The prom

The prom, as a high school institution, has certainly changed over the years. It's gotten less formal as a dating ritual, for instance. I'm pretty sure that in my high school in the 60s, the idea of going stag was simply beyond imagining. If one were lucky, one had a girlfriend, so finding someone to go with was not an issue. But if one were "playing the field," so to speak—that is, a totally inept, asocial bumpkin—it was a little more difficult. I want to an all-boys school, a torture from which I have never fully recovered. My junior prom (we had one both upper class years) was spent in the company of a girl I had never dated before, nor since. We muddled through it, but I'll bet you that today she has as much trouble remembering more than two minutes of it as I do. As a senior, I did have a steady girlfriend, so I didn't have to spend six months getting up the nerve to ask somebody. But I have to admit, I still only remember about two minutes of it. (They were a pretty good two minutes, though, and no, it's not what you think. Two minutes? Nobody's that fast.)

Over the ensuing decades people have breached a lot of barriers. The solo prom attender, obviously. Gay couples is another big one. It's not that we didn't have gay kids in my day, but they didn't admit it at that ripe young age. There was no LGBT group at my Catholic high school, in other words. The only person I remember ever coming out in high school was one of the Vincentian brothers, who quit both the order and teaching, but who honestly didn't make as much of a stir as the other brother who quit the order at about the same time to marry the school nurse. That was something to get one's mind around!

The Smithsonian article by Sloane Crosely The 21st-Century American Prom is a fun personal story, but more than that, a showcase for the prom photos of Mary Ellen Mark. Make sure to both watch the slide show and the video.

By the way, I wore white for the junior prom and black for the senior prom. No powder blue tuxedos for the Grinwout!