by Martholdy Pierre-Canel ‘21

Now I get it, you read a couple of Wattpad stories in middle school, such as “After” when an innocent girl makes the bad boy “soft,” and you saw that as a vision for your own future. Don’t be ashamed, I did to. It was cute and edgy in middle school but why are we still, as highschoolers, living in this fantasy? 

As a teenager, the urge to rebel and have fun whenever possible is inevitable. We want to live out our teenage years by rebelling against our parent’s rules so that when we are older we are able to say that we did the crazy stunts that we did. Why not add a bad boy to that list? Having crazy adventures are so much easier with a guy that is already experienced with doing “close” to illegal things. We want to live our dream of rebelling against the norm and making memories.

In “After,” a wattpad story turned into a movie, the character Hardin Scott is an emotionless, snotty, rude player who didn’t believe in love. Does his character sound like a disgusting human being? Yes! Did we still go crazy because he was hot? Yes! Hardin meets Tessa and because he is the stuck-up player that he is, he assumes Tessa would practically throw herself at him. But no, Tessa was diFfEReNt. Different than EVERYONE Hardin had met simply because she is not obsessed with him at first sight. By the end of the movie, Hardin falls in love with Tessa and becomes the opposite of what he was when the audience first met him.

Are you serious? Do we as (somewhat) mature high schoolers see this as something that could happen in real life? 

I interviewed a junior girl, who requested to remain anonymous, about why bad boys are so attractive to her. “Simply it’s their energy,” said the girl. “Who wouldn’t want someone that would have a hard shell and a soft inside?” We seem to be so devoted in seeing what we could do to change some guy but in reality, isn’t it us trying to see what that guy could do to change us? 

Teens today are so insecure that all we think we need is validation which is why we chase after the guys that are “mean to other girls but sweet to me.” Is this solely to feel special; to feel different; to feel fixed?  

We cannot base our self esteem on one person’s opinion! Especially not a guy who is focused on only the present and not the future and who also thinks that having three outfits is a personality trait.