You Are Your Own Worst Enemy

I noticed throughout reading these two essays that like Lucy Grealy, Emily White suffered from high school traumatic experiences. Although she doesn’t go into any hard times for her specifically, she does hint at it. While she sits in the cafeteria she says: “Sitting on the sidelines now, I can still feel the adolescent loneliness in my guts.” Later she describes the lunchroom as “the place where forms of human sacrifices occur.” Throughout her description of the tribes I got the sense that she related to the outcasts, and bitterly described the popular tribes. She describes an obese girl as “valiant”, and an ousted member of a crowd as “arty and bohemian, and possessing a complex prettiness that boys will probably notice later.”

Another similarity between these two essays was how uniformly a tribe moved together. In Emily Whites essay, the “natural helpers” are having the penny wars, and they “cross the boundaries of the tribes.” White describes not one girl, but “them” and “they”. The natural helpers move as one, and without each other; they could not cross the boundaries at all. Lucy Grealy describes a group who verbally tortured her, during her first few weeks of school. She describes the group as slowly growing braver, and finally sending a member of their “tribe” to come and taunt her face to face. After doing so, the boy would run back to his table, and laugh triumphantly with the rest of his crowd. Without his tribe, the likelihood of him going up to her would be very slim. People, but teenagers especially find courage in groups.

The largest similarity I found between the two essays was the symbolism of masks. Lucy Grealy used the Halloween mask to fit in, and to be like all the other people. She felt freer and more alive with her Halloween mask on, but at the same time even more alone. After taking her mask off, Lucy said she felt “both sad and relieved”. In Emily Whites High Schools Secret Life, all members of each tribe also wore masks. We can use the example of the “popular” crowd. Emily White describes them as having perfect conformity in “haircuts, necklaces, the way they use their voices…They all imitate each other because imitation speaks of their power.” I doubt that every single one of those teenagers liked wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. I doubt that every one of them had the same interests, but they would pretend to for the sake of keeping their place in the popular crowd. In a way every one of those teenagers were wearing masks to hide their real selves to reap what they thought as a greater reward.

Fortunately, I never had the traumatizing experience in school that Lucy Grealy had, or that Emily White suggested. I was unattractive and overweight, but I kept my head down. I would deliberately bury myself in my books. All though I’m sure people were talking about me, I couldn’t hear them over the stories that I immersed myself in. I didn’t care if nobody sat with me at lunch, because I didn’t want them interrupting me in the middle of Wuthering Heights. Sadly, I lost a great deal of friendship opportunities doing this as well. I assumed that anybody approaching me, wanted to hurt me, so I ignored them with all my strength until they left. Though it was nobody’s fault but my own, I had very few friends in high school. Isn’t it interesting how you don’t need anybody else but yourself to make high school a negative experience?