Prom is weird, or maybe it’s just me. I just can’t help chuckling to myself every time I see another proud Prince Charming boldly bestowing his $5 roses and $10 chocolates on another swooning teeny bopper girl, who runs up and hugs her suitor as if this is the happiest day of her week.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with roses or chocolates or acting like Prince Charming, but, if I was a girl, I know that I, for one, would not be impressed.
To begin with, I’d want orchids. Everybody gets roses, and isn’t part of the point of asking someone to prom to make them feel special and not just like every other girl? Oh, and, no matter how nice the flowers, if the price tag was still showing, that’d be an immediate turnoff. Having a big, orange, Ralph’s sticker on a beautiful bouquet just screams tacky.
Secondly, the classic asking, giving and receiving ritual is about as outdated as Prince Charming himself, who first made his appearance in 1890 as an ironic reference in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” While there usually is chemistry between the two sides of a successful prom pair, asking someone to prom is not science nor is it math, and so the old formulas need to be shaken up a bit.
Find a more creative way to ask someone to prom than “will you go to prom with me” or writing “PROM?” with seashells or cupcakes. Put it in code. Make it the final reveal at the end of a scavenger hunt. Write it backwards.
Then, if you are going to give a gift to your date, don’t just diversify the gift (orchids instead of roses) but find a fun way to give it. Again, put it in a scavenger hunt. Hide it in a prom cupcake or underneath a seashell.
Finally, the receiving. Instead of just receiving a yes and a big hug as confirmation, getting a request to go to prom gives girls the opportunity to be creative too. As soon as a boy asks you out to prom, girls, you now have the upper hand, so use it instead of surrendering all in one, quick response. Make him decode your response, or, write “YES” in cupcakes and seashells, that’d be mixing things up. You can never go wrong with a scavenger hunt.
If I was a girl being asked to prom, I would want all these things, and I would respond likewise. The only tradition that I would like to remain are the chocolates because who doesn’t like a nice box of chocolates (assuming of course that the price tag has been removed)?
Although if I was a girl, I likely wouldn’t be waiting around for some faux-romantic boy to ask me to be his date. It’s 2014. Women have rights now. Women have freedoms, so who’s to say that the girls can’t do the asking? Let me tell you, if any girl, any girl, I don’t care who, asked me to prom, I would say yes, immediately, because any girl with enough confidence to break away from the Cult of True Womanhood and ask me out to prom is more than good enough for me.
I have already decided on whom I’m asking to prom, Covi Brannan ’15. A few days ago, I told her that I’d be asking her in order to make sure that no one else beats me to her, but, as of today, I still have not done any official asking. My plan, however, is already set. There will be no chocolates and no roses and no Prince Charming. It will be cute, clever, creative and, even though I’ve already tipped her off as to what’s coming, she’ll never suspect what I have in store.