Long before her not-so-great reality TV show Jon & Kate Plus Eight debuted in 2007 (and way, way before being universally panned for her performance on Dancing with the Stars), Katie Kreider — later to be Kate Gosselin — graduated from Pennsylvania’s Mount Calvary Christian School in 1993.

And certainly, the hairstyle she sported back then was hardly the spiky-bob/reverse mullet/mom-do hairstyle of 2009 that housewives across the country would try to emulate:

Check out Beyoncé as a high school freshman in 1996 at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas:

Girl was gorgeous even during those early teen years that scar most of us — mentally and physically — for life!

No wonder Jay Z put a ring on it.

Twister… or something more nefarious?

During several dark decades in the twentieth century, chiropractors apparently paid high school senior portrait photographers. The goal: To increase their client base by having the students twist their heads into unnatural poses, as thus:

courtesy ronnie44052

But there are other victims besides Marg, above, shown in 1997 — like Betsy and Kelly Sue:

Here’s 16-year-old wild child Angelina Jolie in 1991, when she was a high school student in South Central LA Beverly Hills.

BTW, this was the same year that she broke up with her (older) boyfriend of two years — a guy who was reportedly allowed to move in with her when Ang was just 14.

Actress Charlize Theron was born and raised near Johannesburg, where she attended high school at the The National School of the Arts. Attended school, that is, until she dropped out… probably not too long after this picture was taken.

The girl was  pretty, despite the much-too-big big glasses and meh hairstyle — but you’d never imagine from looking at her that she’d become an international star.

After winning the Best Actress Oscar for “Monster” in 2004, however, none other than Nelson Mandela told Charlize Theron — a woman who had grown up half a world away from Hollywood — that she had “put South Africa on the map.”

High praise, indeed — whether you’re a PhD or a dropout.