High School Styles Essay, Research Paper

High School Styles

School is one of those activities that takes a good portion of one?s life until your mid-twenties; but what we are going to focus on is high school students. Do you remember your first day of high school? The place was full of all types of prospective students. Each type has its own style of dress, grooming, speech patterns, and attitudes. Even though they are all students they differ to include bangers, kickers, preps, jocks, and nerds.

Bangers or head bangers dress in darker colors, usually black. Their pants tend to be very baggy and sag while their shirts are very small and tight fitting. Their grooming habits differ widely in the fact that they always appear dirty, or look as if they just crawled out of the bed or some undesirable place. Some like the style of long, stringy hair and grossly overdone makeup, while others like colorful, spiked, greasy hair. A lot of them favor dyeing their hair; either yellow-corn blond or shoe polish black. The speech patterns used by this group consist of violence, darkness, and profanity. They usually express this by adding tattoos and piercing all over their bodies. Their attitude is very negative toward others outside of their group.

Kickers or cowboys dress in tight Cowboy Cut Wrangler jeans usually the 13MWZ style, western or polo shirts, and cowboy boots (Ropers are the most popular), or Justin Chukkas. A fancy belt that has a lot of silver on it and a large, shiny buckle are almost required apparel. Their grooming habits are neat, the guys having short hair and being clean-shaven. The girls usually have long hair, frequently up in a ponytail adorned with an ornament. They talk in a rural style, preferring words like ain?t, ya?ll, yonder. They use a milder form of profanity that normally refers to animal excrement. Their attitude is cheerful, friendly, and somewhat tolerant. They are polite and respectful to all.

Preps or preppies dress in a very fashionable ?Dillard?s style?; every thing must be the latest fashion. All popular, name brand clothing is worn such as Old Navy, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, etc. Their grooming habits are somewhat similar to the kickers. However, they don?t wear boots. They usually wear expensive tennis shoes. The guys are clean and neat and the girls groom themselves in a well made up way, but not overdone. The girls usually have their nails done weekly at the local nail salon. They paint their nails bright colors or matching to whatever outfit they have on for the moment. The speech patterns of the preps can be somewhat crude at times. They like to tell off-color jokes and stories. This group has a superior attitude and looks down on most of the other groups. They have a tendency to be arrogant and conceded.

Nerds or geeks will someday rule the world. This group normally has higher IQ?s. Their dress is a little out of style. They normally do not care a lot about name brands. Their grooming tends to be run of the mill, nothing spectacular or outrageous, just whatever is available and clean. The stories about most of them having pocket protectors is largely myth. Their language can be obscure and heavily encumbered with technical jargon. Their attitude and outlook conveys a deep trust of everything technical and advanced. Being often ostracized by their classmates they are often loners and have trouble adjusting to the other groups. Unfortunately, this group has produced many of those students who have made violent attacks upon their school and fellow students.

Although jocks or athletes can seemingly be a member of other groups there are things that set them apart. In their dress they have a tendency for letter jackets, athletic jerseys, and gym shorts, and the most expensive tennis shoe that is made. They are a clean group of individuals from all the after practice showers. Their very short hair is stylish with them since many of the coaches demand it. However, the girl jocks tend to have long hair tied up in a knot, or braided to keep it out of their face while playing their sport. Their speech patterns tend to be consistent with kickers and preps with a lot of sports talk in between conversations. For many attitudes justify the classification. Many of them feel that because they are athletes they are special. They look for and often receive special treatment.

Balancing the realm of stereotypical people, I have taken high school students and divided them into five classes: bangers, kickers, preps, jocks, and nerds. I then showed the characteristics that define that class, in addition to explaining the dress, attitude, style, speech patterns, and grooming habits of these divisions of classification as the ones that are found most from in my high school. There may be others, but these are the ones that give the most lasting impression with their popularity.