What fresh hell is this? We are gripped by a school-prom epidemic. No longer do the days after exams pass in a haze of relief, giggling condolences about that awful Maths question, glugs of illicit cider and affectionate writing of names on school shirts in indelible Biro.
Communal celebration used to mean at most a yawning prize day and a few snog-and-shuffle parties with your real mates. There might be a school disco for the sixth-formers but you could roll your eyes and dodge that without being thought odd.
But now there is the ‘Prom’, a virus from the USA where the semi-formal promenade dance is a rite of passage for students in their last year of high school.
Blackburn Central High School pupil Isha Sanah Akhtar, 16, made a jaw-dropping entrance to the end-of-year celebration at Dunkenhalgh Hotel in Clayton-le-Moors. She turned up in the Rolls Royce Phantom decorated in four million Swarovski crystals
Apparently 85 per cent of British schools hold one. Moreover, we don’t wait until A-levels when everyone is rising 18 (the common age of prommers in the US). In Britain, a post-GCSE prom is increasingly common.
The industry promoting and supporting British school proms is calculated at £90 million a year; an average spend is £220, but it can go much higher because how you ‘do’ a prom has become a status symbol that reflects parental income.
At the very least, it’s a £20 or £30 ticket (the venue is usually a flash hotel not the old school gym), and then there’s frock (up to £700 in some cases), shoes (£40), a bag (£40), flowers, hair (£50) and professional grooming (manicure, pedicure, eyebrow shape, eyelash extensions, spray tan, waxing etc)
One youngster from Essex told a newspaper that she’d spent two years planning her prom night — two years she was also working on her GCSEs.
Teenagers are splashing out hundreds on finding their dream prom dress and looking to some of their favourite Disney princesses, like Cinderella, for inspiration like this girl from Glasgow
‘You have to do research to get the best make-up artist,’ she wailed. ‘Everything has to be perfect.’ The owner of a bridal and prom dress shop in Billericay, Essex says she’s sold 870 prom dresses this season. She observes many girls are more focused than brides: ‘A bride doesn’t have competition, does she?’
Another shop, Confetti and Couture, in Romford, Essex, offers parents flexible payment plans to cover the costs of their daughters’ prom dress, while a local charity provides outfits for those who can’t afford one.
Boys don’t escape. A prom means hiring or buying a suit or black tie. One family said their son spent £100 on his hair and they were mortified to discover that the dress shirt they bought him ‘didn’t need cufflinks’.
And of course you can’t just rock up to your prom in the family car: it should be a hired limo, a vintage car or even double-decker bus, while helicopter companies say they get more prom-related inquiries than they can fulfil (around £2,000 plus VAT for six if there’s a place to land near by).
It’s all about the entrance! Another girl from Swansea beams in a beautiful red gown as she heads to her prom night
A group of teenagers in York arrived at prom in style as they hired Aston Martin sports cars for their entrance
How I cringe at all this. Not just for parents under pressure to splash out the cost of a holiday on this one-night hysteria, but particularly for younger teens: the post-GCSE set.
Our prom mania means exhausted 15 and 16-year-olds, some of them not quite through the years of puppy fat and acne, feel they must get dressed to Instagram perfection, net themselves a ‘date’ and then lay themselves open to public judgment.
By 18, you might have got enough nerve to laugh at it, turn your back and go your own way. Whereas despite the creepily sexual ‘all-grown-up’ hype which surrounds children of 16, plenty are not ready for this pressurised competition to dress and pair up.
Some do make real relationships with all their joys and disappointments and betrayals, but plenty don’t. We should leave them alone to enjoy the teenage years with mates, fun and banter and common interests which have nothing to do with allure.
It’s not just girls! Young men with a sense of humour arrive in style at their prom in Oldham, Manchester, packed inside an ice cream van
They may have quiet secret crushes but that’s private. Not something to be tested in public with a dress costing hundreds of pounds or a penguin-suit and a social media moment.
It seems to me that schools have rather taken to prom nonsense in a suspicious manner (I’ve even heard of the end of primary school being marked with a pretend ‘grown up’ ball). Head-teachers may feel pressure from a group of the keenest kids and parents, or see it as a sneaky kind of advertising: parading their glossy leavers as prize specimens like old public-school headmasters who used to chunter: ‘We turn out a decent sort of boy.’
Another reason for the prom virus spreading so fast in British schools is that parents, more than children, get nostalgic about the end of schooldays.
It’s a rite of passage for us, too: a full stop after all those years of battling for the right school, making nourishing breakfasts, buying uniforms, remembering gym kit and musical instruments, sitting through concerts and plays, worrying about bullies and grades and reports and teachers who don’t understand your darling.
One teenage couple step out of a helicopter as they arrive at their prom night in Haynes, Somerset
There is relief and pride at launching a fledgling adult towards university, apprenticeship or a job. It also reminds us that our usefulness is starting to wane. We may want them not to need us so much, but at the same time a part of us starts to wonder what the hell we’re for.
American high schools have a rather touching ceremony to acknowledge this: names are read out, diplomas handed over and each graduate crosses the stage, picks up a single long-stemmed rose, and walks down to hand it to their parent. It underlines the fact that parents have put the work into these schooldays, too.
That sense of ritual may be another fact why parents go prom-crazy and max out credit cards on their off-spring.
So, yes, I think we need something, though I doubt it’s the expense, ostentation, competition and potential for embarrassment of an US-style prom.
What might that something be? An exotic holiday? A presentation watch or jewellery? A wild trip to the shops? I have known parents in pre-prom days to do all of these. But it costs money.
This motor cycle driver in Leicestershire helps two teenage boys make a grand entrance to their prom night
If you want something minimal, I can offer just one suggestion. It made us parents happy, and amused our school-leavers.
For my son and daughter, in turn, I made a collage of their entire schooldays: from primary to A-levels. Not just pictures of them, but of their friends and enemies and teachers. It’s surprisingly hard work: you have to photocopy shots you took of the school play or sports day with your own kid at the centre, and then snip the others out of the corner and magnify them.
Add pictures of the various school buildings, and photocopied scraps of school reports in spidery teacher handwriting. Sometimes they’re praising, sometimes critical (‘does not always see the point of concentrating’), sometimes nicely despairing (‘X is not a natural dancer, but…’).
Our son’s collage ended with his own speech-balloon: ‘OK, I’m educated, can I just please GO now? Exit, pursued by a bear.’
We put them in frames, stood back, admired them and accepted that a phase was over. Finished, done with, achieved!
And nobody had to spend £700 on a ballgown, find a make-up artist and or book a vintage Rolls-Royce to prove it.