Much research has drawn attention to the pressure on pupils not to be seen as academic achievers, in order to maintain popularity with peers. Such discussions have included the ‘laddish behaviour’ thesis, which sees many boys – and some girls – engaging gendered classroom practices that impinge their academic achievement, in constructing resistant ‘cool’ subjectivities (Martino, 1999, Francis, 2000; Jackson, 2006). Nevertheless, some pupils maintain their academic achievement while simultantiously remaining popular with their peers; and one of the intentions of our study was to explore what is it that facilitates these pupils to do so.   Our findings belie the notion that high achieving pupils necessarily jeopardise their social standing with classmates. However, the importance of embodiment and even essential attributes in productions of subjectivity that successfully ‘balance’ popularity and achievement is demonstrated. . In spite of the strong role played by such attributes, high achieving and popular pupils are shown to undertake significant identity work, employing particular gendered performances and practices in order to maintain this simultaneous production. Such practices included engagement with both pedagogic tasks and resistant classroom interaction, performances of ‘attitude’ that did not involve direct confrontation with the teacher, and gendered performances of (hetero)sexuality.