It may not seem possible, but prom season has already begun. Social media is slowly filling with pictures of dresses picked out months before the actual dance. A lot of work goes into prom for both boys and girls. For the most part, the guys are expected to pay for the tickets and be the one to ‘prompose’, while the girls just have to pay for their dress. If you look deeper into the prom ritual, it is glaringly obvious that it is full of outdated gender roles for both sides. With this in mind, what can we do as a community to highlight and improve these problems?

     One of the most apparent gender roles involved in prom is the guy feeling the need to ask his date. It’s a labor-intensive process that will start up again this month. Guys will come into school with signs, balloons, and maybe even doughnuts. This puts unnecessary pressure on everybody for different, but equally important, reasons. Jay Handwerk ’18 commented about his experience and personal views on prom: “Guys have to deal with the stress of having to ask the girl, and coming up with a cool way to ask, but everything after that is so much easier for the guy. Girls have to find the right dress and figure out who’s going to whose house for pictures, and put on makeup, and the whole shebang to try and make themselves look pretty; guys just have to get the right color vest and flower and then they’re in the clear. Prom is stressful for everybody.”

The stress that girls deal with is less obvious, but still there. Because of their roles of waiting for someone to ask them to prom, they have a lack of freedom as to whom they go with. Here’s what Eleanor Napoli ’16 has to say about this pressure: “I think a lot of guys are under the impression that they have to ask girls to prom because they have this idea that all girls want to go to prom, and for the most part that’s true. That being said, there is a lot of pressure to say yes (I know from experience) because a lot of girls get ridiculed for saying no. Their friends will say, ‘He’s so nice,’ or ‘Just go as friends,’ etc. But most girls say no because they either don’t know the guy that well, or simply just don’t want to go to prom. I think if a girl wanted to ask a guy to prom that’s fine too. It is traditional for the guys to ask just because it’s always been that way, but change is good too!” Not only do girls feel a lack of freedom due to the assumption that they want to go, but they also have to deal with pressure to say yes. Not many people want to turn someone down in front of an audience, especially when a lot of effort was put into the asking. The guy’s role asking their dates to prom should no longer be the social norm, because of its outdated qualities and unnecessary pressure.

     According to Mrs. Puritz, the pressure that many students feel regarding prom is unnecessary: “we have the precedent of acceptance for non-traditional gender roles and other combinations of ‘dates’ and garment choices at our prom, going back at least 10 years. In the past, we’ve welcomed same sex couples, groups of young women, one man and four women, all as ‘dates’. Clothing choice has been equally varied, couples in which both parties wear tuxes and a young man in a white shirt and a Dracula cape from the Halloween store among them. I encourage and celebrate that our students invite/attend the prom with the person/s of their choice.” It seems that it isn’t the actual prom that needs changing, but the attitudes of students. Maybe this prom season can be different from the rest. If we all work towards getting rid of self-imposed gender roles, prom could be more fun for everyone involved.