so called “strange child.”
I used to be really chunky with huge glasses and frizzy hair. Over time that changed; I lost the weight and got contacts and started wearing makeup and being more girly but still gothic/punk like, yet still the teasing continues today because people only view me as the way I was, not who I am. Even after trying to let them get to know me, they didn’t want to, they never wanted to see the real me and who I am inside; they just wanted to judge me from my appearance, and all the darkness that controls my world and my life, and they are just scared to open up to new ideas in the end.
If people honestly took the time to get to know me, they would see that I’m more than the “freak” they think I am. I truly am just like them; I listen to music they know and some they don’t, I shop at some of the same stores, and I have some of the same interests they have, but people can never see that and just go with their first impression of follow in what their friends think and believe.
I have people who know the real me. These people, I believe will always be there when I’m in a time of need. So, as far the statement about appearance reflecting personality and identity, I believe they have nothing to do with each other. It is just bad judgment ignorant people make by labels and stupid beliefs, before they actually get to know someone.
People are too scared to accept what they can’t explain or understand, they are scared to have someone who’s “different” in their lives, but in the end we are all people, if cut we all bleed red blood so there’s nothing on the inside that is alien from everyone else. If chances are not taken, a person may never know that they could have found a new best friend in that social outcast the moment they chose to walk away just because of that person’s appearance.
—Samantha, 17

My Skin
The skin I’m in is black
the color is all you see
judging me,
teasing me.
Everything is judged from the outside
never look on the inside.
My heart, my soul
is different from my skin tone
but you can’t tell
from my skin.
Can you tell I love to write
to sing,
even like to talk to myself?
But no, all you see is the color
the brownish of my skin
not the color of my heart and soul.
Just my outside.
So look deeper
than my brown,
look deeper than
my skin.
Because it says nothing about me,
who I am inside,
because it’s just my skin.
—Rachael Fossett, 14

I had to find others who also did not fit in. In my mind, those who did not harass me, quickly became my friends. Oddly enough, many of us did not fit the mold by many measures. High school became a separatist state, one where you had the “metal heads/geeks” and the “preppies/jocks.” I grew to hate the preppies and jocks so much I would do anything to create a distance from them. This did influence to my decision to have nothing to do with sports with the exception of racquetball, which my high school did not support. Why in the hell would want to hang with people who treated me like shit. Funny how that they never got it!
—Don

You are unique, like everyone else.
—Carol Gardner

Have you never played sports in your life for the school. It sucks, because 75% of the teachers like to play favorites and all the football jockeys or other sport players always get it easy through the school. If a kid that don’t play sports said a bad word, he’s down in the office. A jock kid does it and he gets mildly scolded.
—Sean

High school is just plain rigid. Kids are compartmentalized, yet there are too few compartments.
—Faizah

I spent most of my time in high school hanging out at the “freak wall,” with other kids who were generally rebellious, indifferent to school, sexually active and involved with drugs and alcohol. We were careful to steer clear of the athletes, cheerleaders and homecoming court who hung out at the “jock wall.” It was like “we’re united here,” bonded in not being able to make it in the functional world. When I see kids in gangs and groups of outcasts, I understand wanting to be a part of something, even if that thing is bad, unhealthy or harmful.
—Lori

The past does not have to equal the future.
–Anthony Robbins

Honors history. Man, I love history but I can’t stand this class. It’s not the teacher, even though he wears the same brown suit everyday! It’s the rest of the class. They’re the little goody-goody kids; and here I am, the only pothead in honors history. You know, all through elementary school I was friends with most of these kids, but now I am somehow the target of their all-too-witty sarcastic comments and jokes. Yeah, I don’t wear the same preppy clothes as they do and I am not going to be showing up at the country club, but I am an honors student. The school didn’t just go, “Hey, let’s throw one pothead in the class just so the other kids will have someone to bust on.”
I can’t believe this crap. The teacher never steps in so the kids never back off. I know the material as well as any of these brainiacs and I get no credit from the teacher and nothing but crap from these the “good kids.” All because of a reputation. Yes I get stoned, probably way too much. But I am a very good student and a nice person. I have not said a bad word to or about any of these kids, ever! I just want to be treated like a person.
Ricky, 16

I hate being called a terrorist just because I’m a Muslim. I don’t think people realize just how mean and hurtful it is to hear that.*

I was not one of the kids who would be labeled rotten by most people who have hearts. Yet in this place where difficult students were the norm instead of the few, I guess I could only have been seen as what the other students were: DIFFICULT!
—Mark

What I remember most about high school is my intentional isolation because I felt so different from everyone else and preferred being alone for the most part.
—Cheryl

I know a lot of people think that all high school jocks are into drinking or that they’re not as smart, that they only like and only hang out with jocks, but that wasn’t true for me. I wouldn’t consider myself the most popular kid but I was definitely known by everyone. They knew I was smart but they weren’t mean to me because I was smart. I’m not the stereotype at all, but like my own person. I think I get a lot of respect because of that.
—Matthew, 18

The only gay people society sees (or chooses to acknowledge) due to its ignorance are:
• Flamboyant drag queens
• Those suffering in the AIDS epidemic
• Or those that are obsessed with Cher, pink and lycra
Simply because these are society’s stereotypes.
Society expects that if you are in fact gay, you must fit into one of these three categories. And to make life more interesting, the hypocrites of today say that even if you’re not gay and you fit into one of the categories, you must be.Our generation is here to prove that wrong.
A person is a person is a person. There’s nothing to flaunt,display, watch or marvel over.In the big-people world we call reality, there’s no justification for inhumanity toward gays.
—Alex, 17

Every year throughout elementary school, I was asked to tell the entire class about every Jewish holiday that came up. I was severely shy and I always felt very self-conscious, but I was also the only Jewish kid in my class for six years.
—Daria

You really don’t want to know about my high school days. There was the live possum in the coach’s mailbox, the still in the chemistry lab and the battery spliced into the bell system to name but a few. Some I can’t go into because I am still not sure what the statute of limitations is. One of my friends was caught in the governor’s office smoking one of his cigars. Of course, I had very high test scores, so I and my comrades had diplomatic immunity.
—Paul

Sometimes, I hear a lot of names being called towards different groups of people and nothing is done by the adults, even when these names are called right in front of them. Any time you walk down the halls, you hear something about Spanish people, or blacks. The racist kids are never caught, though.*

*indicates material that was submitted anonymously

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