Prom night puritans will vet every dress for decency
LOS ANGELES Americans tend to remember who their prom date was. In years to come, female graduates of one Pennsylvania high school may also be able to recall who sat on the three-person committee that approved their dress.
According to a petition signed by aggrieved students and parents at Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia, the stringent prom dress code and the vetting process that enforces it are ‘‘degrading, arbitrary and unfair’’.
The code is part of a growing trend towards regulating the most emotive night of the American school year more heavily.
At Boylan Catholic High School in Illinois, the guidelines for acceptable prom wear now stretch to 21 pages. Other schools have banned bare backs, exposed midriffs, and dresses with mesh cutouts that give the illusion of bare skin, as well as shawls, coats and sweaters that attempt to cover non-complying dresses.
Earlier this month, at Carencro High School in Louisiana, a student was refused entry to her prom because her custom-made dress was asymmetrical and showed a small section of one leg immediately above the ankle.
At Boylan, a private school, one of the many rules states: ‘‘Some girls may wear the same dress, but due to body types, one dress may be acceptable while the other is not.’’ The school has been accused of body shaming, and some students are organising their own alternative prom.
At Archbishop Ryan, dresses have to be approved by a committee of one male administrator and two female ones. Students must submit a full-body photograph of themselves wearing their dress, or bring it to school to show the panel.
If this wasn’t enough, finding an acceptable prom date can be as problematic as deciding what to wear. In the Sanger school district in Texas, prom dates from outside school are subjected to a criminal background check. Rhonda Bilbrey, the district’s assistant superintendent, said: ‘‘We used to let everyone in the door but, unfortunately, circumstances change.’’ The Times REUTERS