It’s spring. The way you know, if not by the breeze getting warmer or the flowers blossoming as trees thicken with bright green leaves, is by the content of teens heading off to prom with lavish send-offs that rival celebrity wedding couples.
Already, with the arrival of April, we’ve received viral footage of teens stepping on mock red carpets, posing in front of lavish cars, jumping out of magazine boxes, and often dripping down in extravagant bespoke duds. Under this footage, however, in addition to their friends and family hyping them up are scores of strangers, adult strangers weighing in, making stitches and the like, slamming the extravagance.
Over the weekend, a video began trending of a user criticizing the trend that has picked up steam.
“Its prom season which means one thing and one thing only…hood prom,” asserted the content creator. “And I think what a lot of people fail to realize [about] hood prom and baby mama culture [is]…you can’t have one without the other.”
She added, “You can’t have hood prom or the baby shower stuff or anything like that without baby mama culture.”
While she’s white, which adds an entire layer of racism to her screed, the thing is, she’s far from alone. Many online take issue with the rise of the viral prom send-off. You can find this trend of bashing others’ fetes kind of everywhere, from birthday trip footage to bachelorette parties (that’s a big trigger for many), to baby showers, to dog parent content, and beyond. If we must admit, it’s almost like the trend of rushing to critique others’ joy is getting more out of hand than the celebrations.
Why do we do this? Why do we see others online being celebrated and allow our own limitations on self-expression or our lens on appropriateness to guide our reactions? There are presently grown adults analyzing in lengthy videos whether or not prom culture has gotten out of control. Many of these people do not have children; they don’t work with children; they have opinions about them.
Sure, a lot of this is driven by social media. Way back in the day, folks tried to keep up with the Joneses, their neighbors, the everyday people in their orbit. Then, with TV entering our homes, we started keeping up with celebrities because we could see them more often. You add social media to the mix, where we are seeing celebrities even more in the content of the so-called Jones, and we have a complex time with people treating everything like it’s a red carpet. That much is true and has been discussed by many.
What’s also true is how much most of us would, if we could celebrate ourselves exactly how we want to, whether that means an enormous blowout before heading off to an even bigger blowout or a tame, quieter acknowledgment.
As this pertains to teens, we have to ask ourselves what we’re really made about. Are we upset because this is harmful to them in some way? Can’t imagine that getting to enjoy the prom night of your dreams makes for a maladjusted person, so many of us can relate. In the early aughts, teen girls were booking appointments at the Mac counter and buying a tube of lipstick, walking away with a full face of makeup hours before the event as their mothers shook their heads, remembering when prom makeup meant crowding around a mirror in one of your friends’ houses. The point is, the culture changes. The more we see, the more we want. Yes, that’s one way of looking at it, but the more we can imagine as well.
Let kids have their over-the-top birthdays and prom send-offs, let them have their joy, let them have their dreams fully realized in this life. So, before you go commenting on the goings-on of a stranger, ask yourself a set of questions: Is this content a child, so not my peer, not my business? Is this person harming themselves or anyone else? Is this person just happy? Can I scroll past if I can’t share in their joy? I think you know the answer to the last one.
