Never Be Too Cool for Your Own Life: Why It Was a Mistake to Skip My Senior Prom

The American tradition of prom goes way back, always in tuxes and gowns, always in spring, the girls in their gaggle, the pocked-faced boys in their polyester rentals. The first known reference appeared in the Harvard Crimson in 1879. History books speak of it as a coming-of-age ritual meant to get non-aristocrats mixing like royals. By the 1950s, it had become a set piece, a marker of time, a chance for public-school nobodies to experience something like a debutante ball.

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I've been in the US for nearly 25 years now... and have never understood the American obsession with high-school proms. Friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances (mostly male, though some females too) largely admitted they all hated their proms. Nevertheless, they all went, and reported experiences of sham glory, embarrassment, nights of debauchery or some combination thereof.

As an immigrant, this rite of passage has been something that I have never been understand.