On Demand
Promzillas
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A thousand-dollar dye job and a pair of Manolo Blahniks is more than just the stuff Sex in the City is made of. For some teens, those pricey frills are serious prom essentials. Columnist for the New York Sun Lenore Skenazy talks about this monster of a phenomenon.
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what a waste. I can barely remember my prom, 20 years later. it's a scam. won't waste your money
I threw out my prom dress, pictures, and totally forgot that awful night. The guy was an idiot and his mother told me at 18 you can marry in NY state without parental consent.
Proms are a waste! It starts with the prom and then you think the wedding is the best thing since sliced bread.
Forget it. Proms are stupid and so are big weddings! Go to city hall or elope to the Caribbean.
Any one who spends a boatload of money for a prom, is raising the expectations of this kids way to high. I have said this before, if you have the money does not mean that you should do it.
If your prom is one of the "highlights" of your life, you might need to change your life goals
Disgusting phenomenon...future looks bleak for America.
this segment is a waste, i'm out
ttp://www.newyorker.com/archive/1981/06/22/1981_06_22_026_TNY_CARDS_000331425
I enjoyed my date´s prom and hated my own (largely because of that same date). It was memorable only because it was so bad.
While I don´t think the men get as worked up about the clothes, I think they definitely focus a lot about the limos and other details. This is particularly true because they´re hoping to get lucky by setting the perfect mood.
My prom didn´t allow limos. We had to take a yellow school bus, so a lot of the luxurious atmosphere was lost.
I am tired of disney promoting this "I am a princess" culture. Everytime i see some girl wearing a shirt saying "princess" it makes me cringe. I dont know why some guys are looking for a "princess", that must means more work for the guy
Old Prom Stories:
I was fifteen and a senior in high school, too young for the prom. Instead, I and two of my friends went to see the movie "My Fair Lady." (Clearly, this was a long time ago.) The movie was magical and I did not care about the prom.
Story two: In 1970, the kids at my friend's school in Maplewood held an "anti-prom" to protest conventional prom materialism. They held the "anti-prom" at one of the seniors' homes, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, and otherwise had a "sixties/seventies" event. Like me, my friend has fond memories of her "prom."
Too many are trying to live like they have Bill Gates' bankroll. It's only one night in your life. Save your money.
I heard about this on This American Life. Crazy.
I'm from upstate Albany suburb area where all the prom hype afterwards the young men pressure the girls for sexual activity. It creates too much pressure and too many girls graduating pregnant!
Proms are ridiculous. Let teens be teens and enjoy life while they are young.
Why should you hold High School kids to higher standard than the adults in your life? If, as your guest says, kids are just copying culture at large, what's the real point of singling out teenagers?
Many people look back on their proms and talk about them as the highlight of their lives, till they get married.
They did a segment on this girl's prom on THIS AMERICAN LIFE: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1244
friends from a wealthy suburb of nyc funded their junior year highschooler's prom debacle, which included 25 students taking a "party bus" into manhattan after the prom. half of the students got so drunk on the bus on the way in that the teen club that was poised to receive them refused them entrance, forcing their parents to schlep into manhattan on a friday night to drive their children home. the parents know and accept they were going to drink (16 and 17-year olds!), but thought the bus would somehow make it better (for them, I suppose). what i object to is the fact that they dumped them on manhattan for the evening.
the juxtaposition of this story and the last one (one the working poor) is quite stark...and depressing.
I get the impression that the prom was a bigger deal to my mom and my at-the-time boyfriend than it was to me. My mom made my dress (she's excellent; she also made my wedding gown), so there was no reason to believe that there would be anyone there with a similar dress. My boyfriend went all out and rented a limo, tux, planned a trip into Philly, etc. It was a nice night, but I think I would have been just as happy hanging out without all of that stuff.
Proms are really overrated. It's better to concentrate on the people you'll be with and what you plan to do, not on the clothes, make up, and other trappings.
Looks like MTV, Vh1, fashion mags, "reality" shows etc.. and the celebrity culture they've elevated have done their job for their advertisers. Sex and the City couldn't have asked for better advertising for the fashion biz.
And we wonder why the rest of the world hates us.
P.S. Was it intentional to put this segment immediately after the one on the "working poor."
Paulo,
Are you talking about proms in Brazil or did you attend in US? I think the region of the US has different emphasis and culture related to proms as well.
RCT,
My Fair Lady is the best movie! Audrey Hepburn was the epitome of class and style.
I get the impression that the prom was a bigger deal to my mom and my at-the-time boyfriend than it was to me. My mom made my dress (she's excellent; she also made my wedding gown), so there was no reason to believe that there would be anyone there with a similar dress. I did my own make up. My boyfriend went all out and rented a limo, tux, planned a trip into Philly, etc. It was a nice night, but I think I would have been just as happy hanging out with my boyfriend and other friends, without all of that stuff.
Proms are really overrated. It's better to concentrate on the people you'll be with and what you plan to do, not on the clothes, make up, and other trappings.
Perhaps I was ahead of the zeitgeist, but I graduated from high school (in Chicago) in the mid-1960s. My parents begged me to go to the prom, but I refused because it seemed like a complete waste of time and money. Regrettably my mother was in tears over this, telling me "You only get one senior prom." My reaction was, "Thank God!" I spent prom night wit a bunch of friends camping out at the Indiana Dunes State Park. That was also where most of the prom attendees ended up the following day, so I got to see them anyway without the expense or hassle.
My grandmothers rented their wedding dresses. What about renting formal wear? These dresses and tuxes won't be useful in a few years if everyone gains weight as many people do!
Imagine the spectacular dress one can afford to rent.
Woh, a teenager listening to WNYC. I guess I still have hope for the future.
My partner's mom owns a consignment store in a small town in Iowa, most girls in that town are going to her store to pick up their dresses. They are definetly one of kind as well becuase most of the time she gets one kind of a dress in one size only. So there is always a variety. So they are speaking $60-$100 on insane priced dressed
I grew up in Fargo ND in the 1980's and people took prom far to seriously back then.
I recall a particular guy, quite an outcast in 1987 North Dakota. One year he met a (then) West German exchange student and the two of them fell in love as birds of a feather.
For prom he went in the dress, she went in the tuxedo, I thought it was fantastic.
After the prom the school administration felt that they had so demeaned the "tradition" and that she proved that she couldn't fit in Fargo "culture" that they sent her back to Germany.
Oh, how i've hated the idea of prom since then.
My son's date ripped the black lining out of a short dress and wore that - very unique, frayed edges and all.
What a difference a generation makes...
I showed up at my wedding wearing the same dress as my maid of honor sister in 1983. A funny accident since 3 of my sisters were getting married in the same year and we had a mix up in dresses. We had a good laugh and it makes a great story.
Which, I told to my 17 year old daughter to show that it's really not that big a deal.
She was somewhat horrified...
I assure you, no matter how aghast we are at today's excesses of proms (, Bar Mitzvahs & Weddings) what takes place in 5 years will make all of today's nonsense look modest. People have been complaining about this for years, but the complaining not only doesn't do any good, it just gets worse.
Our society is going over the cliff. The irony is that it was the Baby Boomers who complained about their parent's "materialism" but opened the Pandora's box with materialism that put their parents to shame.
I am listening to your show via the website, and I have to say that I find the Promzilla show disturbing. I grew up in central pennsylvania, and our attitude to prom was quite frugal. We were more proud of spending less on prom, not more. Most of us drove ourselves to the prom. My dress was $15. I distinctly remember complimenting a friend on her shoes, who responded by shouting "Twelve bucks!" and we all applauded. This celebrity-insprired spendfest is a sad reflection on current culture.
Love your show!
We are just vulgar and don't know teh difference between elegance and blowsiness - we let labels be our guide while the producers of those brands laugh all the way to the bank. Pathetic.
Your guest is using extreme examples to stereotype female high school students as vain and superficial. The media commonly promotes this image of women. The majority of girls are rational about their prom experiences but this received little mention on WNYC.
i honestly think boomer parents feed this beast. in the zeal to give their children "everything" they have created consumer monsters who, as someone said above, are only emulating their parents' behavior. indeed, this isn't just prom. it's weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other displays of outlandish expectation.
I just don't understand where these parent's heads are at...my mother and father refused to dump a lot of money on my prom (not that I asked, I never thought it was a big deal in the first place).` I got a nice dress from Macy's, my mom helped me with my hair, and my father drove me and my friends to the dance, and a good time was had by all. When my friend's parents asked mine if they wanted to chip in on a limo for us, my parent's said "No Thank you". Is "No" such a hard thing to say these days?
I'm also disturbed how putting so much pressure on young girls seems to be the norm these days...I would have hoped we'd moved beyond an age where a teenage girl's senior prom is the highlight of her life...what about college and a career, moving out and having a successful fulfilled life beyond HS? Should that be where our emphasis is? I never realized how rare my upbringing was until I started seeing stories like these!
I Think today the prom is a jock . I was the king of my prom in 1991 and then was a big deal , today it is a metreal world.
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