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.
👍🏽 thank you
Thoroughly explained and well supported. I want to save this in case this topic ever comes up again so I can copy-pasta this.
Funny, in Australia we have school dances and they don’t get anything like American proms, with the possible exception of girls’ debutante balls which we dress up for
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.
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
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.
Tbf that’s a better explanation than any other I’ve heard.
That’s like asking why people celebrate holidays.
That’s all it is. It’s a holiday that’s just for teens.
I would separate the two – Prom isn’t necessarily theatrical in nature. It’s usually the first time a teen gets to dress up and do something special with friends, but the type of thing you’re seeing sounds like pretty typical “lets see if I can go viral” narcissistic behavior.
I haven’t seen anything like what you’re talking about, but Prom isn’t the only target of this type of thing.
Even without the viral part still think is weird. I already though it was weird during my time and that was over 15 years ago and in a third world country.
Just because you’re not into that sort of thing doesn’t make it weird.
“Weirdness” is a strange concept, honestly. People probably thought you were weird for not going.
Bullshit! Obviously there can only be one correct viewpoint and it’s mine
Only weirdos DON’T attend prom. Even I went.
Sure
I’m just going to throw out that if your understanding of US prom is based off of movies and videos people make to try and get views, that doesn’t match reality. For mine, it was fun to dress up and dance, but I knew plenty of people who didn’t go, and plenty who went without dates. And there was no prom queen or king or anything.
prom used to be an event where young adults get to actually act as adults in an adult setting.
unfortunately, the Infantilization of the unites states youth has turned this into something of a farce. its clearly backpeddled into child-fantasy land.
high school kids used to be given actual responsibilities, and treated like young adults… open campuses, student governments that could affect actual change. that is no longer the case.
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
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.
I asked sometime to the prom and got turned down. All I learned was that rejection hurts a lot more than I would have thought.
Yeah, being rejected can destroy someone’s confidence
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
Most US kids skip prom as well but there is a lot of pressure to go and have someone to bring. Honestly its not as big a thing as TV/movies makes it.
Have you seen all those high school movies? The US is obsessed with high school. I guess prom is just part of that.
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
In Germany we have this stupid tradition with Maibäume (Maypole) were young people carry a tree around and place it in front of the house of their beloved ones. The bigger the tree the better.
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.
Thanks to COVID, we didn’t get to have a prom. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.