All I could think about in eighth grade was how excited I was for homecoming. The dresses, the after party, the pictures — everything. I was getting FOMO (fear of missing out) before even reaching high school but I really didn’t know what school dances were truly about.
Yes, dances can be fun, but the stress isn't worth it. The social pressure of finding a date and the best, most original dress is the worst feeling. The whole dance just feels like one big competition.
Finding a dress is easily the worst part. Yes, I am the most indecisive person ever, but every dress is either worth five paychecks or sold out. And I'm not going to spend $800 on a dress that I’ll wear for three hours and never again, so usually I end up settling for borrowing one. But this makes the pressure of being original unattainable.
Freshman year, I ordered five dresses, each being at least $150, just to end up returning them all and rewearing my sister's freshman year homecoming dress. And repeated the whole ordering and returning cycle to my junior year at the Sweet Heart dance. I had posted on my Snapchat private story 15 times asking people’s opinions on which dress I should wear.
All to just be stressed to the point of sobbing the night before the dance.
Then there's dinner.
Yes, dinner is fun with great food, but usually it's filled with taking pictures for 30 minutes just to end up not liking any of them enough to post on social media. Everyone is competing for the best Instagram post to show off their dresses and outfits. It's just one big social competition.
The dance itself can be fun, because you get to see friends who aren’t in your dinner group, along with people from different grades. The music is what makes or breaks the dance though. It always depends on who the DJ is and whether they can get the students dancing and having fun. But usually the dance doesn’t last long, because everyone leaves in about 30 minutes. It feels so forced to go to the dance, which is the whole point of the night.
The after-party is my favorite part, but it's always the hardest to plan out.
First, we all have to agree on a theme, which always causes drama because nobody can agree on just one. Then we have to find a host, which we always find at the last minute. Four times now I have caved to hosting two days before the dance and ended up with 70 high schoolers in my basement.
It's not the worst, but cleaning up the next morning and picking up thousands of decorations can get annoying, along with making sure my house doesn’t get destroyed during the three-hour party.
Having a good after party costume makes it so much fun, but again, finding an after party costume can be so difficult and so expensive on top of everything else. And it's always a competition on whose costume is the best.
I skipped prom and homecoming this year and was expecting to have major FOMO, but realized it wasn't the end of the world. I visited the University of Arizona and had so much fun — more than I would have had at prom because instead of one night of fun I got three.
I will say, one dance a year is fun, but four dances are just too much and far too costly. I mean, people spend around $1000 dollars for one night, then multiply that by four. Homecoming, chill ball, WPA, and prom yet they’re all the same thing.
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