Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life

Nikki’s first eight journal entries chronicle the lead-up to and events of her first week at Westchester. After being uncool at her past school, Nikki’s main goal is to jumpstart her rise to popularity, and she’s convinced that owning a cell phone and designer clothes will accomplish this. Westchester is an elite private school, and most of the students come from rich families. Nikki is ashamed of her family’s economic status and her dad’s work as an exterminator. She lives in fear of anyone at school learning she got a scholarship through her dad’s job because she is sure everyone would judge her, preventing her rise to popularity. Nikki likely projects these fears unconsciously, meaning that people see how she feels even if they don’t know why she feels that way. Her behavior suggests a self-defeating habit of Making Judgments Without Facts: She makes conclusions about how her peers perceive her and then lets these fears control her, shaking her confidence and preventing her from pursuing her goals. These flaws reflect Nikki’s round, dynamic characterization, which leaves her with ample room to grow; self-discovery and coming of age are common tropes in middle-grade texts. Indeed, Nikki has many lessons yet to learn—about herself, about friendship, about social status, and so on.

By giving readers an intimate look at Nikki’s perspective and personality, the novel’s diary structure enriches the theme about The Volatile Emotional Lives of Teenagers. Her writing style includes elements like all capitals, multiple exclamation points, and interrobangs (a question mark and exclamation mark together). These habitual flourishes convey her heightened emotions. In Chapter 1, for example, Nikki writes “ruin” in all caps when describing how her lack of a phone affects her social life. This emphasizes how strongly she believes, however mistakenly, that having a phone would catapult her to instant popularity. In Chapter 2, Nikki says that writing about her boyfriend or first kiss is “SO NOT ME”—an example of both emphasis and irony. She wants the reader to think this diary will be different from that of a typical 14-year-old girl, and so she promises not to write about things she thinks typical 14-year-old girls write about. This line foreshadows Nikki and Brandon, her love interest, becoming a couple by the end of the book, and it’s ironic because Nikki does write both about Brandon being her boyfriend and about their first kiss.

Nikki feels particularly vulnerable in Chapter 6, shown by her decision to wear a disguise if she shops anywhere but designer stores. Though Nikki may not be aware of it, “snobby chic” is a metaphor for the beauty and financial standards society puts on people. Nikki believes the same outfit would look better on someone like MacKenzie than it would on her because society perpetuates the idea that tall, blonde girls are prettier than other girls. Nikki also believes a more expensive outfit would look better than a less expensive one because of the societal construct that things that cost more are better. In reality, Nikki’s outfit is perfectly acceptable, and the same outfit would look different on her and MacKenzie because of factors like complementary colors or body type, not because of popularity status.

These chapters introduce MacKenzie Hollister, the main antagonist. In Nikki’s view, MacKenzie is the embodiment of the archetypal “popular girl”—someone who is pretty, rich, and mean and insults other people. Nikki hates MacKenzie on sight both because she is jealous of her and because MacKenzie is rude from almost the moment Nikki sees her. At the same time, Nikki’s confession that she’d like to be MacKenzie’s best friend illustrates the powerful allure of popularity. Especially in middle school, popularity can feel like the only thing that matters, when in reality, popularity is only important in the context of school. The tension Nikki feels between hating MacKenzie and wishing for her approval becomes a catalyst for her ongoing struggle to forge an authentic identity for herself.

Chapter 8 introduces Nikki’s potential for sensitivity and kindness. Up until now, Nikki has reserved her diary entries for complaints or insults, such as the Chapter 4 entry in which she makes everyone at her school sound like brainless drones who want MacKenzie to love them. In Chapter 8, however, Nikki’s kind side shines through in her description of her grandma. Though her grandma is eccentric, Nikki loves her because she’s sweet and fun. Nikki also genuinely misses her friends from her old school, showing that she really is just scared to be at a new school. This lends nuance to the novel’s exploration of Expectations Versus Reality: Nikki wasn’t popular at her last school, but she had good friends, which suggests she knows she doesn’t need to be popular for people to like her. Her desperation for popularity is her way of coping with attending a new school where she doesn’t feel like she fits in.