book

Cliques, Crowds and Methods of Conformity

21 Pages 611 Words 1557 Views

Middle school graduates transition to high school and immediately looks at who they are going to be. They look at the different grade levels and see the way they dress, talk, act, and socialize. The adolescent then compares the style they perceive themselves to have to the ones observed. Their fear is to end up alone with no friends because an adolescent with friends is considered to be popular. A crowd is a large number of people gathered together, typically in a disorganized or unruly way, a clique is a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common; they spend a lot of time together and do not quickly let others join them, and conformity is just the standard, rule, or law that crowds and cliques tend to have. All these characteristics boil down to your high school moment being a memorable one with positive moments. Adolescents in high school form cliques and crowds according to their self-identification. Just like a 4 year old may consider herself to be a princess, an adolescent considers himself/herself to be a rock star or a preppy girl that only wears name brand clothes and has the nicest and latest things. They also form cliques and crowds according to their personal interests and beliefs. These cliques have imaginary audiences, which give them the right to believe they need to make sure everyone in the clique follows the same conformities. The different crowds are formed also with different ethnic groups, such as whites, Spanish, blacks, Chinese or Asian, and Jamaicans etc. While I was in high school, I would hang around the Spanish crowds because we all would speak Spanish and listen to the same music. It was kind of different from cliques because cliques tend to have conformities that must be followed. For example, the rock star crowd that only wears different colored hair. Within crowds, all different types of styles are accepted; they are made a crowd pertaining to ethnic culture, likes, beliefs

Read Full Essay