Popularity
Welcome to my blog today! I’m hosting The Writer’s Post blog hop this week, which means I get to be the boss and make everyone write about MY topic—cool! [image error] I encourage you all to click on the link below to check out the other awesome writers’ takes on my topic.
This week, the topic is POPULARITY. There are many different ways to look at popularity—what is it? How does one achieve it? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Does popularity mean valuable? Are there different ways to “be” popular? Does it even matter? These are my prompts. You can examine yourself, cultural trends, and societal pressures; really anything that can relate in some way back to POPULARITY. So, read my take below, get inspired to write your own, and again, click on the link below for more participating writers!
I have to say, I hate the word, “popular.” It could very well be due to my own insecurities, but whenever I hear that something is popular, I automatically take a step back and want to know why. It shouldn’t be that way. According to Google, the word “popular” means “liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people or by a particular person or group.” Sounds harmless enough.
In fact, I like that definition. Popular means liked by many people. Great. So a popular hotel is one that many people enjoyed. It’s probably clean, the staff is probably nice, and it’s probably convenient to lots of places. A popular restaurant most likely has a friendly wait-staff and serves good food. Popular music is played often on the radio and is known by many people. Popular books have been read by many people and have probably gotten favorable reviews. Popular people are liked by many people—they have many friends.
But when I look at things through the “popular” lens, I start to get uncomfortable. I’m not most people. I’m my own person. Sure, I like many things that others do, but I also like different things. Along with popularity comes the pressure to conform. 50 Shades of Gray was a popular book last year. Great. Plenty of friends suggested I read it. I didn’t. I love romance, and I write it, but that kind of book is not my style. Just because everyone is talking about it doesn’t mean I’m going to read it, and it certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it.
I remember getting a stomach ache every September when I was a teenager. I subscribed to Seventeen Magazine and every fall they published their back-to-school fashion issue. I hated most of the clothes they claimed would be popular. I immediately had to deal with the problem of how to deal with not wearing what “everyone else” would be wearing. Looking back, very few of my friends or classmates actually wore those fashions, so it really wasn’t a big deal.
As an adult, I’ve surrounded myself with people who are nice and kind. They don’t judge me by external factors, they value me for who I am on the inside. So while I’m still leery of the word, I am willing to consider that there are many contexts to it.
My daughter has a very different definition of “popularity.” To her, popularity equals mean. She speaks derisively about the “popular girls” and their antics at school. She has no desire to be part of their group and in fact, declaring something to be “popular” has the exact opposite effect—she won’t want it if it’s “popular.” While I applaud her individuality, I wish she’d at least consider the actual definition of the word and realize that it doesn’t always mean “mean.”
I’d actually consider her popular because she has a lot of friends. She’s friendly to everyone and for the most part, my understanding is that quite a few people like her. That seems like the definition to me. Perhaps she just needs to get a bit older and wiser.
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