Stereotypes… What’s the point?

Hi,

I’m Just Average Teen Me. Today my post is going to be about stereotypes. I’ve noticed (well obviously I’m aware of stereotypes) that they are rarely 100% accurate reflections of the people that they describe. So, I thought that I might prove to you all, and just rant at the world about why they aren’t accurate…

So, since I’m a teenager, and I’m guessing that most of you are teenagers too, I’ll talk about them. I’m pretty sure that most people get called a ‘moody teenager’ once they hit 13…. Straight away, there are stereotypes… And it will probably be the same throughout your whole teenage life. I feel like there are groups of stereotypes within the general stereotype of teenagers…. If that makes any sense 😀 .

So, people that are clever, seem to automatically be classed as nerds, uncool and unpopular… Personally, I prefer geek to nerd but they both mean the same sort of thing so meh. My point is, people that are intelligent aren’t always nerds… Sometimes it just comes naturally and they are actually popular, and ‘cool’ within the year group. If not, then they can still have friends….

Next, there are the popular girls. We imagine them as Mean Girls style, strutting down the corridors in short skirts, caked in makeup and constantly gossiping about anyone they can. But really, think. Is there anyone that extreme in your school? I know there isn’t in mine… There are some though, with rolled up skirts that have had billions of boyfriends and whatnot… But they really aren’t as bad as the stereotypes. The extent of them is rolled up skirts, quite dodgy eyebrows and rumours of them ‘doing the do’ when nobody knows if it’s even true… But most of them aren’t all bad… I know quite a few girls with loads of friends that are actually really nice!

And while I’m on popular people, I might as well cover the popular boys. Most people imagine these as chavs, swearing, smokers and wearing hoodies…. When again, not many of them really are. Well there are a few people in my year that think they’re such cool rebels that they should smoke e-cigarettes but that’s all really. Usually, they don’t wear hoodies… It’s usually t-shirts or something. I will admit, a lot of them are quite chav-like, but not in the sense that the word is…. If you didn’t already know, chav stands for council house and violence or something like that… Most of the people who walk around acting cool, with their big caps and baggy trousers have been tagged as living in a council house and being violent. In my opinion, this really isn’t fair, and proves that the stereotype is wrong.

Aside from groups of people, teenagers often get told that they’re always up to no goo by people older than them. Really, only a small group of teens are the ones always getting into actual trouble. Most of them don’t actually do anything…

But my point is, most stereotypes aren’t accurate so why should they exist? Who started them? And why should one age group be looked down on because of a small group within them? I just don’t see the point… I know that there are stereotypes for other groups of people but I felt like since most of the people reading are probably teenage sort of age, I decided to focus on us. What do you think of stereotypes? And what stereotypes annoy you?

Thank you SO much for reading, make sure to like and follow if you like my blog and let me know what your opinion on this sort of topic is in the comments! I’d love to hear them!

–Just Average Teen Me