Wednesday, August 03, 2011

The Social Animal

Reading "The Social Animal" by David Brooks, which is basically a look at why we do what we do based on our subconscious mind and social interactions. Brooks takes us through the lives of two fictional characters and tells us why they do what they do, how they develop/interact with their environment based on social cues. Pretty interesting stuff.

So far I'm only as far as high school with these characters. This quote caught my eye:

As the novelist Frank Portman has observed, the troika is the natural unit of high-school female friendship. Girl 1 is the hot one; Girl 2 is her sidekick; and Girl 3 is the less attractive one who is the object of the other two's loving condescension. For a time, Girls 1 and 2 will help Girl 3 with makeup and clothes and try to set her up with one of their boyfriends' less attractive friends. But eventually Girls 1 and 2 will let it be known how much hotter they are than Girl 3, and their ensuing bitterness toward her will become more and more obvious until they finally ostracize Girl 3 and replace her with a new Girl 3. The Girl 3s never quite have enough class-consciousness to collectivize and use their combined poser to throw off the yoke of their oppression.


Interesting thought. Trying to think of ways I've seen this happen in life, or in TV/Movies/etc...

2 comments:

Mom said...

Maybe you were girl 3 and K. and M. were girls 1 and 2? Not really, you and most of your friends did not have this type of relationship dynamic. You were all about the game!

Marci said...

Special thanks to my mom for suggesting me as Girl #3