Stereotypes In John Hughes's The Breakfast Club

667 Words3 Pages

Within every high school in the United States of America, stereotypes affect the everyday life of adolescents. The author John Hughes’ created a classic movie The Breakfast Club to demonstrate and understand the difficulties of puberty and how it affects adolescents today. The characters within the movie are stereotyped by their peers and their teachers and face the challenge of personal identity that affect their personal, parent and teacher relationships. Throughout this essay I will discuss the timing of puberty and maturation of a few different characters. Along with this I will discuss the cognitive advancement or the lack of cognitive advancement of three characters associated within the movie. Lastly, I will be discussing the parenting …show more content…

Many factors come into play when it regards puberty timing such as genetics, environmental influences, and social status. The timing of puberty can affect an adolescent child in psychological, health and social issues. The Breakfast Club demonstrates the effectiveness and timing of puberty on multiple characters. The first charter I will be discussing is Claire Standish. Claire is defined as an early maturing girl because she is referred to as the princes and gets very high status from her peers. She was homecoming queen a few years in a row, although she is highly liked by all her peers she struggles with personal issues. She is defined as an early maturing girl because according to Steinberg, “although some early maturing girls have self-image difficulties, their popularity with peers is not jeopardized. Early matures are more popular than other girls, especially, as you would expect, when the index of popularity includes popularity with boys” (Simmons, Blyth, & McKinney, 1983 as cited in, Steinberg, 2017, p.32). I believe that Claire Standish is defined as a early maturing girl because while she is in detention Brian Johnson defines Claire’s behavior as snobbish only because she is popular and she looks down on other peers that are not in her social class. This proves that her thoughts, behavior and social environment are contributing to her personality and social issues. Throughout high school you will see a lot of early maturing girls but you will also see a combination of late maturing girls like Allison