Impressions of the prom, 2007

I worked an off-duty gig last night, doing security at the high school prom. My impressions:

For some reason, all chaperons stationed outside were male, and most of the inside chaperons were female.

Fedoras were big, this year.

Backless, shoulderless gowns were the standard.

Teenaged girls that are physically fit are now more so, than when I was in high school. No, that wasn't written as a leering old perv, but a simple observation: those girls that are not fat are generally far more toned than the girls I grew up with. They've clearly been going to the gym. When I was a teenager, it was extremely unusual to witness any kind of muscle definition in a girl's arms, back, or neck. I saw last night latissimus dorsi that have been regularly pulling on a rowing machine, triceps that have been worked. Calves showed sculpting. With very few exceptions, the effect is quite aesthetic and feminine. (The rot about "not wanting to work out with weights lest I look masculine" is a misconception; without steroids and/or obsessive over-use of the gym, women with normal body chemistry simply cannot bulk up like that.) I don't know what to make of that. Sad statement on society's raised bar of expectations of young women, or happy surge in physical fitness?

Boys mostly wore rented tuxes. A few colorful examples were present, not least of which was a textured pink tuxedo. I told the boy he looked nice. He did; he was relaxed and healthy and happy and having a good time with his friends. What's nicer than that? A couple wore straw cowboy hats. One, in a traditional black tux, wore a camouflage baseball hat. Some of the nicer tuxedos had tails. I didn't particularly care for the scarlet cummerbunds on some of the "traditional" tuxes, but that's just me. A couple of guys wore personal suits. One guy tried to enter without a jacket with his shirt untucked and tie hanging loose. He was stopped, and he corrected what he could.

I observed a terrible lack of etiquette, mostly on the part of the boys, but also from the girls. It's a Promenade; walking in smacking gum isn't appropriate. Girls struggled in 4" heels to walk to the building entrance across a gravel parking lot while their "escorts" would either walk along without ever thinking to put out his arm, or, worse and still more common, striding ahead without looking back. This was especially common in groups that arrived together-- the girls would bunch up together, and the boys would mob up, slinking up the path in a pair of segregated groups. Boys would get out of their vehicles and walk toward the entrance without so much as a glance to their dates' car doors. Girls would form up together and run off from their escorts before they had even entered the building. Cell phones were pulled out without a thought. Boys thought nothing of standing among ladies with their hands shoved in their pockets.

I apparently will never dance again, if I have now seen the new scene of dance.

At least one lengthy (overly-so) hiphop song features air raid sirens. Huh. Okay.

Most of the kids danced. Perhaps badly, and with no real method, but they danced, that's good. Young people should dance. It makes me happy to see it.

My friends and I were never so good-looking. We weren't as young, either. But must of us cut our hair. (I don't mind long hair-- it's the unkempt shaggy look that bugs me.)