The Vine: May 11, 2011
Please bear with the prom drama, as I’m hoping to get your opinion.
My daughter is a high-school sophomore, and was asked to the Junior/Senior Prom by a guy friend. JL, a good friend of hers in the same grade was also asked, but ended up not having the money to get a dress, so she’s not attending.
I took my daughter prom-gown-shopping, and JL and another girl came along for fun/opinions. They both ended up trying on gowns just as a goof, and JL found one that she absolutely loved. Keep in mind, she’s not going to the prom. My daughter didn’t try on that gown for whatever reason, but we both remembered and admired it. We ended up not buying a gown that day.
The following weekend, we went shopping again, just the two of us, to a larger mall. I never attended my prom, lucky me, but going into prom gown stores is a total sensory-overload experience. There are probably around 500 gowns that you could potentially try on, in any conceivable color combination, but upon closer examination, most of them are too slinky/tacky/rhinestoned/Madonna-fied, or just plain ugly. After trying on at least 20 gowns, she ended up trying on the gown her friend JL had loved.
It looked amazing on her, and was by far the nicest one she’d tried on. She loved it, I loved it, and everyone in the dressing room loved it. She did try on one other dress that wasn’t bad, but it was more expensive, a much heaver material, and would need a lot of alterations. However, she was very concerned about JL, and what she would say. I told her that it was ultimately up to her, and left her alone in the dressing room to make up her mind. She ended up going with the amazing gown.
The whole way home, she angsted about the decision. The whole next day she angsted. She had texted JL to let her know about the gown, and JL replied, “I’m devastated, how could you do this to me, you know I loved that gown, my mom was going to get it for me as an early birthday present, there wasn’t one other gown that you could have bought,” blah blah prama-queen-cakes. My daughter is now upset that she hurt her friend, and what the rest of their friends will think, what will be said on Facebook, etc. Bleah!
Who’d have thought I’d be in the midst of all this drama! Do you think she should have gone with another gown, or just told her friend to deal with it (in nicer terms). After all, it’s not like it was her wedding gown, or even the dress she had picked out for her own Senior Prom that she was actually attending. I’m trying to stay out of the whole thing, but I would welcome your opinion.
When did it become just “Prom,” and not “the Prom”?
Dear The Mom,
Hoooo boy. I had to deal with a similar situation back in the day, and if I recall correctly, my bestie and I had two proms to go to — our own and our boyfriends’ (who were BFF themselves) — so we each needed two dresses, and for Prom #2, I picked a dress that she’d planned to wear to Prom #1, but in a different color. I felt like, who cares, it’s blue, not pink, and it’s not for the same night, but Bestie did care, and she asked me to return that dress and getting another one I’d also liked instead. I vaguely remember that I resented giving way on the issue, but I absolutely remember feeling like it was not a hill worth dying on, so I exchanged the dress. (And Bestie did me such a huge favor, too. Peplum. Enough said.)
The situation here is somewhat different, because, although I sort of felt like Bestie should have sucked it up, she did have grounds for the request. Grounds aside, though, to tell you the truth, at that point in a girls’-school senior year, between the college-application drama and the final-play-of-the-school-year-casting drama (well, “drama drama,” I guess) and the prom drama? I just wanted to get my diploma and get out of there without any more fucking crying.
So: I’d have gone with another gown. I know trying on all that jenky rayon is a hassle, I know the dress looked great on your daughter, I know that she had no way of knowing that JL’s mother would offer to buy her the dress, I know it’s absurd and irrational for JL to feel “devastated” about a dress she couldn’t even wear — I know all that.
But I also know how teenage girls get about that kind of thing. JL feels like she saw it first. She feels like it’s “bad enough” that 1) she’s not going to that prom herself and 2) she couldn’t afford her dream dress even if she had gotten an invitation. Now, your daughter is “rubbing it in” by buying her dream dress and wearing it while JL stays home and is ugly and po.
…Oh, I know. I know! It’s childish and self-absorbed and whatever all else. But some teenage girls do not yet distinguish between the experiencing of an emotion and making other people responsible for the management of that emotion, and I agree that JL should probably just “deal with it,” but the thing is, to her, this is dealing with it. Now it falls to your daughter to “deal with” that, and you can try to tell her that not everyone has to, or is going to, sign off on everything she does, and it’ll blow over, but…see above. Putting disappointments and disagreements into context is not necessarily a signature strength at that age.
All that said, while I agree that your daughter is not in the wrong here, I think the only way to have avoided the contretemps is to have bought a different dress. (And I suspect she knew how it would go over, even before she texted JL. Not that she shouldn’t have made the choice she did, but she does have to live with it now; just something for her to consider.) Failing that, I’d suggest she apologize to JL for not realizing how much the dress meant to her — not for buying it, or for anything else; just for appearing insensitive — and try to let it go at that. Don’t play into the idea that it’s a huge deal; don’t give the drama fire any oxygen. If her friends want to get all grievance-committee about it on FB, she can ignore it until they seize on something else. It seldom takes long.
Or there’s the “actually, I’ll just return it…it looks better on your…’body type’ anyway [sucks teeth]” tactic. Take the moral high ground; get a dig in on your way there. Just an idea (which I’m sure your daughter is much too gracious and compassionate to consider) (unlike a certain snitty bitch of yore, who made sure to point out that the dress was “a better cut for someone REALLY SHORT, LIKE YOU”).
Thank God we don’t have to go back to high school, amirite? Anyway: good luck to your daughter, and let us know how it’s going.
Tags: etiquette friendships
I would play it up like the daughter got the dress because JL made it look so fantastic, and it was so pretty that if JL couldn’t wear it, the daughter didn’t want it to go to waste.
Actually, if I were the daughter, I would roll my eyes and say, “Whatever,” but I guess that’s not helpful?
Ohhhhh, prom. Since Daughter is only a sophomore, there are still TWO FULL YEARS of drama ahead, and I can guarantee that this particular episode will be trotted out at all opportunities and will be beaten more than a red-head dead stepchild’s horse. That’s just how teenage girls roll, and can I just get down and thank Jeebus that Facebook and texting didn’t exist in the early 90s when I was that age? I can barely deal with the drama that FB brings *now* and I am 36 damn years old.
AHEM.
Anyway, the diplomatic thing would be to choose another dress. There are thousands, and with a bit of sleuthing it might be possible to come up with one that is similar enough to still look amazing but dissimilar enough that it’s a different dress. I’m not a fan of rolling over and letting people steamroller me, but Daughter is a sophomore. This shit isn’t going to go away. If she were a senior, I’d tell JL to suck it and go to the prom looking all fabulous. But… two more years.
I have nothing to add to your response except that it’s so true: there’s what’s right or wrong to an adult and what’s right or wrong to a teenager in high snit, and rarely shall the two meet. I definitely don’t think it was wrong of her to buy the dress in the first place, but I agree that it’s probably the for the best if it gets returned.
BTW, is anyone else glad they didn’t have to navigate their teen traumas in the age of texting and Facebook? The high drama of being in HS plus the ease with which tone in electronic communications can be misinterpreted, misconstrued, and twisted would have put me in therapy far earlier than regular teenagerhood did.
Good answer overall, but this: “some teenage girls do not yet distinguish between the experiencing of an emotion and making other people responsible for the management of that emotion” …was a beautiful little pearl of wisdom hidden within it. You could easily replace “teenage girls” with “women” or “people” & it would still ring true–I know I myself took far too long to realize that my crying wasn’t an automatic indictment of whoever I’d been interacting with before the waterworks began.
Prom Mom, I have no words of wisdom as I never went to prom or Prom and I have no daughters. All I can say is I hope it works out for everyone involved because at that age the BFF relationship and all it’s ups and downs. . . well, you’ve got a front row seat so you know!
Sars–good call on rejecting the peplum!
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to call my mother and once again apologize for my behavior from the ages of 14-18 as I suspect I was the 70s version of Prom Mom’s daughter’s bestie.
I’m a bit gobsmacked that two different proms at two different locales with presumably two different sets of attendees couldn’t have been done with one dress. Or is that hopeless of me?
I see that we’re putting peplums on swimsuit bottoms now. Can that be a sign of the apocalypse?
As to the LW, perhaps daughter can tell JL that she’s wearing the dress in tribute, and promise to tell all her friends that JL is being so gracious about ‘letting her’ wear it. It’s presuming a happier outcome, but sometimes making that presumption makes way for the feelings to come around to it.
Or she could put a big ol’ sash around it that says “JL’s dress.” That would serve as penance and a conversation starter!
That’s the hard thing about this — no one’s really in the wrong. Your daughter had to know this’d go over like a ton of bricks, but I don’t think she was ill-intentioned, and she has a right to wear the perfect dress, if this is the perfect dress. At the same time, JL is overreacting, but she’s a high school sophomore, so, duh, and she has a right to object, too. If your daughter can find another dress, I think that’s the best way to go. If she agrees, then good luck; not only do I remember prom dress shopping myself as a harrowing nightmare, I work in a big well-known department store and walk by the dress department every day on my way in and out the door. No thanks.
In high school, for junior prom, which is now eight years ago and when did that happen, my clarinet stand partner and I bought the same dress coincidentally. This easily could’ve been World War III, but to us, it was hilarious. Why? Don’t know; somehow we were both lucky enough to be tuned that way at that age. Possibly because we were both pale busty plus-sized sixteen-year-olds and it was one of like three dresses in the world that year that looked good on a pale busty plus-sized sixteen-year-old. There’s still a picture on Facebook of the two of us at prom. (On top of this, we both took saxophone players to prom with us, because none of the other things I said in this paragraph were dweeby enough.) Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone in my grade had dress drama that year, and of course we all would have known if there had been. We must be from another planet.
Boy, would I have given a whole different (and less sympathetic to JL) sort of answer here, but… I was never a teenage girl, nor did I have sisters, so what do I know? Nothing.
I can offer some info on the question in the final sentence of the letter, though: definitely, saying “prom” without the article is not some new invention. In my high school, back in the early 1960s, we always “went to prom.” The other way is well established too, so I guess it varies locally or regionally, or something.
I went to my junior prom in the exact dress that another girl in my group bought. I don’t remember there being a lot of drama–mostly laughter about the other’s good taste, keeping us separated in photos at either end (there were eight couples, so plenty of froofy gown space between), and no real consideration of either of us giving up the dress, since we bought it at different times and it looked totally different on each of us.
Accordingly, I’m in the, be sensitive to your friend’s feelings but don’t return the dress camp. Unless you were planning on wearing this dress to every prom from here on out (which would be cost-effective, but wasn’t the way it played out at my school), you won’t wear the dress to the same event as your friend, who is welcome to look magnificent in it at homecoming, next year’s prom, whatever.
If that doesn’t sit well with the facebook hoi polloi (yet another problem I didn’t have to deal with back when), you can keep shopping, and if you find a dress that is equally great as the first, swap ’em out. Also, if wearing a slightly less ravishing gown will assuage feelings all around and keep your daughter from feeling guilty so she can thoroughly enjoy herself, maybe that is the best answer.
I’m sort of with Sars in that I probably wouldn’t have bought the dress in the first place, or even tried it on. Then again, I say this now as a 30 year old. I have no idea what 17-year-old me would have done.
Boy, shit like this makes me glad I didn’t really have any close girlfriends at my school. I was cheap and wore a $10 Value Village dress to prom and now look at the photos and wish I’d gotten a pretty princess dress, but I didn’t deal with any drama. :)
Nooooo please do not body shame the other girl with the “body type” comment! That’s a shitty, shitty thing to do.
For the record, I think they’re all fucking morons for caring about OMG SAME DRESS or whatever, but do NOT contribute to giving this kid a complex about her body.
This may sound epic-ly, crushingly naive of me … but could the daughter call it: “the Friend dress” … and could they trade off wearing it? And they could have a whole kit of pictures of each of them in the dress at different places. Kind of like the sisterhood of the traveling pants, except: Prom.
… oh dear. I am out of it, aren’t I? Maybe I am letting my wistful thoughts of “damn, high school coulda been less hellish” color my ideas.
Disclaimer: didn’t have to deal w/ FB, didn’t have to deal with texting … and, for that matter, was asked as a pity date to prom. Ah, the memories.
I really like Sars’ suggestion for daughter to just talk to JL, and say something like, “I’m really sorry for not realizing how important it was to you.” Because I think that’s more what it’s about, for JL, since the dress represents her not being able to go to the prom at all. I think that such an apology would be a really nice way to acknowledge her feelings without turning it into High Drama (or at least not *more* High Drama).
@Emmers – obviously Sars was joking about that approach, but what’s shaming about the phrase “body type?” I actually found it helpful as a teen to hear about body types, because it helped me come to the realization that people are shaped differently, and there was nothing WRONG with my pear shape. In this case, it’s just acknowledging that some silhouettes will flatter some people more than others.
Two of my friends and I all wanted to wear near-identical dresses to the big holiday dance junior year of high school, and couldn’t decide who got to wear it. So, we all wore near-identical dresses, and periodically went to the bathroom together to swap as a joke. Not a single person noticed (not even later, when looking at photos where we’re wearing different dresses in each picture). But we still found it endlessly hilarious and had a great time.
Of course, we also arrived completely wasted and newly-tattooed (this is what growing up overseas does to you), so that might have played a part.
Boy, would I have given a whole different (and less sympathetic to JL) sort of answer here, but… I was never a teenage girl, nor did I have sisters, so what do I know? Nothing.
I’m not particularly sympathetic to JL. I think she’s being a fucking baby. But making a principled stand on that kind of thing in Girl World is seldom worth it.
Oh Amanda. I loved your second paragraph. I think we would have been buddies in high school. And perhaps you would have found a saxophone player for me to go to prom with, since I didn’t go.
And I have just blown my mind by realizing this was now TWENTY years ago. *hork*
Picking a different dress is probably the way to go. That said, I would be prepared for the possibility that even if you do that, JL never gets over this “devastating” betrayal, and your daughter is still made to feel like crap. No one holds a grudge quite like a teenage girl (and believe me, I had a few when I was that age). So The Mom may want to be ready to help her daughter if she ends up feeling ganged up on even though she did the “right” thing.
I could be overly pessimistic. But “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”, as they say.
Jesus Christ, this is exactly why nobody but juniors and seniors were allowed to attend prom at my high school–sophomore year is the worst. You feel all grown up and not a freshman anymore but you are still such a hormone ridden ball of “if there’s no drama lying around I WILL DAMN WELL MAKE SOME!!”
Seriously, by senior year most teens are starting to get an inkling that this prom band isn’t worth the cover charge, no matter how much they try to cover it up with tacky limo rentals and mani/pedis and whatever crap the kids are doing today.
I’m with Sars in just giving in about the damn dress, and it’s because Bestie really doesn’t want her to. She wants Daughter to be “mean” and “a bitch” and wear the dress, because that way she can stay involved and become the star of her own little FaceBook based Gossip Girl-esqe drama–hell, it’s even better than actually going! If Daughter just graciously says “wow, had no idea you cared this much, I’ll return it right away and if I can’t find another dress as good it’s nothing compared to our freindship”…well, Drama Sails? Wind taken out.
I bought the same prom dress as my lifelong best friend, after she did (in fairness, I thought I was buying a similar one, but didn’t realize it was literally THE dress) and then refused to return it because we went to two different schools. “It’s the PRINCIPLE OF THE THING! It was MY DRESS FIRST!” she wailed. “But who will even know but us? We’re going to different proms! Why should I give up a dress that looks great on me when it detracts nothing from you?” I defended. Lines were drawn. It got a little ugly. And you know what? The day after our respective proms, the entire thing was forgotten.
So I totally get Sars’s advice about sucking it up to avoid drama, because: teenagers, but it kind of flips the other way too. It can blow over as fast as it blows up, and if your daughter truly doesn’t want to hurt her friend’s feelings, that’s sweet, but she shouldn’t feel manipulated out of wearing the dress she wants because some girl’s going to get in a snit about it. Cause next week she’ll be in a snit about something else entirely. Cause, you know: teenagers. (And if she doesn’t get over it…then she’s a brat and I’m a bitch and I wouldn’t worry overmuch about her feelings anyway.)
OMG PROM. I went to 6 proms, and looking back I feel so sorry for all the bullshit I put my mom through about “omg the dress and the makeup and the hair and the shoes”.
I went to the junior my sophomore year, and wore the same dress (different color) as a “super-bitchy” junior. Did it cause some angst and teenage girl drama? You bet your ass. Did I take the high road? Not at all~I held my head high while explaining that dark blue was WAY more slimming than white, and said it in that nasty teen girl voice. And I am SO SORRY for being that girl.
So should JL get over it? Yeah. But how much is this friendship worth to your daughter? I know the whole “if it’s ruined over a dress, she wasn’t really a friend in the first place” shtick, but it’s more than the dress~it’s a betrayal. YES it’s irrational, but that’s just how it is. I would suggest taking your daughter shopping again~and if you can’t return the dress (special occasion dresses are hard to return) and your daughter and JL are close to the same size, offer to sell it to her mom to recoup a little of it.
I’m not particularly sympathetic to JL. I think she’s being a fucking baby. But making a principled stand on that kind of thing in Girl World is seldom worth it.
This, exactly, for anyone else who’s not quite Been There, Done That. Just get past it as undramatically as you can and move on and cross your fingers graduation gets here as fast as possible. Adult logic doesn’t help because it isn’t there. Trying to introduce it often makes a bad situation a million times worse at that age.
@Stephanie: I totally could have arranged something for you! We had tons of saxophone players. Hers was our lead alto and mine was our lead tenor, both a year ahead of us, so clearly we were all about social status. [koff]
It might not be possible to return the dress. Many stores have policies that disallow returning formalwear to prevent people from wearing it once and then bringing it back. I hope it works out!
I was a high school girl once, and I probably would have been like “C’mon, [best friend] it’s just a [redacted] dress.” But from what I remember of high school, the damage is done, and I suspect the only way to go back on it would be to get in time machine and prevent your daughter’s buying of the dress. Even if she returns it, the mere thinking of buying the dress will always be thrown in her face.
Might explain why I didn’t have many girls as friends in high school.
I have nothing to add to the above advice, but dress drama in high school? Try medical school. I would have thought that we’d be over this kind of thing by then, but no. Two of my friends bought the same dress for our med school ball–a black strapless dress, looked totally different on each person due to different body types, and with the preponderance of black dresses at the dance, I doubt anyone would have noticed. One of them ended up getting a different dress at the last minute. Good times.
My sister and TWO of my cousins showed up at my brother’s wedding in the same dress in three different colors! (Damn unoriginal designers!) It was the running joke of the evening, in the best sense! They all looked beautiful, so no big deal!
Tend to agree with Sars here (amidst an eye-roll). However, I do have a suggestion for other dresses she might try to find. When my niece was wailing over prom dresses and not finding any she liked (and they were ridiculously expensive, too)… I took her to David’s Bridal. The bridesmaid dresses there work just as well for prom, and she found one she loved, and nobody else was wearing anything like it. AND it was about half the cost of some of the official “prom” dresses. Another similar place would be Alfred Angelo.
Disclaimer: didn’t have to deal w/ FB, didn’t have to deal with texting … and, for that matter, was asked as a pity date to prom. Ah, the memories.
Most people didn’t even have AOL Instant Messenger yet when I was in high school, and I cant’ imagine how awful it must be to go through your teen years dealing with that shit. My senior prom date was just a friend (who, rumor had it, liked me “that way,” but nothing ever came of it). Junior year, a life-long friend from a different school called me in a panic a week before his prom because his girlfriend broke up with him and he’d already spent a lot of money and needed a date. I recycled a dress I’d worn to formal the year before and had a blast. :) So glad I didn’t really care about either one.
On the alternate-dress-finding tip: hit the J. Crew sale section. Cute, on-trend (sometimes too much so), and as little as $70.
@Carrie Ann –
Or there’s the “actually, I’ll just return it…it looks better on your…’body type’ anyway [sucks teeth]” tactic. Take the moral high ground; get a dig in on your way there. Just an idea (which I’m sure your daughter is much too gracious and compassionate to consider) (unlike a certain snitty bitch of yore, who made sure to point out that the dress was “a better cut for someone REALLY SHORT, LIKE YOU”).
Something about it just struck me as totally mean-spirited. I could tell it was a joke on the second read-through, but even so it still bugged me enough to comment. Couldn’t really say why.
Basically: that it did *not* seem like the constructive type of “body type” analysis you seem to think it was. “Someone REALLY SHORT, like you” is not “Well, your figure is so graceful and willowy, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have breasts.”
How has the conversation gone this far without anyone mentioning the Beverly Hills 90210 prom when Kelly and Brenda wore the same dress? To be honest, I don’t really remember how it happened. Just that it was a black minidress with a big white bow and I was rooting for Brenda.
(Here it is! “I have to find something fabulously hip.” http://www.fanpop.com/spots/brenda-and-kelly/videos/7444903/title/beverly-hills-90210-brenda-kelly-choose-same-dress-spring-dance)
Posted too soon! My point being is that you can help your teenager laugh about it if you give her a little historical perspective. Try to get her to laugh about it, so at least she isn’t driving the drama.
I assume you don’t mean that *I* thought it was constructive. Of course I didn’t; it was nasty. That was the point of it, to cut her back down to size, if you’ll forgive the pun. And it worked, too.
And I was 17 YEARS OLD. It’s not a design for living.
Edited to add —
The comment was absolutely mean-spirited, but you know, I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world, and here’s why.
I’m not into body-shaming, obviously, or passive-aggressive behavior, or any of that. Girls — people — should speak directly to one another about emotional issues and situations like this one, and try to work things out without resorting to snarking on each other’s thighs. They shouldn’t hold grudges, they shouldn’t talk shit, they shouldn’t try the case in the court of Facebook.
But that’s “should be”; we all have to live in the world of “is,” and in my own experience as a not terribly fashionable, grade-grubby, badly permed young lady who got manipulated, and picked at verbally, and got blank stares (followed by snotty whispering) when I asked if there was a problem, there are worse things to develop than a reputation for mean-spiritedness. If they know that you have a sharp tongue, sharp enough to make them cry, they’ll be a little slower to start in on you the next time, because they’ll be a little afraid of you.
Everyone can and should try to keep it on a mature, reasonable, direct, non-mean-girly level. But sometimes a peer group that age doesn’t give you that option, and in that case, honestly, you’re better off being a bitch and at least getting some respect. That doesn’t preclude you from being a good, sympathetic friend, too — but it’s high school, and you can’t get away from these people until graduation day. Letting it be known that you can dish it out at a pH of 2 is not the worst thing in terms of feeling like you’re going to survive.
Going around shitting on people or calling out their cankles is unnecessary; being able to defend yourself in high school is critical.
…Sars, I love everything about what you just said. I do feel bad about some of the things I said in HS~but I can count on half a hand the number of times it was out of the blue or unprovoked. You can be the nicest, sweetest girl in the history of high school, but once you have a target on you, it’s there, and you gotta do what you gotta do to make sure you aren’t easy pickins. As a choir geek/academic decathlon participant with few social graces and no athletic ability, being able to reduce a bitch to crying in the bathroom was what kept me from being targeted even more.
This is the kind of thing that I can easily say I wouldn’t have cared about, even as an angsty teen who obsessed over all kinds of stupid shit. I’ve never really gotten the issue with two people wearing the same dress- I mean, what is this, the Oscars? I’ve been to a few formal events/dinners over the years where I’ve noticed a girl in the same dress, and we’ve always kind of smiled at each other/had a friendly conversation about ‘great taste!’ in the ladies’ room.
BUT. I feel like there’s a dimension that hasn’t really been explored here, namely the friend not being able to afford the dress/go to the prom. From this girl’s point of view, she’s excited to be asked, and wants to go, but can’t. Then her friend has been invited and can afford to go. Then she graciously agrees to go along dress-shopping with the friend, and enjoy the fun of it, even though it must be a little disappointing/envy-making for her. Then the friend goes back, chooses *the one dress she likes*, her mom buys it for her, and it’s all too easy. Not to say that this level of drama is called for, but the whole thing strikes me as slightly…insensitive? It’s hard to get the vibe/exactly what the financial situation is from the letter, but that definitely struck me on reading it through, that the friend’s reaction could be slightly more complicated than it first seems. Not necessarily more valid, but there could be an undercurrent of feeling sensitive about not being able to afford these things/whatever. (This may be totally undercut by the claim her mom planned to buy the dress in the end, but still.)
Am I way off base? Just surprised no one has discussed this in the comments, really.
Long Island, mid-1960’s, junior high school “Spring Formal because the administration WON’T call it a Prom”. I showed up in a dress that was the identical style, different pastel tint, as a girl who I didn’t know very well/different social clique. We both just sort of got an embarassed grin and made a quick “oh, I see you’ve got the same style” kind of acknowledgement, then let it slide. Because, in my mind at least, my mom had insisted on shopping at the very CHEAPEST store on the whole island. She wasn’t about to blow a week’s pay on a dress for one night for a dam’ teenage dance. I was pretty sure the other girl got hers at the same store; no other stores were carrying such cheap fugly rubbish. Who’d want to make a drama out of that who’s-the-cheesiest situation?
Click ahead to 1969, high school senior Prom time. I hung out on the fringes of the arts-and-music hippie crowd. One of that group decided to throw an “anti-Prom”, i.e. a beach party at her family home on Prom night. So. My “prom” was spent in comfortable picnicking-on-the-beach gear. My mom was devasted, all “Aren’t you going to regret missing the Most Important Formal Occasion of High School?”, and my older boyfriend would’ve loved to go to Prom because he was already out of school and hadn’t gone to his, but I just didn’t want to deal with all the fancy bother. No regrets for me.
I just wanted to chime in to say that Jen S 1.0’s suggested wording, “Wow, had no idea you cared this much, I’ll return it right away and if I can’t find another dress as good it’s nothing compared to our freindship” strikes me as REALLY effective, if that’s the route that Daughter decides to go. It feels to me like a nicely high-road way of giving in while getting the last word on “but you realize this is a really stupid thing to get in a snit about, yes?”
I also think it’s a great suggestion to take her to other places looking for a replacement dress — bridesmaid stuff, or J Crew (which also offers bridesmaid dresses). Cheaper, and very elegant-looking.
As for myself, I have no good advice, as I never went to any proms. I remember going dress-shopping with my best friends, because several of them were going. I also remember trying on a dress, for a lark, and really, REALLY loving it. It was a Gunne Sax thing in medium blue satin. GUNNE SAX, OMG. (This was the mid-80s, so.) And you know, I don’t even remember now whether one of my other friends might have bought the same dress. It’s possible. I don’t THINK I would have cared if she had. At any rate, a year later, I found the same dress design on sale for non-promware, shorter length obviously, and in a tiny-flowers calico fabric instead of the satin. So at that time, I got it to wear for graduation, and I didn’t have to regret Never Getting To Wear My Perfect Dress.
Where is JL’s mom in all of this? Would it be possible to have a light mom-to-mom talk about it? Maybe JL’s mom doesn’t know what a drama baby JL is being, and can talk to her in private. Also, the mean side of me says to buy JL a T-shirt that says “IT’S JUST PROM” for her birthday. You know, to wear over the dress. Feh.
Although it is probably much too late for this year, I have a suggestion that circumvents prom-dress drama as a possibility in the future: plan ahead a bit and have a dress made. When I was in HS, this is what I did, because back in the late 80s, there just weren’t attractive prom dresses as options in sizes above a 12, which was the size that I was in Jr. High, but not HS. I was also well into C cup territory by then.
I picked the style I wanted, and the fabric. The woman who sewed my dress (who I found by recommendation of the fabric store) made a dress that fit me perfectly, and made me feel fabulous.
Best part: no chance that anyone would have the same dress.
I went to both my proms, and couldn’t have afforded a “real” dress for either. I wore a recycled bridesmaid’s dress from my cousin’s wedding to my junior prom and my best friend made both of our dresses for senior prom. I think even at fifteen or so I would have been smarter than to try on and get attached to dresses I couldn’t afford, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Bestie over here. (And I’m not sure I believe that a mom who “can’t afford” the dress for the prom is going to just buy it as a birthday present for no reason at all, since presumably the prom plan is off altogether at this point? So confusing!) All my friends were similarly poor (hence the dress-making escapade) so I can’t say for sure I probably woudln’t have bought a dress a friend fell madly in love with, but.
I agree with everyone that expecting rational behavior here is probably not realistic, but, basically, your daughter has some decisions to make about how important it is to her to wear This Dress. She can do that, and deal with the fallout (and I do think an apology along the lines of “I didn’t realize how important it was to you, sorry for being insensitive” is the way to go in that case) or she can try to “make it right” by returning the dress and going with someothing else. Both options involve conceding some ground, and it’s entirely possible that neither is going to “save the friendship” or whatever. It’s a hard but age-appropriate lesson that not everyone is going to love you all the time and that getting what you want sometimes costs a lot more than it should. At least she’s learning it with dresses and not with boyfriends. (Ahem.)
I love not being in high school. Oh, how I love it.
Oh, man. Something about this brings back memories of my own mother (a dyed-in-the-wool, school-activity-shunning hippie emerita) when I announced I needed a dress for the prom:
“Why can’t you just wear your choir uniform?”
Oh, and to the point of high-school survival: the “mildly stuck-up” label I attracted helped me spot and avoid a number of vindictive backstabbers and users. I didn’t fling verbal abuse, but a little eye-rolling and good posture can do wonders against social vampires.
@C — Yeah, that did occur to me, too. I completely agree that the teen-girl drama is ridiculous and Sars is right all the way about dealing with the situation… but as someone who had much, much less spending money than every one of her friends in high school, I can relate to how JL might be feeling here. It must make the “betrayal” feel even more hurtful. Not being able to afford the same things as your friends does tend to sting a little extra around prom season. Then again, I was pretty determined to avoid this kind of soap-opera bullshit back in the day, so I learned to let situations like this roll off my back. A tall order for any sixteen-year-old, I know.
Aw, the interwebs will not reveal to a clip of the “I Love Lucy” routine in which Lucy and Ethel buy the same formal dress for a TV appearance, and then rip each other’s outfits to shreds on air while singing Cole Porter’s “Friendship.”
I’m with C here, I think. The money situation made me feel squicky for JL (who is admittedly acting like a wiener and I would hope that when she’s 30 she feels suitably embarrassed about this little episode). Especially if the early-birthday-present-angle would have enabled her to go this prom after all, which I don’t think is clear.
I just…I was more the JL than the OP’s daughter in school, money-wise, so I spent a fair amount of time watching my friends do and buy things we couldn’t afford. (My bestie was slightly better-off than my family, but still less so than the rest of our peers–we lived in a residential part of the city, they all lived in the schmancy suburbs, and one of our richer friend’s mom came to my bestie’s house to pick up the rich friend and said, “Oh, this isn’t so bad.” I guess rich friend had been regaling her family with tales of bestie’s small and crappy house. Cue me not inviting anyone to my worse house for the entirety of middle and high school.)
It seems like it really was kind of insensitive, in the end. Not saying it needs to be returned, because, you know, this is dumb, but I’m not going to go ahead and say that the OP acted spotlessly here.
Sarah’s comment above and this whole conversation are really fascinating to me. I certainly traded meanness for meanness sometimes when standing up for myself in high school. I’ve always felt a little bad about that behavior in hindsight, because now that I’m a rational..ish adult, I can see a better way to handle things.
But back then, being an assertive girl in a sea of passive-aggressive, behind-the-back smack-talking girls was the only way I knew to protect myself. I knew they would talk shit about me, because that’s sort of the Teen Girl national pastime. But they soon learned that if it got back to me, I would actually come to them in person to talk it out. That was not the accepted way of things in my suburban MN high school, and it wasn’t worth it to them to be called out publicly, so eventually I was just kind of off-limits.
Oh, Sars, how I wish you had gone to high school with me.
I didn’t get asked to prom, and — like a typical teenager — made a HUGE, ENORMOUS DEAL of it. Lots of weeping, lots of self-pity, and yes, it was RIDICULOUS, but high schoolers have a really, really hard time seeing anything beyond, well, HIGH SCHOOL, and all the crap therein. This is one of the reasons they are so insufferable.
I feel for JL, is what I’m saying. Yeah, she needs to get over it, but she probably won’t. Better to err on the side of indulging her here. I would bet the mortgage that in 10 years she will remember this and feel like a huge ass about all the dramz.