I just don’t get it… Why is that important, especially for kids now, that feel like they need to do a YouTube video asking for a date or doing some meme stuff. Some teens even hire the hottest celebrity or ask them to appear in their prom? This is so bizarre for me, all that just for a frivolous night.
In my country prom was a thing but nowhere near as theatrical, I didn’t went to either my prom trip or the party. Also skipped half of my middle school trips.
The main thing is that prom didn’t start to become big until the 1950s. This was a high water mark for conservatism in the U.S., and in order to go on any date
at least one parent, usually the girl’s dad, had to be presentI have been corrected that this is reductive. Chaperoning was still commonish in this time period, depending on your area, but the 50s dating scene was beginning to look somewhat similar to what we have today with a guy picking up a girl in his car to go somewhere. Dancing would have been an uncommon activity because of how “adult” it was seen to be, so for horny teens Homecoming and Prom were a big deal. The biggest thing you notice looking at the dances of this time period is that the dresses are relatively simple, because it really wasn’t that big of a deal back then. It was literally just a school dance, organized and overseen by the teachers and school staff.Then, those kids grew up, had kids of their own, started making movies, and on doing so impressed on the following generation that homecoming and prom were the most fun nights in all of high school. This created pressure to make your proms and homecomings be as cool as the ones your parents told you about. This led to a lot more effort being put in. Dresses got way more expensive, tuxes became pretty much mandatory, guys began doing elaborate prom-posals.
This created a big economic opening in the market. Somebody needs to make colorful dresses for the girls and tuxes for the guys. The wedding industry immediately took over this area, and homecoming and prom became rush time for that industry. Somebody needs to play music. Back in the 50s they would hire bands, but by the 70s and 80 we started getting disc jockeys and now the party dj industry is fully enmeshed in high school dances. Then there’s the decorations, which became themeing, which feeds into the party industry.
Now you have the cultural snowball rolling downhill, building up speed, slowly getting bigger. It is encouraged by a growing industry that advertises to teens how cool their prom will be if they just wear this dress, and then social media happened. Now teens are advertising prom to each other, and feeling they need to be better than that TikTok they saw earlier, so the social pressure to have the coolest prom ever is more ubiquitous that it has ever been.
The US in nutshell here
We really are in our “let them eat cake” era
👍🏽 thank you
the 1950s. This was a high water mark for conservatism in the U.S., and in order to go on any date at least one parent, usually the girl’s dad, had to be present.
Perhaps this was a regional thing.
I was born in 1970, but from what my parents have described, dates were not chaperoned in the 50s unless you happened to have particularly strict parents. Like maybe if you were Amish or something.
Here’s the only thing I was able to find online about dating in the 50’s
Thanks. Gonna edit my comment since another commenter said he was going to save my comment to copy-paste later if it becomes relevant. I dont want to spread misinformation.
A school dance isn’t just a date, it’s a social event. The US doesn’t really have a lot of public social rituals, so a school dance is a unique kind of social experience that doesn’t really exist outside of school. It probably wasn’t as big when there were town festivals and church holiday events where everyone knew each other, but over time the school dances have become the only thing left.
The USA is what we call the Great American Melting Pot. A bunch of cultures stripped of their cultural practices as much as possible.
It means we have very little in the way of innate cultural practices. Which is why we cling to things like sports, fast food, pop music, (much of which isn’t ours, but anyway), military celebrations; because we’re desperately trying to find ceremonial right of passage/cultural identity. We are a blank slate.
We don’t have a quince, we don’t have a bat mitzvah, we have prom. It’s stupid, but it’s ours.
Tbf, being a melting pot also means all those cultures impact and influence “ours.” Plenty of Americans have bat mitzvahs, for instance, of course they’d be particularly the ones that are Jewish, but plenty of Americans also observe Ramadan. We have a lack of cohesive culture because we’re not just one cohesive “people,” yet we all are under the banner of “American.”
Our country is a melting pot, and so “our culture” is too, made up of pieces immigrants have brought with them from everywhere in the world. I think it’s pretty cool, personally.
“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.”
-Tyler Durden
You have fun with all that! I otoh am going to eat shwarma, then hit the mexican ice cream truck for dessert. Maybe watch some anime after that with my friend from Prague.
Or to put it concisely: “even the fascists eat kebabs”
Yes yes I’m a fascist because I was born in a place you don’t like and appreciate the cultures others have decided to share with us. Does it get tiring, being a contrarian just for the sake of it?
Hey, I was agreeing with you. If even the far-right consume the foods of the very cultures they rally against, then those cultures have already assimilated into the public’s unconscious
Ah I misunderstood, my mistake.
I disagree we have everything that everyone has because we have everyone living here it’s just celebrated by whoever wants to celebrate what. Stop making it sound like a couple hundred year old country doesn’t have ceremonies we cherish.
Whoosh
Can someone explain me [ X country] obsession with [ X celebration] and similar [location] rituals? Why do different cultures have their respective rituals? Why do some people prioritize certain values and act on them? Is having more reasons to celebrate life a bad or good thing?
Nah, I think it’s more; “as someone who consumes 90% of culture X, and gets 90% of the X references, what is the significance of this 10% X reference which has no analog in my native culture?”
based and human nature-pilled
I think it’s important to remember that the USA isn’t a single culture. Things vary dramatically even within a single state to say nothing of differences between states.
In some areas prom is very important. In others, not so much.
Only one of my three kids went to prom (Eastern PA).
Prom in my high school was a relatively big deal. You rented a tux or bought a dress. Some people would rent a limo. The prom was held in some kind of banquet hall with a fairly fancy meal. There’d be a DJ and dancing.
My wife was one year behind me in high school, and we attended FOUR proms (my junior prom, then the next year her junior prom and my senior prom, then the next year I came back for her senior prom).
I think for most people it’s just an opportunity to get dressed up, have a good meal, and dance. If you’re already dating someone, it obviously has more significance, but I had plenty of friends who just took another friend as a date for the prom and others who didn’t go with anyone. However, there was a lot of pressure to be a “couple”, even if you weren’t actually romantically involved with your “date”.
Typically the parents take pictures of the kids in their dresses and tuxedos. From the parents’ point of view, it’s a moment to sort of take note of how your kids are maturing and think about what the future holds for them. Lots of thinking about how old you are ;-)
Often there’s an after party that goes on late into the morning, and for many kids the after party is more important than the prom.
I think social media has had an effect on what prom is, but it also has the effect of distorting what it is to people who only experience it remotely. When you’re seeing the crazy YouTube videos and Instagram posts, you’re not seeing what prom is. You’re seeing a snapshot of what those particular proms are.
Prom is part of the culture and teenage experience here. Some people are more into it than others. It’s ok not to totally understand or like it. I’m sure there are things that we don’t understand about other places too.
Prom is fun. You get to hang out with all of your classmates, ask someone out. A subset of people are always going to go overboard, but keep in mind that you don’t see the “normal” cases. Most people just walk up to someone and ask them out. They find a date from the school or go alone.
I’m from Canada so I don’t know if the US is wildly different, but here it is a bit of a big deal, but I think part of that is what makes it fun, you sort of build a bit of hype around what would otherwise be just another school dance.
Is just weird for me, in my country nobody ask anyone dates is was just a party. And even like that I didn’t went… Always had the impression that USA gives this idea that you must get a date to go
you must get a date to go
You really don’t, it’s where the phrase “going stag” (To go without a date, or with a group of friends rather than a date) is commonly used.
Also, HS is important for developing social skills and prom is usually for seniors. The end of the last stage of childhood and an opportunity to flex those skills out as graduation is usually within a couple weeks after prom at which point you’re ejected into the adult world.
It’s just a fun event for teens to be teens before they go fully into the workforce or college
Yeah, with my kids and their friends, it was mostly one or two couples and then their girl and guy friends all went together as a group without dates.
The rituals started in the 1950s. At that time, in order to go on a date with someone, your parents had to chaperone you. It was the wisdom at the time. Prom and homecoming were the only exceptions, so it became a really big thing. Then those people grew up, impressed upon the next generation how homecoming and prom were the best times in high school, started making nostalgia movies about homecoming and prom. That created pressure to live up to this, girls started getting overly fancy dresses, guys started doing elaborate prom-posals, the wedding dress industry jumped in to fill the gap, and now it’s a whole capitalism-fest like Christmas and Valentine’s Day
FWIW I think it is actually a valuable social skill to be encouraged to ask someone out to prom. A lot of people don’t have many similar experiences throughout their lives.
I’ve never been with anyone in my life. I highly doubt it has to do with not going to a dumb party though.
You might consider what’s driving you to put people down who are having fun
I don’t put anyone down just because I think a party is lame dude. They can do whatever they want, I can’t stop them.
When you call an event where kids get together to celebrate the end of high school “frivolous” and “dumb,” it really comes across as putting other people down.
I don’t really mean literally to practice asking people out. But there are times in your life where you need to ask people for things. It is hard to get over the anxiety, risk of social embarrassment and practice showing confidence (even if you are not). These are valuable skills in all sort of social circumstances.
It’s sort of a first step into adulthood and just a way of marking a coming of age threshold as people head out into the wider world.
Most proms aren’t that crazy, I think the real thing you’re noticing is more the distorting effecf social media can have on any cultural tradition or practice. You’re seeing people who would go overboard about anything they thought might get them attention. Kind of like people who have insane weddings, the majority of people still have totally normal weddings for the most part.
most proms are held in a the gym with a shitty dj and shitty catered food. but you’re not gonna see that portrayed in media. parents drop them off, there are no limos.
Here they are big, catered events in a rented venue with expensive tickets, limos, etc. Friends daughter has several ~$500 dresses. I don’t understand how or why.
It goes to show the socioeconomic differences. The more affluent kids at my school went all out. There was expensive outfits, limos, and after parties at other venues. For others it was just mom dropping them off at the vanilla school hosted event and that’s it.
There are also post-prom parties so there’s often no curfew which leads to the hotel room/ sleepover situation.
There’s also a lot of variance within the US. In some towns prom is huge. In my home town it wasn’t as much. Many students elected not to go at all.
You’re only seeing the most outrageous edge cases. It’s a weird kind of survivorship bias.
Prom was kinda like graduation to me. It’s a school event, I mostly went because it was important to someone else, and it’s a very common and relatable event in American life. All in, it was a waste of 50 bucks and a few good hours of gaming/relaxing with my GF.
For a lot of high school seniors, prom is the last big event before graduation. It’s an event where you can hang out with a lot of your classmates away from school and parents and such. There aren’t too many opportunities to just hang out for a lot of teens, what with the homework and extra curricular activities and such occupying a lot of their free time. That being said, it’s not uncommon for people to skip the prom and some schools make it a bigger deal than others.
You think prom is weird. Do an image search for Texas homecoming mums.
As a Texan, I can absolutely attest to this
Proms were around for ~50 years before we started seeing “promposals”, where guys would ask girls out with 3 minute-long choreographed dances in the middle of the quad for the whole school to see & record for social media. I’m not saying it’s stupid to put effort into asking someone, it can definitely be cute, but it can also be ultra cringe if you take it too far
I don’t know, why do Japanese schools have culture festivals? Is it not enough to say that some countries have different cultural norms and traditions?
It of course varries from one school or area to another, and from different age groups.
I ended up going to 4 proms, my own junior and senior proms, the senior prom my junior year because a girl asked me, and then I ended up dating a girl at another high school after I graduated and ended up going to her senior prom (in case anyone’s getting skeeved at that, we were both 18 at the time we started dating, just a few months difference between us, I just barely made the cutoff to be part of the previous grade and she just missed it)
That last prom was the only one where I was actually dating my date, the other 3 we just went as friends, although I did have a pretty big crush on the girl I took to both of my own proms but could never quite work up the nerve to ask her out.
There were never any elaborate promposals or anything, that was just starting around that time and hadn’t quite caught on yet, my sister a couple years behind me did it, nothing too elaborate I think she gave her friend a cake and balloons.
The promposal thing is mostly just that it’s silly and fun, and nowadays I guess it probably makes for a funny tiktok.
Prom was not a particularly big deal in my area, if I had to attach any particular significance to it, it’s just that it’s kind of your first “adult” formal event that you’re attending for your own sake, not because you’re going to a cousins wedding, not something like your first communion or bar mitzvah or whatever when you’re still very much a kid. You get to dress up, you get a fancy meal, you rent a limo, maybe you go to a cool post-prom party and you’re going to be out till the wee hours of the morning mostly left to your own devices. It’s fun for its own sake, and the kind of event most teens don’t really get to experience very often.
