Those of you still in high school are probably gearing up for what must seem like the most magical time of the school year. No, it’s not summer break, final exams, college applications or the possibility of a typhoon signal so dangerous that classes are cancelled and you can spend the day in your electricity-free home mourning the absence of WiFi. I’m talking about prom night.
The high school dance, or prom, is the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work. For some of you kids, it’s spent hitting the books to ace your report card and joining as many extracurriculars as possible. For others, it’s stealing prescription pads from your doctor so you can write sick notes and skip as many days of school as possible without getting caught. For some of you, prom may just be the one semi-exciting event to punctuate a seemingly uneventful existence as a high school student. Whatever the reason may be, prom night’s, like, totally when you can have a totally OMFG awesome time with your BFFs. So naturally, no one wants it to suck, even if — and I’m really sorry to say so — for some of you, it really will. That’s all part of high school, though.
In my experience, the measures taken to prepare for that enchanted evening range from justifiable to downright ridiculous. In my private Catholic high school, the months leading up to prom were spent securing the perfect date, a fabulous dress, and the most effective diet. Girls clamored to ask batch heartthrobs (that word makes me cringe, but it’s totally what some chicks said back then) to be their dates. Cliques discussed designer dress cuts to save them the embarrassment of rolling up to prom in similar ensembles or color schemes. Girls perused gossip rags for celebrity style tips. The school cafeteria experienced an alarming drop in sales, inversely proportional to the spike in gym memberships and under-the-table diet pill dealers.
Let’s Talk About Sex
I don’t think much has changed about prom night preparation since I was in high school. Sure, nowadays you can send your crush a Facebook message or tell the Twitterverse that the boy of your dreams just totally freaking asked you to be his date (yay!). You can also order dresses and accessories online, and probably fit into them by doing diets that don’t involve a chemical dependence or eating disorder. Thanks to the dawn of the information age, high school students today have evolved to a certain degree in terms of preparing for the big night. The fundamentals, however, remain the same: What should you wear? Who are you going with? When is he picking you up? How are you getting there? Where’s the after party? And most importantly… how far are you going with your date?
Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it. You’re a freaking teenager, of course you think about sex. If you’ve seen any movie ever marketed to anyone your age, you’ve probably thought about having sex on prom night. If those films are even a little bit accurate, getting down in the backseat is just about as likely as on the dance floor. Ultimately, doing the deed will come down to what you decide.
As good (Catholic) Filipino kids, you’re probably living your adolescent lives with this giant crucifix-shaped chip on your shoulder because you’ve been taught in school and by your parents that premarital sex will land you a spot as Satan’s pooper scooper in the sixth layer of Hell. As a generation of rational thinkers with Internet access, you also probably know that all of that is total bulls**t. While fire and brimstone aren’t actual consequences of prom sex, STDs, teen pregnancy, not graduating because you have to raise a child and the shame that no amount of crying in the shower will ever fix are. He also might never call you back.
The case for ‘No’
I went to five proms in high school. Two were my own. The other three, I was asked to. I’m also proud to say I didn’t put out on any of those nights. Frankly, I think that your high school prom shouldn’t be about hooking up. Yeah, there are probably a ton of reasons to do it. I don’t want to get into it at the risk of providing anyone with reasons to have sex on prom night, but there are a million reasons not to. Sure, the actual event never actually lives up to anyone’s expectations of it, but you’re teenagers. Life’s meant to be disappointing, or at least that’s what your hormones are telling you. So don’t go and do something you’ll regret just because you think it’ll be more special than the cheap crepe paper streamers drooped around the hotel ballroom and overcooked chicken they serve at dinner. The time you spend trying to have fun with your friends despite all the cheesiness at that suckfest is what you’ll fondly call one of the best nights of your life, years down the road. Trust me too when I say it’ll totally make for a far better memory than climbing into the backseat of your date’s parents’ Honda Civic so he can desperately try to remember his notes on female genitalia from anatomy class while he awkwardly tries to fumble for your panties without blowing his load. Yeah, that’s what sex with high school dudes is like. It’s not worth missing out on kicking off your mom’s heels to shake your groove thing with friends while the DJ’s crappy dubstep almost causes you to seize, spiking the punch with GSM blue and laughing your ass off when you get grounded for coming home at 6 a.m. because your smug teenaged self knows it was all totally worth it. Now that’s a real prom night.
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Francesca Ayala hates to be forced to do things, which is why she has never given it up on prom night. E-mail her at francesca.ayala@gmail.com.