Prom Night Is Here And I Have Finally Decisively Turned Into My Mother

Prom night is here – and I have finally, decisively, turned into my mother | Zoe Williams

She always believed Halloween was an Americanism too far. What would she have thought about the rise of this US high school tradition in Britain, asks Zoe Williams

silverguide.site –

When I was young, and Halloween was just becoming a thing, and other people’s mums were doing fun stuff like blindfolding children and sticking their hands in a bowl of peeled grapes, calling them witches’ eyeballs, my mum was saying: “This is a disgusting Americanisation of what was previously a very low-key event.”

I used to daydream about how great it would be to have one of those fun mums who didn’t hate America. Imagine all the other stuff she might do! She might buy Pop-tarts just to see what they were like. We might go to Disneyland.

But then 40 years flashed by, and prom became a thing, and now it’s me asking the dumb questions, which all boil down to the same question: why are we doing this? Is it just because we learned it off the telly?

It starts with the outfits. Everyone dresses up like they’re late for the finals of Mr and Ms Universe, and they each of them look so beautiful, so shyly hopeful, it makes you want to convert to a religion, just to have somewhere to put your gratitude, protectiveness and awe. But according to them, the dress is a nerd colour (“Nerd? The personality type or the sweet?” “Never mind!”) and the straps are all wrong, and the suit is too square (“Square? The personality type or the shape?” “Just leave it!”) and nothing goes with the shoes.

Then the event arrives, but nothing happens that might shift it into the category of “memorable night”. I don’t ask for the earth; I don’t need someone to have a bucket of pig’s blood emptied on their head. But nobody ever even snogs anyone they didn’t arrive with. There’s no drama, there are no home truths, because “It’s prom, it’s not Coachella,” one promster informed me, impatiently.

The real reason is, of course, that there’s no booze, yet another nuts Americanism: no drinking authorised under 21, even though for the rest of the year we’re all still British and they’ve been vomiting in each other’s front gardens since they were in Year 10.

It made me wish my mum had lived to see the day that I turned into her. But the same week, she would have lived to see the destruction of her rock-solid position: “There will never be a summer hotter than 1976.” So swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist