Being unpopular isn't worth fearing; in most schools, twelve-year-old girls can be hated losers, hated tyrants or hated boot-lickers. Loser is easily the most comfortable of the three positions, because at least you get to be honest.

I mean, not that 80% of the books about middle school don't go into great detail about the matter.

But as for the deal with this author? Yeah, I can only think she generally writes for the younger-set teen magazines or something. That's the only world I can think of where people treat split ends as emergencies and vampirism is strictly cosmetic.