When My Whole High School Hated Me—Twice

This isn’t a story about fame or shame. It’s not even about me.

So, if by the time you finish this, you’re giving me fame or shame, then you might want to consider reading through the blog post again.

Not many people have caused their high school of 3,000+ people to start talking about the same subject. As a journalist working on our high school newspaper, it seemed like I had accomplished the dream.

It felt more like a nightmare.

And it all started with a pair of leggings.

They were gray. Snowflakes and reindeers dashed across them in different patterns. I wore them on vacation in Utah, trying to fit in with the winter season.

As a young teen girl, I shrieked when I reunited with friends I had moved away from. One friend and I went with her family on a trip to Salt Lake City. We spent our time doing the only thing a 14-year-old girl could do on a train ride: have a photoshoot.

Featured in the photoshoot were those leggings.

Wearing and flaunting them came naturally. No second thoughts. Then it became a hot topic on Pinterest (the platform that held the attention of all teenage girls). Were leggings pants? So many people said no! So many people said yes!

The number of people wearing leggings as pants grew. However, fashion did not catch up quickly. Multiple leggings were still made with the same fabric that worked well if you wore a dress over it, but it didn’t work well without layers. And here’s why: they were sheer.

So, instead of flaunting leggings, people were flaunting everything underneath. I even saw one girl mistakenly wear tights, which took the transparency to another level.

As a journalist, I usually wrote features about people and their lives. If it weren’t for my teacher pushing us to expand our experience, I would have never done it. But there I sat. Typing on a keyboard. Staring at a computer. Writing an opinion piece on leggings and how they had gone too far.

Usually, when an article was released, it was lucky to get a comment or two. Our more popular ones might get ten comments. This one received 49 comments. Some people advocated for the same thing as me. Some people thought I was a prude. Some were downright offended.

The hate surprised me. Because our commenters were young students, the majority resorted to ad hominem: attacking the person instead of debating their views.

Luckily, sophomore year was almost done. Everyone would soon leave for the summer and forget about it. Until then, a friend from our newspaper staff stood behind me, and others backed her up. This same friend wore leggings, but we all believed in the right to express your opinion and act with respect toward other’s opinions.

Looking back, I would have written it differently, but it was my first attempt and it was hyperbolic for a reason. It gathered attention, and it got people thinking. Talking.

During summer break, I thought it had all ended. I thought I had gone through the worst. Instead, I had merely underwent a flesh wound in comparison to what would come my junior year.

Don’t ask me why I decided to write another opinion piece. Maybe I felt like if I could encourage discussion on these topics, I should keep going. Even if people slandered me, at least we would all have the opportunity to think more about something before continuing on with the usual.

So there I sat again. Screen lighting up my face. A thought coming to my mind. Outside, a breeze blowing through the trees. As the air cooled and the seasons shifted, an event came closer. Homecoming.

Because this was the first year I could go with a date, homecoming was a big deal. Who would ask me? What dress would I wear? Would I make royalty?

It all enthused me. I could hardly think about it without a cheesy grin spreading across my face. There was only one thing I dreaded: the dance floor.

I had gone to homecoming one year prior with a couple of friends. Darkness covered most of the gym, minus a few colored lights. The speakers’ music destroyed our ear drums. And a mass of bodies clumped together as students grinded against their dates or anyone who agreed to it.

If you entered the group vicinity, there wasn’t much space for doing any other type of dance. It felt awkward to stand out in the open or sit on the bleachers. So I had aimlessly followed my friends around the tight quarters, feeling trapped and disappointed.

I didn’t want to relive that experience. More than anything at the time, I wished I could go to homecoming and have people a little more spread out, not constantly pressing themselves against one another. I mean, where was the creativity in the dance moves?

Because I had wrote an opinion piece once, I decided I could do it again. Instead of jotting down a bunch of my thoughts, I approached this one differently. I did research.

Had it always been this way? Were all other schools like this too? No and no.

Deciding I wanted to hear my peers out before posting the article, we released a survey on our website and promoted it on the screens. “Should grinding be allowed at school dances?” It didn’t shock me that most people said yes. However, the amount that said no was not insignificantly small. With a few more votes in their favor, it could have easily been fifty-fifty.

I interviewed students and the man himself, our principal. I have a lot of respect for him, since he always treated me with respect and civility, despite me throwing him under the bus when he said he felt like grinding was declining in popularity, and it clearly wasn’t.

After all of my research concluded, I wrote my article: why grinding should not be allowed at high school dances.

A few days before its publication date, the nominations for junior and senior homecoming royalty came out. My friend (a senior) and I (a junior) had both made it.

And then my article went live.

The comments poured in like rain before a tornado.

“Honestly girl you need to move to an Amish community.”

“Don’t ruin grinding for everyone else just because no one wants to grind with you.”

“Delete this article. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Please this girl gave me a headache.”

On the public facing front, the article had 70 comments. Behind the scenes, there were even more, but for legal reasons we couldn’t publish certain comments on a high school newspaper website—certain comments that included death threats.

Students were confused and angry. Some thought my article might result in the school banning grinding. Some thought it had already resulted in that. Others knew better but still despised me for my opinion.

Soon, in every classroom, every hallway, and every lunch period people were talking about my article. Comments spread from our newspaper website to social platforms like Twitter. Memes were made. Students from other high schools pitched in their thoughts. Most were unpleasant to read.

Again, my newspaper friends had my back, whether they agreed with my opinion or not.

My closest friend took me out when I was alone in my house, scrolling through everything everyone had said. She persuaded me to take a break from my phone and it gave me peace.

After that, I decided to stop looking at the comments. It hadn’t done me any good the last time. I had given my say already, and now the readers owned the conversation. The discussion was theirs to have.

As things worsened, the school district became concerned and my principal talked about taking the piece down, for my safety. I insisted I was fine. I could handle it. He talked about removing the comment option. Again, I resisted. People deserved the right to speak.

Would I have loved for people to speak with more thoughtfulness and kindness? YES! But I had opened this topic up for discussion. I wasn’t about to take it away.

Eventually, the rain slowed to a trickle. Unfortunately, when the rain stops, the tornado comes.

As a homecoming royalty nominee, I would participate in the pep rally. A couple of times, they hosted the pep rally like a parade, marching through the school hallways and obliging to fire safety standards. This year, they decided to go traditional and just cram all the students into our gym.

The nominees gathered together in another room. We would all stand on the stage together. Each person would have the chance to speak into the microphone and say their name, their grade, and one thing about themselves. I’m not sure what my one thing was. Maybe that I liked soccer. Or ice cream.

It didn’t matter.

I finished speaking and the boos came. There were cheers. But boy, there were enough boos to make it hard to focus on the applause.

Surprise, surprise—no one asked me to homecoming. I asked a friend who might not have gone otherwise, and he happily said yes.

At the homecoming football game, I shook as half-time came and I waited down by the field. I didn’t know what would happen. More boos? A pig’s blood Carrie moment? My mom and my friend tried to bolster me up. No matter what happened, they were there for me.

My arm linked with my mom’s. I walked down the field. Nothing happened. According to a source of mine, a few people booed, but not as many as at the pep rally. Maybe others were scared because too many adults were around, or maybe they were over it. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hear them from that far away.

And surprise, surprise again, I didn’t get voted as homecoming princess, and thank goodness. Could you imagine the controversy that would have come from that?

The day of the dance came. The dress fit me spectacularly, and I was literally shining because of the fabric’s midnight sparkles that glimmered every time I moved. I never checked the clock, but when my date and I arrived at the dance, we couldn’t have been there longer than ten minutes.

As soon as we walked into the gym, a girl I knew came up to me. She started saying hi and then she forcefully grinded on me. My date pushed her away, and I was embarrassed. Her friend was embarrassed too, and it became clear that the girl was not in her usual state of mind.

It was a small incident, but it shocked me. The girl knew I hadn’t wanted it, and she had done it anyway. I didn’t feel like even attempting to go anywhere else in that gym. After all that had happened, why bother trying to dance and have a good time with my date? The risk wasn’t worth it.

We left and went bowling.

I’ll forever be grateful for my date’s sacrifice—hanging out with the high school’s most hated girl, ditching the dance, and trying to cheer that same girl up after a semi-traumatic incident.

When my mom heard about what happened, she reported it to the principal. I received an apology. Then all the drama with the dance ended. People moved on.

I’m not sure if either opinion article had a lasting effect or not. Maybe I had imagined it, but I thought it seemed that girls started to wear thicker leggings, and when I went to my senior homecoming, I thought there were more people than usual dancing outside the mass of grinders.

Maybe nothing changed except this: people had the chance to talk and think about what they were doing.

As a blogger, an author, and, in my heart, a journalist, I believe in speaking up. More specifically, I believe in speaking up in the right timing and in the right way. Kindness and respect are key. I have made many mistakes in learning how to do this, but I never gave up on freedom of speech, for myself or for others.

So, I suppose it was all worth it, even if my whole high school hated me—twice.