all i do is win (up down up down up down)

[intertribal]

A couple weeks ago (during the pre-break work crunch), I left the Graduate Research Center around 9 p.m. and decided to catch the shuttle back to the metro near the undergrad dorms.  There were four girls in the bus shelter when I got there - it was cold, but they were going out - teensy dresses, leather jackets, jesus-christ-heels, flat-ironed hair, mascara so thick it looks like feathers, gum.  The uniform for going out, especially in the under-21 set.  All white, all at least trying to look loaded.  The undergrads at AU have a reputation for being dumb rich kids from Maryland and the surrounding area whose parents were like "ohhh-kay, I guess you can go to college in DC but be careful sweetie" - the grads, by comparison, are like the underdog team in any given sports comedy (Georgetown, GW, and Johns Hopkins take turns pointing and laughing, but the price is wrong, bitch). 

These girls would have intimidated the shit out of me when I was an undergrad, by sheer virtue of looking like they knew how to dress, knew how to be cool, had friends, were going "out," etc.  They crowded around one iPhone watching the "Rack City" video like it was some kind of scandal that they were watching it at all.  Then other girls, and one guy who was clearly trying to play the pimp role, joined them - by the time the shuttle got there, there were about two dozen of these little rockstars ready for their big night out.  They took up nearly the entire bus, and treated the thing like it was their personal party limo.  Everybody preening in the window. 

And then there was me, and one other grad student in the class I'd just gotten out of - both of us had our earbuds in and gave each other customary curt nods - and at the back of the bus, by herself, one lowly undergrad who was not invited to the Party.  And she wasn't ugly, or frumpy, but she was still wearing makeup junior high style and her hair was unkempt and her clothes weren't cool.  I looked at her and the gulf separating her from the Cool Kids and thought, "there but for the grace of God go I."  In fact, that was me as an undergrad, and it was awful.  I remember trying to get the look right everyday before class - because I sure didn't go to parties - and just failing all over the place.  Just never got there.  I had the chance to be part of a preppy-cool clique early on in college and I simply could not keep up appearances.  Because when it doesn't feel natural, it feels like you're trapped on some hideous piece of gym equipment, climbing up but slipping down and under so much strain. 

I have no clue how I got out of it (a similar thing happens on the Law & Order episode "Quit Claim," when Connie shows the judge a picture of her in college to show how women's appearances can change, and the judge is like, "point taken").  Time, maybe?  Finally going to a school that I feel fondness and "spirit" for?  Those two years in Nebraska getting drunk in a more "low-key" environment?  A year pretending to be a presentable date for a normal Nebraskan boy?  Is it wearing jeggings and bandage dresses, God help me?  I don't know.  I don't know how I fell in with the popular crowd in my program, how I became one of the girls that "brings the party," someone who "knows people."  Natnari always jokes that you have to schedule a social appointment with me two weeks in advance.  There is much closer correspondence between professionalism/competence and popularity in grad school - it's actually a very good thing to be friends with the faculty and staff; the resident bombshell of SIS is staff.  It's definitely a good thing to have a white-collar job - the more networked, the better.  But the art of Being Cool is also much more intense because we're that much closer to adulthood, and I'm not falling off the StairMaster this time, and I just do not know why. 

So I kind of wanted to go up to that girl on the bus and tell her it'll get better (I feel like I shouldn't use that phrase anymore, but how else to say it?).  But it's not like I don't get imposter syndrome either - imposter at my job, imposter as a student, imposter as a popular girl most of all - it's not like I don't half the time feel like "inside every Chris Hargensen and Sue Snell is a Carrie White clawing to get out."  I'm just trying my best not to let the two "sides" merge.  I do not want to be a Mean Girl, which is why I maintain my effort to be (almost) everyone's friend - a goal I originally set up to just not be unpopular again, for the love of all that was good and holy.  But I can see how easy it would be, to be a Mean Girl, especially when you've always been on the wrong side of the bleachers and you're on this nouveau-riche high.  Especially when being on the wrong side of the bleachers in your teen years graced you with a constant, consuming sense of resentment (ressentiment?).  And especially when, like Gatsby, getting rich didn't get you what you really wanted all along. 

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Possibly that girl on the bus didn't care. I was like her in college, and I was happy with the friends I made and never wanted to be part of that popular group you describe. It's only miserable for you if you're aspiring to it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she looked like she didn't care, which, you know, bully for her. I've never been able to be one of those people that just didn't care... I think because there's a hierarchy even within non-popular groups (at least there was within the speech clique and the math/science nerds clique when I was in high school - there were still the ones that were derided for being too awkward in some way, and the mean witty guys that everyone wanted to be associated with, and the girls everyone wanted to bone either because they were talkative extroverts or because they were pretty). Some of that I think is just the social human. And I think I'm extremely sensitive to all those dynamics because they usually leave me feeling either isolated or unsafe - I never found that group of friends in college. I had some of that in high school, but I think it was difficult for me to genuinely become friends with some of my high school peers because of how they'd teased me in middle school (and forgot about it). So, conclusion, I'm too neurotic to be well-adjusted, although I'm putting on a good show of it here in DC.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

*nods*'

Yeah, you're perceptive and see the dynamics, and having seen them, it's hard not to feel the implications of them.

I think sometimes you (meaning "a person," not you in particular) can feel a little better when you broaden the variables you consider when you analyze a social dynamic. The more limited the cause-and-effect factors, the more alienating, because it's easy to "score badly" when there are only a few variables.

So, conclusion, I'm too neurotic to be well-adjusted, although I'm putting on a good show of it here in DC.

Well, even if you're just playing a well-adjusted person, it's great that you're able to play the part convincingly. And you've got empathy for the outsider, which not all genuinely well-adjusted people do.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I admit this is hard for me to understand very well. I've never wanted to be popular--although I have, certainly, felt bad about not being cool, being awkward, etc., it never came with any real envy, I guess because I just never saw myself as a part of that. Maybe it's not something I judged myself by, and something I actually judged the 'cool' kids (at least the mean or two-faced ones) somewhat for. I had my experiences in elementary school...being tricked even by the 'not-so-cool' kids to join their 'group'; getting my own 'group' and then finding that no one in it genuinely cared about me (or the principles of the group! lol, 3rd grade principles) just about belonging to a special, set-off group; having one friend become 'cool' and ditch me, though she felt bad about it and would always remember me; losing another friend in 6th grade because people made fun of her (calling her a lesbian) for hanging out with me; playing up the role of crazy person to entertain instead of having real friends... I just don't think I took it that seriously. Those kind of friendships weren't deep, so they couldn't touch me.

When it came to hierarchies that involved things I cared about, like intelligence, maybe I cared more, but...less about the social aspect than about whether I 'really was' intelligent. I just never felt the need to score better than other people or whatever, 'cause we were all trying for the same (kind of) thing, and I supported them. Watching other people stress about the hierarchy just made me uncomfortable and detached, and it was probably good I went to the zoo.

At Reed...that was maybe the worst, not because I wanted to be like the 'cool' kids, but because it was like this whole other (rich, hipster, West Coast) way of being cool that I didn't understand, nor did I understand being professional, which would've at least got me by, made me feel like I had things under control and my profs respected me and I knew what I was doing. So I hung out with other people who didn't fit in. I've probably said before that that's the same thing that happened to me with 'culture shock'...but at least in a new country, I know how to resolve it: go talk to people, make a place for yourself. I guess it's the same anywhere, but I was too afraid to do that then (even with profs, or talking in class--hipsters were never gonna be worth the trouble), and didn't realize how much it would help to force myself to.

Anyway, not that you care about all that. Just why it's hard for me to understand. I understand it more in the context of China, honestly, than growing up in the Midwest, with the new middle class and people desperately trying to get to Beijing and 'make it', etc.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you mention China - I wonder if part of what's behind it for me is a residual feeling that's similar based on growing up in Jakarta, surrounded by people who were definitely the "haves" in Indonesia (and our family was both the smallest and least well-off of this network of my dad's friends, so we never hosted parties, my dad never "got the bill" for the huge banquets, I was very aware that we had the smallest house [and no vacation home!]). And going to private school, which had similar implications (and popularity was paid for by wealth in my school, besides). And me the BMW baby who always wanted nice things.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's kind of what I thought, but I don't want to assume things about your psyche, you know. ;) I forget when that conclusion came to me...maybe when I learned more about your childhood semi-recently.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Also, I guessed that it had to do with even being part of that privileged elite at all, in a cultural/economic context where everyone envies that (esp. when associated with America/the West) and assumes it is THE definition of success and happiness and security. Although, I think it's also true in linguistics that the socioeconomic class that overcompensates the most in their speech is the one just below the wealthy, not the middle class or the poor. And I don't know how moving to the States affected you.

I say I understand where it comes from in China--I've seen the poverty and all that. But like I said in my post...it permeates everything, and everyone (well, the majority) feels the need to define themselves against that, no matter how much they have--in fact, the more they have--or what other things might have value. It's like a cultural sickness. I actually liked that TV show my Chinese teacher gave me for dealing with that--a couple of the characters really struggle with destroying their relationships (and hurting themselves) because they put status and material success first. I mean, the show is not exactly subtle, but it does deal with the psychological causes and effects, that sort of thing, not quite making anybody into the 'bad guy' (or girl).