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" Anyone who&amp;#039;s ever sat in a high school cafeteria knows that there&amp;#039;s an order to the layout. &amp;quot;Freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds&amp;quot; \u2014 everyone has her place, as misfit Janis explains in Mean Girls. It&amp;#039;s true: You stick to your table. You don&amp;#039;t go rogue. Amazingly, though, that&amp;#039;s just what Maya Van Wagenen, 15, bravely did every day for a year while gathering research for her first book, Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek. A few years ago, armed with a 1950s-era advice manual written by former teen model Betty Cornell, the self-proclaimed &amp;quot;geek&amp;quot; from Statesboro, Ga., embarked on a quirky experiment: For the duration of her eighth-grade year, she would follow the book&amp;#039;s advice to the letter, spending a month on each chapter, to see if it would make her popular. It worked. Maya&amp;#039;s social circle expanded and her confidence soared. Even cooler, New York literary agents \u2014 and Hollywood producers \u2014 took notice. Last year, Maya signed a two-book deal with Penguin Young Readers imprint Dutton Children&amp;#039;s that reportedly came with a $300,000 advance. Now DreamWorks is making Popular into a movie, with Amy B. Harris, executive producer of The Carrie Diaries, developing the script. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s funny to remember the girl I first chatted with on the phone, who kept a journal about her life in small town \u2014 and to then see that girl here in Manhattan meeting the crowd of people at her publisher, or seeing her looking so chic at her photo shoots,&amp;quot; Maya&amp;#039;s literary agent, Dan Lazar, says. And yet, in all the important ways, he notes, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s still the same person&amp;quot;\u2014 sweet, grounded, with a personality all her own. Maya spoke with Cosmopolitan.com about what she took away from her experiment and how she hopes it inspires other girls. Congrats on the book! How does it feel to see your work in print? I never expected it to happen so quickly! I just feel so lucky and grateful. Every time I hear back from someone who says they enjoyed it, I&amp;#039;m floored. It&amp;#039;s basically my journal, so it&amp;#039;s interesting to hear people say, &amp;quot;I loved it! I totally related.&amp;quot; And now there&amp;#039;s a Hollywood movie in the works? Yeah! Just the fact they&amp;#039;re considering making it into a movie is amazing. [Amy B. Harris] and I have talked on the phone, and she definitely understands the message of Popular. They said something about inviting me to set, and I think that would be so much fun. I asked for a cameo. If I have a line, I would love to be someone who makes fun of me.  If you could pick anyone to play you in the movie, who would it be? I want whoever&amp;#039;s best for the part \u2014 whether it&amp;#039;s somebody out there or someone unknown \u2014 but I&amp;#039;d love it if America Ferrara could play me. I really loved Ugly Betty. Not many teens get a six-figure book advance. Have you splurged on anything? I just bought a MacBook Pro! I originally wrote the first half of the book on what I called the &amp;quot;craptop,&amp;quot; our old laptop \u2014 a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down. I&amp;#039;d be writing, and it would just shut down. Are you working on your second book yet? I just finished the outline. It&amp;#039;s a novel, and it&amp;#039;s got a different tone than Popular, but the same message about finding friendships and stuff like that. To write Popular, you dressed in old-fashioned garb \u2014 long skirts, hats, pearls, the whole nine yards. What was the reception at school?  It was definitely difficult. It was always interesting to see my best friend&amp;#039;s reactions. When I wore the long skirt, hat, pearls, and girdle, she told me I looked like an old lady. And yeah, the girdle. Girdle shopping was \u2026 interesting. I was worried I&amp;#039;d run into people I knew. Sounds medieval. How long did you survive in it? I wore the girdle for the full month that I followed Betty&amp;#039;s chapter on grooming, and then a little bit beyond that. It sits in a drawer right now \u2014 I haven&amp;#039;t put it on since the experiment. I show it to people. They&amp;#039;re always curious. It&amp;#039;s not fun.  You also made a point of sitting with everyone in the cafeteria, including people who teased you. That couldn&amp;#039;t have been easy. Stepping outside of myself and reaching out to new people was definitely the hardest part, because I&amp;#039;ve always been really shy. The first time I did, I was shaking. But by the end of the month, it was much easier. When I began sitting down next to people I&amp;#039;d never met, I started seeing them as people, not something to be afraid of. It was empowering, knowing that I could do something that I had always been too scared to do. A few of the popular boys in your school commented on how ballsy you were. How did you find the courage? In the beginning, I faked it. I put on that confident attitude with the hope that I would start to feel that confidence. And whenever somebody said something mean, I would go write about it. I tried to look at things with humor.  Were there moments that were so hard you almost bailed? Definitely. There were mean reactions, and sometimes I felt as though it was too hard. Those were the days when it was hard to keep a sense of humor, and I thought about giving it up. But then I&amp;#039;d think, You&amp;#039;ve come so far!, and ask myself, What am I really trying to do? What is the true message of Betty&amp;#039;s book? It was about kindness. Remembering that put me back on track. What was your proudest moment? During the grooming month, I found the courage to sit next to a girl that I had never spoken to. When I saw how rewarding that friendship became, that was definitely a massive turning point for me. That&amp;#039;s when it became less about me and more about reaching out to others. A lot of Betty&amp;#039;s advice seems a bit superficial. Do you think it&amp;#039;s very important to be pretty? Betty&amp;#039;s tips helped me gain confidence because they were difficult for me. I never wear makeup, but I had to in the experiment. I also had to wear a skirt and a hat to church. For me, it wasn&amp;#039;t about conforming \u2014 I was standing out, because I was wearing things that no one else was wearing. I do still wear pearls and red lipstick when I need to feel confident. Can you be popular if you don&amp;#039;t buy into certain beauty norms? I think we need to redefine popularity. Everyone may know who you are, but you may not feel like you have very many friends. That kind of popularity is about exclusion \u2014 but popularity should be about kindness and being the person who reaches out. You shouldn&amp;#039;t have to conform. True popularity is about how open you&amp;#039;re willing to make your circle. I believe that anyone can be popular, no matter how they look. You also write about learning how to approach guys. How are things on the dating front? Well, not to brag, but I&amp;#039;m in a relationship with Charles Dickens on Facebook. I spent about three hours making a historically accurate Facebook page for him, just so I could say I&amp;#039;m in a relationship with him! [Laughs]  Okay, but\u2026 But, yeah, I definitely know how to talk to boys much better than I did before. Betty&amp;#039;s advice helped. I&amp;#039;m told, though, that I can&amp;#039;t flirt to save my life. Oh well. Any crushes \u2014 celebrity or otherwise? Maybe ... I&amp;#039;m really into Sherlock right now. That Benedict Cumberbatch is pretty easy on the eyes. Yeah! And he&amp;#039;s only 22 years older than I am, which is nothing. You write that on your middle school&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;popularity scale,&amp;quot; you registered at &amp;quot;-1&amp;quot;\u2014social outcast. Where would you place yourself on your school&amp;#039;s scale now? The funny thing is, in high school, the social ladder isn&amp;#039;t nearly as distinct as it was in middle school. I don&amp;#039;t believe you! We&amp;#039;re all over the place. I don&amp;#039;t really think of myself in any one category. Would you say you&amp;#039;re a different person now? I have gained so much confidence. Betty says that being pretty doesn&amp;#039;t guarantee you&amp;#039;ll be popular \u2014 it&amp;#039;s about how you act and the person that you are. That&amp;#039;s the biggest message I drew from her book. She taught me to smile. I try to be true to the self that I found because of her. Would you recommend that other girls copy your experiment? Depends on the person! I think it could be empowering for a lot of girls. Just to see that you can be the heroine of your own story \u2014 I think that that&amp;#039;s a powerful message, not just for girls, but for older women as well. It&amp;#039;s hard for a lot of people to find the confidence to stand up straight and be proud of themselves. If someone is struggling, I&amp;#039;d tell her to smile and try reaching out to just one or two new people. That will help. And if nothing else, fake a little bit of confidence. Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek will be published by Dutton Children&amp;#039;s Book on April 15.  RELATED:  12 Books That Totally Get Female Friendship  40 Ways to Know if You Were a Popular Girl in 2003 Follow Kristen on Twitter. Photo credit: Robert Krasner; Michael Van Wagenen Correction: A previous version of this story stated Maya&amp;#039;s age as 16. She is 15. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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