Popular Girls by Karen Shepard – Text Analysis

What is the result of a spoiled girl living in the city that never sleeps, absent parents and her father’s credit card? “Popular Girls” tells the story.
“Popular girls”, the title really hits the spot. And what do I mean by this? Well it’s actually quite simple. The story revolves around five, or maybe six, girls living in New York City, which is the richest city in the US, doing everything in their power to be popular. And how do they do this? Well as I said everything they possibly can. Even though they only attend tenth grade, they have become so affected by the big city life that their sense of reality has completely disappeared. They have one thing in mind, and that is becoming older and until that happens, they are doing what they can to at least seem older. They go drinking, they do drugs and they throw themselves at older boys, sleeping with them.
The text in itself is pretty hard to analyze because of the structure of the text. The first three pages is basically an environment description which is very confusing. An environment description of the girls lives. How they live and how they go about living. With every third of fourth word being a brand name, the reader fast gets ahold of the idea that, these girls are very aware of how they display themselves to the public. With almost all the attention being put on the girls posh lives, it is easy to miss the subtle contrasts in the text. There are a few times, where we are reminded of the girls actual age, and without them the reader would quickly get picture in its head, of a group of girls in their mid to late twenties instead of their actual age which is fifteen to sixteen years old. There is a contrast between the drugs they are taking and the doll collection that they own. The doll collections are a symbol of childhood and a more appropriate thing for girls of that age to do. And on the other hand the drugs symbolize adulthood, a fast pace life and danger.
The narrative angle is very complex in this story, and I haven’t seen this type of narration before. The story is written as if all of the five girls have written it together, without taking a point of view from one of the girls, but all of them. “We” is the most commonly used word to describe the girls, which gives the impression that they together are “one” or a unit if you like. At first I thought that the narrator was either one of the girls or a sixth girl. Being one of the girls wouldn’t make sense, because of the way the story is told. It mentions all of the girls with no particular point of view in one of them.
The tone of the story is very alike the girls in the story, superficial. Actually is it very cleverly written because of the way that the tone supports the personalities of the girls. The girls try to be as cool as possible, which also is reflected in the tone by being very unemotional. Another superficial feature is the way that everything they own, do or everywhere they go is described mainly by the brand name. Whether it’s a bar, miniskirt or drink it is pointed out that it is not cheap and accessible for everyone.
I my opinion there are more than one theme in this story. But if I had to pick one I would go with “Materialism”. And I choose that, because it is what the girls in the story’s lives revolve around. Stuff and appearance, nothing else. Everything the girls do is to make an impression on the outside world. Another theme of the story could be “consequences of absent parents”. Because of the effect it has on a child, when the parents work so much, that they completely forget their child. And when a child is forgotten and gets no attention, that child will seek attention somewhere else and that somewhere isn’t always the nicest place.
So what is the result of a spoiled girl living in the city that never sleeps, absent parents and her father’s credit card? Well according to Karen Shepard, exactly what you would imagine. A superficial, materialistic and attention seeking teenager with no boundaries. All in all the story plays out very stereotypical with no real storyline. You could say that it is one long description of their lives.

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[ 1 ]. Page 5, Line 10-15 – “We're tenth-graders. It's all about getting through the whole thing as fast as possible. Who wants to go through tenth grade in real time?”
[ 2 ]. Page 3, Line 27-29 ”We have doll collections our fathers add to every time they go to a foreign country….”