This afternoon, I spent a couple of lazy hours staring out the window at the rain, flipping through City Pages’  “Best of Twin Cities” issue, and Netflixing a movie I had heard of for years but never watched: Heathers.

While this dark comedy isn’t your typical “high school” flick filled with jocks, nerds, fashionistas and drama kids; it made me think about how high school cliques are portrayed in movies versus how I perceive them in reality. At the high school I attended, there really weren’t noticeable cliques. Sure, there was a certain hierarchy and some kids were considered more popular than others, but I went to a small enough school that for the most part people were pretty respectful of other kids that had different interests than them, and even crossed over in friendship to other groups with frequency.

If life were one high school movie, however, we’d all be convinced that cliques were defined like the Districts in the Hunger games; fenced off, unyielding, and distinct. So in the spirit of movie madness, I’ll make a LIST of some of the most ridiculous high school movie cliques.

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Meri’s Clique Flicks

1. Jocks: think Varsity Blues; American Pie’s Chris Klein character; Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club
2. A-Listers: Well, Mean Girls’ clan led by Regina George; Cher Horowitz and Dionne in Clueless; the Pink Ladies from Grease; She’s All That‘s brood of bitches starring Taylor Vaughn; Never Been Kissed crew led by the Jessica Alba character; Jennifer Love Hewitt and her crew in Can’t Hardly Wait; The younger sister from 10 Things I Hate about You and her “underwhelmed /overwhelmed/ whelmed” friend…all of the Heathers; and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club
3. Partiers: the entire ensemble, more or less, of Dazed and Confuzed; Travis Birkenstock and friends in Clueless; Less than Zero; American Pie’s Stifler; Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High
4. Goody Two Shoes: Easy A’s Amanda Bynes and company; Mandy Moore and her deranged posse in Saved; Sandy in Grease; Melissa Joan Hart in Can’t Hardly Wait
5. Stupid Oafs: Dazed and Confused’s Ben Affleck steak for brains character and his buddies; O Doyle and his brothers in Billy Madison; Jake’s pull up partner in 16 Candles
6. Overachievers: Tracy Flick in Election; the boys in Dead Poet’s Society; Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore; American Pie’s Finch; 10 things I hate about you’s Bogie Lowenstein
7. Badasses: The freakin’ witches in The Craft; Heath Ledger (10 things I hate about you); The T-birds in Grease; Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club; Riff from Rock and Roll High School; Heathers’ Christian Slater
8. Nerds: The Mathletes from Mean Girls; Eugene in Grease; Napoleon Dynamite; Never Been Kissed’s Double Helix
9. Outsiders: Lauren Ambrose in Can’t Hardly Wait; Amber Tamblyn in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; Eliza Dushku in Bring it On; Julia Stiles in 10 things I hate about you; Juno; Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club
10. Pretty Boys: Jake Ryan (Sixteen Candles) Freddie Prinze Jr. (She’s All That); Andrew Keegan (10 things I hate about you); Elton in Clueless; Mean Girls’ Aaron Samuels; James Dean in Rebel without a Cause

Were there stereotypical cliques in your high school? Which “clique” did you belong to? Did I miss any of your favorite high school cliques?

Meri