Yostivanich

So, to sum­ma­rize, whether one becomes pop­u­lar in mid­dle school is largely out of one's con­scious con­trol because it is mostly based on one's phys­i­cal appear­ance dur­ing the early mid­dle school months. If you just don't have the right look, there is very lit­tle you can do to over­come it, except if you have amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills. If you are able to be so charis­matic and engag­ing that peo­ple think you are cool even though you look like a 12-year-old Danny DeVito, then you can join stu­dent coun­cil and crack every­one up with your humor and get peo­ple to like you and accept you into the social elite. Often times, though, you'll notice that the peo­ple with great inter-personal skills are usu­ally better-looking, because the two com­ple­ment and rein­force one another in a pos­i­tive cycle: Good-looking kids get more atten­tion and have more oppor­tu­ni­ties and incen­tives to develop their inter-personal skills because they receive even more rewards in terms of pos­i­tive atten­tion, and repeat …

via Philip Guo — On Pop­u­lar­ity.