Goths and Preps: Same Type of Teenager with Different Collectable Wrapping

Imagine a high school courtyard with a number of yellow and orange trees, a fountain, and a few filled lunch tables. Lounging near the fountain are the “preps”, with their banana and salmon-colored polo-shirts, standing out like popsicles against their liquid background. Like a camera, the scene shifts to under the shade of the autumn trees. The students stretched out comfortably avoid the bright sunlight because their dark clothes absorb the heat like a sponge. Both clans of high school students chat together animatedly about random topics such as the way they made a face at some and such teacher during biology when said figure of authority chose them to adequately describe the reproductive organs of a male. Goths and preps, two polar-opposite stereotypes, are the same type of teenager that are only distinguished by their clothing style and choice of companions.

Either dressed liked a cherry lollipop or a teenager perpetually in mourning, their personalities and priorities are very similar. If an English paper returned to his or her desk with a screaming “F. Come talk to me.,” the disappointment would make the student into something close to Atlantis sinking in the ocean: desperate and water-logged. Contrary to popular belief, Goths are not slackers, constantly procrastinating and disrespecting the teacher. Just to skewer another lie, preps don’t always score as high as the heavens when it comes to schoolwork. Goths and preps are always high school students first and stereotypes last. Just like their desire to do well in school, the Goths’ or preps’ personality is actually not based on his or her appearance. The make-up of these two types of teenagers are like the same McDonald’s toy with different collectable wrapping. No matter how many young adult fictions have the stock character of the despairing, therapy-packed male or female that is Goth, the real personality is no weirder than lettuce in the vegetable section of the supermarket. Preps also don’t limit their horizons to cheerleading and football, as the cliché high school romance novel decrees. Their heads aren’t entirely filled with air, hot or cold; on the same token, Goths aren’t always thinking like Darth Mal or a kamikaze pilot. Just like a Goth can be as happy as a rainbow, a prep has the capacity to be as sullen as a rain cloud. The colors of their clothing don’t affect their outlook on life. In fact, their outlook on life affects the colors of their clothing.

Goths and preps have different styles of clothing because of their desire to be seen or not seen. The absence of color in a Goth’s closet is the result of his or her way of not wanting to choose between dark navy blue or cotton-candy pink. Even though the dark clothing sucks up unwanted heat ferociously, making the color or lack thereof very impractical, a goth is most comfortable in dark clothing. Wearing black is a very effective way of hiding; an example of this technique is a theatre tech crew. Theatre Tech requires its members to wear all black during performances so they melt into the shadows and are unnoticed by a thickly concentrating audience. The same situation can be found in the high school daily life. Goths wear all dark or black clothing so most other people won’t notice them or will choose to ignore them. A Goth high school student usually doesn’t want to bother with a casual “hello” and “how are you doing?”, because they might feel the need to answer to the inquirer’s preference: “fine.” On the other hand, preps wear colors because they’re “pretty.” All teenage magazines like Teen People or Seventeen advertise in big, blue letters “Look Great This Summer in Two Billion Different Ways.” A stereotypical prep girl will keep up with the most modern, colorful style to wear her skirt, no matter how high above the knee or below the gut it will go. Just like their female counterparts, a prep guy wears color to look good. Feeling most comfortable in colors, preps will rarely ever wear all black. It feels good to be complimented on the coral color of a new button-down shirt. Preps exchange compliments like this everyday out of common courtesy, no matter how genuine they are. Listening to Goths, one would never hear a compliment like “Hey, dude, your new black shirt is so you.”

A preppy student would consider this fact extremely rude. To him or her, giving compliments is just like giving presents without receipts; you can’t return them, and of course, it’s not like you would want to. It is also because of this that Goths tend to congregate together during the lunch hour in high school. While preps try to bond with every single human being that breathes, Goths tend to band together because they feel that people similar to themselves will be the only ones to accept them and they’re unique style of thinking. Even somewhat preppy guys or girls walking down the hallway will smile and wave at as many people they can while they pass. Their philosophy is “be friends with everybody” and “the more friends, the better.” Preps have enough charisma to get along with pretty much everybody in their class, except for their polar-opposites: the Goths. Like a pack of wolves, they stick to together or stick with nobody at all. Their sinister-seeming clothing style is enough to get some people wary of their presence. Because of the blunt student who yells out “GOTH FREAK!”, Goths try to socialize with people who won’t force them to say to much, or who will listen the right way so they won’t say too little. Goths’ different desire to be unnoticed attracts other Goths, people who understand when one of them stands up and walks away with no warning. If a Goth walked away from a prep without releasing a peep, the prep would feel spurned and disliked, which is usually not the case.

Prep and Goth are just clothing styles and high school life-styles that live and die in the span of four years. They are definitely not as extreme as stereotypical cheerleader or emotional wrecks in the young adult fiction found in public libraries. The realities are only normal teenagers with different ways of communicating their desires and dislikes. Books are always deeper than their hard or soft covers, but they’re always first and foremost pages with words on the inside. Goths and preps are just like a hard-cover and paper-back book. They may look different on the outside, but on the inside, they’re aren’t so drastically different.

I wrote this as a satire of high school life for my essay class for the "Compare/Contrast Essay" portion. I hope nobody takes it seriously and enjoyed reading it. I worked hard on it to make it seem true P but it really isn't and I hope I didn't offend anybody.