Browsing social media this morning, this post popped into my feeds. I'd like to imagine that the algorithms were taunting me.
Now, prom is a full-blown production. The average cost in the U.S. has crept up to $919, with about a third of that going toward the outfit alone. Hair, makeup, jewelry, shoes, nails — prom has become its own mini wedding.
- $919 is 61.2666 hours of work at $15 minimum wage.
- $919 is the cost of applying to a minimum of 9 colleges.
- $919 is close to the average cost of three semesters of college textbooks and course materials, when students are avoiding courses because they can't afford the books.
- $919 is almost the cost of Sylvan Learning Center's SAT prep course, and Sylvan is one one least expensive options for SAP prep.
- $919 is 4.67 months of a college student's "moderate" food budget when so many students can't pay for basic needs.
We know that high school students can and will enjoy prom without expensive clothes and professional hair and make up and manicures and limos.
We know that parents who can afford these things for their children will pay for all these things to ensure that their own children "win" status contests.
We know also that every year, students have to drop out from college because they are exhausted from working so many hours, because they enrolled in a college that is not a good fit because they couldn't afford to apply to multiple places, because they go to a college with fewer support resources (because their SAT scores were too low), because they can't pay for basic needs like food even with Pell Grants and other financial aid.
I understand that lifestyle magazines like this one aren't aiming for readers who want the justice and equity angle on every story. Yet stories like this make students who can't afford these school rituals invisible. So many parents don't "gasp" and then just pay. They have to tell their children "no". Their invisibility is making people – including school administrators – more naive about their own communities and their own roles in perpetuating inequalities. Their invisibility is clearly signaling who does and does not matter.
And I fully realize how much pressure schools would face should anyone try to put parameters around privileged students' "enjoyment" of what might otherwise be an inclusive rite of passage.
