Popularity being harmful seems like an oxymoron. Popularity is something so many people strive to have- to be respected, accepted, admired, even envied. But when that need to ‘fit in’ turns sour, most people never see it coming. The book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, shows the detrimental side of popularity not often considered by kids, and rarely mentioned in books. Speak is about a girl named Melinda and her first year in high school, where, after being raped by a popular kid, experiences bullying, exclusion, depression, and a myriad of different issues, in addition to not speaking.
So Melinda withdraws into herself, indirectly because of popularity. Popularity in Melinda’s high school plays both a complicated and consequential role for those that desire it (in some way): it prevents Melinda from speaking out about sexual assault, causes distrust and dishonesty, and surprisingly, proves to be ultimately unfulfilling. negative thing in this book is that it prevents Melinda from speaking out about sexual assault. Because a popular person raped her, Melinda is afraid to speak out for fear that no one will believe her, or think she is just jealous.
One group of opular kids confirms this. Melinda is sitting at the edge of the The first big reason popularity is a Marthas table and listens to this conversation. The conversation between Siobhan and Emily unfolds: “Rumor-he sleeps with anything. ‘ “I don’t believe it. Rumors are spread by jealous people.. ” (Anderson 90). Siobhan and Emily are basically saying that if Mel were to tell people that she was raped by Andy Evans, she would be called a liar and no one would believe her. That is proved when Mel does tell someone, Rachel.
Rachel is her ex-BFF, and at the end of the book, Melinda finally has a onversation with her about why they aren’t friends anymore. Mel tells Rachel that she was raped. Rachel believes her and is understanding up until the point where she finds out who did it. When Melinda says Andy Evans (the popular kid Rachel’s interested in), Rachel screams “Liar! ” (Anderson 184), and turns away. This just a small example of what the rest of the school would do if Mel told them. She would be ostracized and bullied even more than she already is because everyone would think she is a liar and jealous.
All this is a negative effect of popularity. Because everyone believes that popular people are always right, and Andy Evans denies it, then Melinda must be wrong and lie. That is one way that popularity is bad, because it prevents Melinda from speaking up about sexual assault. To continue, popularity is not good for anyone. It is that popularity is ultimately unfulfilling. This is proven in multiple ways by Heather, Melinda’s “friend”. Heather friend-dumps Melinda so she can fit in more with the Marthas, a popular group, but at the end of the year regrets it and comes bellycrawling back to Melinda for help.
They have one last conversation in Melinda’s room when Heather asks for Melinda’s help decorating the venue for prom, where these words are said: “… she hates being a Marthadrone… This whole year has been horrible-I hated every single day” (Anderson 177). She is Heather, and Heather is bemoaning the fact that she is a Martha, saying that she hates it and that the whole year was horrible. Heather hates being a Martha, being “popular” because the Marthas make her do all the work. Doing all this work, though, has negative impacts on the rest of Heather’s life.
As Melinda finds out, “Her grades are ll the way down to Bs because of the time she has to spend waiting on her Senior Marthas” (Anderson 177). This shows how being popular can permanently affect you, and damage other parts of someone’s life. For example, bad grades and being a servant for the Marthas, or being preoccupied with something else, can lead to being very stressed, and stress has lots of negative impacts. Also, bad grades in high school can lead to stress over college, which has even more of an impact on someone’s life.
These pieces of evidence show that popularity is unfulfilling for everyone, and will not help anybody later in life. And there is one final reason that popularity is a bad thing. That reason is that it causes and perpetuates distrust, a lot of dishonesty and other negative emotions. Melinda’s conversation with Rachel also supports this reason. During the conversation, Rachel becomes understanding of Melinda’s predicament. Rachel believes Mel, and may consider trusting her again. But as soon as she finds out who rap She immediately thinks that Mel is lying, and no longer trusts her even a smidge. She says “…
You’re jealous that I’m popular and I’m going to the prom and so you lie to me like his… ” (Anderson 184). In this conversation, the fact that Andy is popular is causing distrust. Rachel is blinded as to what Andy is really like because she likes him and he’s popular. So when she is told something bad about it, she immediately thinks that it is a lie, and does not trust the person who told it. By believing the best of Andy, and disregarding everything negative about him, she is basically lying to herself, and because she doesn’t realize all the bad things about him, she could come to harm too.
Another way she is lying to herself is thinking that the only eason Mel is saying that Andy raped her is because she is jealous of Rachel, and wants Andy for herself. But Rachel is just deluding herself by thinking that Melinda is lying. An additional example that proves this is when Andy corners Mel in her closet at the end of the school year. He rants at her, saying “Rachel blew me off… giving me some bullshit story about how I raped you. You know that’s a lie… so you started spreading lies… spreading that bullshit story for weeks.. ” (Anderson 193).
Andy is basically calling Mel a liar for spreading a “fake” story about im raping her. That proves that popularity causes dishonesty because Andy is lying to himself. He is so convinced that he is right, because he is popular and full of himself, that he misremembers the event. These examples show how badly Melinda, all progress is lost. popularity can warp someone’s mind: making them blind to things that stare them in the face, thinking the best of someone when that someone is only bad, and causing them to lie to themselves, and all because of popularity. To sum it all up, popularity in Melinda’s high school is bad for everyone involved.
It prevents Melinda from speaking out about her being raped, it is unfulfilling for everyone, and it causes distrust, dishonesty, and other negative emotions. Speak ends with Melinda telling Rachel, confronting Andy, and coming out of her shellI. Popularity does not win, and does not succeed in making Melinda even more of an outsider. Instead, she comes out of a shell, confronts her enemies, and starts making friends. An important lesson, other than the main one, is that popularity is not all that it is cracked up to be. There are hidden sides to it, and a lot of them are negative.
