Eve Kaplan '25
People are products of their culture. They are products of the world they were raised in and the ideals they’ve been taught to value. Teenagers are no exception, Netflix coming-of-age movies have always taught us the importance of school dances: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, High School Musical, Mean Girls, Tall Girl, and so many others. Novels like these romanticize these one-night events, the Yule Ball in the fourth book of Harry Potter. In these motion pictures and novels, every single person at the dance is going with a significant other. Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls even makes her cousin go to the Chilton formal with her.
Part of individuality is the uniqueness of each of our priorities. These movies seem to create a culture that condones and looks down upon those who are academically motivated and focused on extracurriculars and passions outside of the one night of homecoming. The movies promote the idea that a person’s worth can be defined by someone else - By a significant other, by a relationship. Too often in our society, the individuality of females is overshadowed by those of significant others. A society, in which for years, women were chained to their kitchen and to dull household tasks. The culture around these dances continues to stimulate that outdated ideology that centers around the idea that a female can be defined by her male counterpart or rather, who asks her to homecoming.
The culture around these dances seeps into reality, creating a toxic culture around Winter Formal and Homecoming. An idea has been embedded into the culture of high schoolers that self-worth is derived from being asked to these dances. Insecurities abound as teenagers watch the same type of girl get asked out to every single dance. The girls who belong within the worlds of these coming-of-age movies and the girls who have priorities that lie with social events rather than academics or athletics.
Naturally, the expectation normalized by these novels and motion pictures is that a teenage boy asks out a teenage girl. Heteronormativity sinks its way into our society once again. With the current generation of high schoolers being the queerest generation yet, it's hard to look at the culture that still exists within popular novels and movies. We seem to have internalized the idea that the perfect Winter Formal is spent with a female leaning onto a male's chest. This societal expectation puts queer couples in the position of feeling “other” as if their relationships are less valid. As homecoming dances turn into wedding dances, the same prejudice towards queer couples continues. The wedding industry is just that: an industry. The annual income of the wedding industry is over 56.7 billion dollars a year, excluding the honeymoon. This culture begins from what was in 2015, the 4 billion dollar prom industry. Each pattern and stereotype created from the Netflix Proms, Homecomings, and Winter Formals continue to creep into our lives.
The concept of a perfect wedding dress begins with a perfect dress for a high school dance. The array of tables set up for high school dances will follow into our 20s in 30s with tables set for weddings and celebrations of love. Before one experiences the pressure to bring a date to a wedding, they experience the pressure to bring a date to a dance. Those who can’t find dates to weddings, or aren’t married by 35 end up feeling the exact same way a high schooler who never gets asked out feels.
High school does not end with graduation. In the same ways, the study habits we build follow us to college and our professional careers, the insecurities we develop will follow us for the rest of our lives. These movies that preach all the destructive values are still large pieces of our middle and high school cultures. The prom and wedding industries begin affecting children before they even reach middle school. We are products of our cultures, of the industries that affect us all.
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