Julie Saito

Header Image: Rockwell, Norman. After the Prom. 1957. Oil on canvas. 31" x 29". Private Collection.

"Promposal: The Most Important Decision of Your LIFE!"

Julie Saito

CAS HI303: Sex, Love, and Family

Professor Blower

May 5th, 2023

What would you do with $900? You might take yourself and some friends to a once-in-a-lifetime dinner, or maybe put it into an emergency cash fund. The average American family, according to the financial service corporation Visa, spent $919 on prom festivities for their children, per capita (1). Though it sounds like an extortionate amount of money to spend on just one night, it also comes as no surprise: the prom experience has cemented itself as one of the most iconic American teenage experiences in the twentieth century. People often allude to prom night as the “best night of your life,” and so it comes across as reasonable to splurge. However, what may be alarming to some is that out of that $900, the average teen will spend roughly a third of it (2) to prompose–a portmanteau of “prom” and “promposal,” first coined in 2001 (3). In this novel ritual, teenagers find elaborate and grandiose ways of asking someone to prom, rivaling the marriage proposal. Though there has always been drama surrounding who one goes to prom with in its history, the way to ask has become increasingly pressurized–how did something that used to cost nothing at all get to this point? Understanding the evolution of promposals and their components reveal that they correlate to changes in American attitudes toward romance, and the increasing reliance of media as a model for real life.

Prom: What Is It? 

Before we discuss the promposal, it’s important to contextualize the prom itself. The precursor of the prom, the promenade, bears nearly no resemblance to its modern successor. Gaining popularity in the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States, particularly in New England, the promenade was a social activity in which individuals would take a walk along a public area, such as a park or even a cemetery (4). Unassuming at first sight, this walk was meant to covertly indicate one’s status and establishment in higher society. George G. Foster, a well known journalist of the late nineteenth century in New York, observes “if you touch your hat to fifty people in Broadway, your character is 'O.K.'- you are an established man” (5). This carries on well into the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, when universities begin holding promenades to celebrate their new graduates’ acquisition of manners and social standing. However, instead of walking in public places, the promenade would become a luncheon with the graduates’ families, followed by a concert. Though the promenade was a familial celebration, some graduates would invite a young woman as a date–which would indicate serious courtship and intent of marriage (6). This reflects the upper-class Victorian era attitude surrounding romantic relationships: there was no dating in the modern sense, thus any unwed woman a bachelor would be seen with was someone he was seriously considering marrying (7). This was doubly important in the context of a promenade, as it was the first major social event in a young man’s life. Though it is difficult to find extensive pieces of writing of the promenade, we know of them happening throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century almost exclusively through school papers, such as a Yale Daily News’ article of a Promenade Committee voting notice in 1916 (Figure 1), or a listing of the Promenade concert program in the Harvard Crimson in 1894 (8).

Conforming to a Script

Now to the promposal. Regardless of what form of the prom(enade) you look at, one thing remained constant: the importance of who you asked. There is little documentation as to how individuals would ask each other to their respective proms in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, but what we can deduce is that it was as simple as a verbal invitation. One heavily referenced promposal from the diary of former US senator Dwight Morrow’s diary entry in 1884 plainly reports he had been “invited to the Smith {College} junior prom” (10). Seemingly, there are no bells or whistles to note. However, the young woman who asked Morrow to the prom would end up his wife (11)! This is one theme that prevails across time in promposals: people often went with their established beaus–and it sufficed simply to ask. However, by the 1950s, the prom transformed to the romantic spectacle it is today. Instead of being held in your high school gym surrounded by balloons and paper streamers, teenagers of the midcentury held their proms at local country clubs and other luxurious occasions. In tandem to this, Americans had mostly moved on from courtship to dating by the 1950s–instead of romance happening in the privacy of one’s family home, love was brewing in public areas such as dance halls and movie theaters (12).

This midcentury change also had an impact on high schoolers not in relationships. Because the proms of the early twentieth century did not emphasize romance, there wasn’t a strong expectation that you go to prom with a date–but now that the romance factor had increased, people felt more pressured to go to prom with someone in a romantic context by the 1950s. But what were the rules regulating how one invites someone to the prom if you were single? Why, heteronormativity of course! Firstly, a girl is meant to be pursued, never the pursuer. A girl asking a boy to prom would be emasculating for him; it sent signals that she believed he wouldn’t have the courage to do this. She was also meant to never come across as too eager–she couldn’t drop hints more obvious than what polite society allowed. We see this come to fruition in one episode of the 1950s TV sitcom “Father Knows Best.” High schooler Bud Anderson asks his classmate Judy if she’s “planning on going to the prom” at their public library (23:28~23:55):

They follow the 1950s expectation of heteronormativity and promposing well: Judy maintains a demure face and showing genuine yet restrained enthusiasm–the promposal itself is brief, less of a promposal as it is a casual question. This is the textbook promposal of the midcentury, and well beyond into the 1990s. Much like evidence for the promenade in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, little evidence exists that the promposals of the first half of the twentieth century bearing any resemblance to the modern promposal.

So, then what explains the sudden shift in promposing grandiosity? One factor may be the increase of teen drama and coming-of-age movies from the 1970s and onwards. The genre was made popular by a variety of movies including John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink (1986), Randal Kleiser’s Grease (1978), and Steve Rash’s Can’t Buy Me Love (1987). Though not all coming-of-age films contain this element, many–including the ones listed–feature a prom scene in some aspect, whether it is the climax of the movie, or serves as some kind of resolution. By extension, the promposal serves as a narrative device, such as this scene in Can’t Buy Me Love. Here, protagonist Ronald asks Cindy to the prom, simply with one sentence (2:01):

In this instance, the promposal serves to be the finishing bow on the tumultuous love story of Ronald and Cindy. Many of the promposals featured in films in the second half of the twentieth century remain as simple as the one above. However, around the 1990s, we began seeing promposals that look more like the promposals of today. Take for instance the promposal scenes from 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). For the main couple, Patrick and Kat, the promposal is not a question, but a demand: “go to prom with me.” Kat even points this out, but nonetheless agrees to go with him; Kat does not interpret this as controlling, but rather that he is taking the lead and aligns with Patrick’s overall “my way, or the highway” attitude. In contrast, another couple, Michael and Mandella, is far more elaborate–more prompose-y. Mandella is established to be a huge Shakespeare/Renaissance fangirl throughout the movie, and she laments that she wants to go to prom, but doesn’t have a dress. Michael then appropriately promposes pretending as William Shakespeare, providing her with a (rather questionable) Renaissance inspired prom dress for her to wear (13). Interestingly enough, the characters aren’t seen interacting in the movie until the prom. Nonetheless, Michael’s promposal far closely resembles the present day equation for a successful promposal: a reference to something the promposee is into.

It’s important to highlight how William and Kat contrast Michael and Mandella as film archetypes. While both couples are people considered “unpopular” in the movie's social world, Michael and Mandella are still used as the butt-of-the-joke throughout the film (Patrick and Kat being saved from this fate by proxy of being protagonists). Thus, to a certain extent, the elaborate nature of Michael’s promposal is meant to be a joke via exaggeration of a simple event. Interestingly, the film’s release year coincides with the rise of social media, another potential factor to why promposals had gotten more elaborate. While the promposal has been part of pop culture through mediums such as film, the visibility of promposing had increased through the use of social media. Additionally, instead of fictional characters performing, the fact that real people were executing grandiose ways of asking people to prom gave a new angle to promposing: you too could have your main character moment! In “The Promposal: Youth Expressions of Identity and ‘Love’ in the Digital Age,” John M. Richardson speaks on how the digital age and the constant eye of social media has “{changed} a date to the prom {from}... a hurried hallway exchange to a staged production created with in audience in mind–not just the onlookers, but also online” (14). In this sense, teenagers truly were becoming a kind of character in a larger narrative of their life. Social media has thus transformed theatrical promposals from jokes like in 10 Things I Hate About You to the standard due to it's amplifying influence. Promposing became such a grand presence in pop culture that in 2017, MTV released one season of the reality show “Promposal,” in which they would document the process of planning and executing their promposal (15). One girl orchestrates her entire graduating class to aid her in asking out her boyfriend to prom, as featured in this trailer:

While anyone who went to prom pre-2010s may be shocked by such an elaborate scheme, for most Gen-Z high schoolers, they understand that the promposal is a must.  A personal anecdote: I remember one of my female friends crying to me and threatening to go to prom with someone else if her boyfriend didn’t get her a sign (but he had indeed verbally asked her if she would go with him). Even for established couples–who in the past would have a mutual, unspoken understanding that they would go together–the elaborate promposal had become an integral part in creating the perfect prom experience. 

While dating culture itself is still a relatively new concept, promposing has rapidly shifted alongside changing nuances of romantic relationships at large, transitioning from casual affairs to more serious and performative.

In addition to this, the ability to prompose at all upholds heteronormative power. For many same sex couples, even established ones, promposing could be a potential danger to them. When looking for evidence for queer couple’s promposals, they are functionally non-existent until the mid 2010s to early 2020s. This is largely attributed to same sex couples not receiving the same privilege of visibility until the twenty-first century; but even today, depending on the political climate of your hometown, queer couples can’t openly prompose in public, grandiose ways, lest they out themselves or their partner and place themselves in a potentially dangerous family situation. This is such a prevalent issue that in 2016, a musical based off of a real life news story in Indiana when a prom was canceled in a conservative town because a lesbian couple was rumored to attend (18). At my own senior prom, a lesbian couple I was friends with attended prom but under the guise of “just friends” in order to ensure their parents wouldn’t find out about their identity; they were not able to publicly prompose like my heterosexual friends. 

In this sense, we often take for granted the implications of the actions we consider as normal or even ritualistic. It's valuable to consider the ways in which such institutions, such as prom and promposing, uphold gender anstereotypes. 

Final Words 

The promposal today has become an over-the-top, silly social ritual, but it still holds deep revelations on changing American dynamics in romance and expectations in teenagehood. Some may argue that the shift from courtship to dating may not be evident in promposing across all socioeconomic groups. Though it is true that courting in the ways we see it through the promposal for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was mainly an upper-class ritual, prom as an institution is rooted in origins that involve marriage. However, our modern ideas of romance and dating have changed this institution of prom away from this marital, courtly ritual; today, the average teenager thinks of prom as the practice of married adult life. This is properly reflected in the light-hearted nature of these elaborate promposals: many are just puns based off of the promposee’s name or interest, as we saw with Michael’s in 10 Things I Hate About You. Another argument may be that the current state of promposing is not that teens are imitating media, but media is imitating life; therefore, films and social media have a negligible impact on promposal culture. If this were true, we would have more historical evidence of more grandiose instances of promposals far earlier than the 2000s; it strongly suggests that there exists at least a correlation between social media, the rise of #promposal, and its impact on the theatrics of promposing. 

Endnotes:

(1) “Cost of High School “Promposals” Hit $324.” Visa Inc., Accessed April 2, 2023. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2015/Cost-of-High-School-Promposals-Hits-324/default.aspx 

(2) Visa, “Cost of Promposals.” 

(3) Caitlin Dewey, “A Short History of the ‘Promposal’,” The Washington Post, April 21, 2014. Accessed on March 19, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2014/04/21/a-short-history-of-the-promposal/ 

(4) David Scobey, "Anatomy of the Promenade: The Politics of Bourgeois Sociability in Nineteenth-Century New York," Social History 17, no. 2 (1992), 203. Accessed April 20, 2023.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286016  

(5) George G. Foster, New York in Slices: By an Experienced Carver (New York: 1849), quoted in David Scobey, Anatomy of the Promenade: The Politics of Bourgeois Sociability in Nineteenth-Century New York (Milton Park, UK: Social History 1992), 203. Accessed April 20, 2023.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286016  

(6) Candace Chen, “Prom: How a High School Ritual Brought Youth Closer to Adulthood, 1890-1970” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 14. Accessed April 23rd, 2023. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/96n4586k 

(7) Ayda Loewen-Clarke, “Date Like a Victorian: Courtship and Romance in the Victorian Era.” Dalnavert Museum and Visitors’ Centre, February 12, 2021. Accessed April 20, 2023. https://www.friendsofdalnavert.ca/blog/2021/2/12/date-like-a-victorian-courtship-and-romance-in-the-victorian-era 

(8) “Promenade Concert.” The Harvard Crimson, June 21, 1894. Accessed April 19, 2023. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1894/6/21/promenade-concert-the-programme-for-tonights/ 

(9) Karal Ann Marling, Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 175. 

(10) Ann Anderson, High School Prom: Marketing, Morals and the American Teen (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 8. 

(11) Anne Hertzog, Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (New York: Random House, 1999), 44-46. 

(12) Brooke Blower, “Young Adult Romance and Seduction.” HI 303: Sex, Love, and Family: Relationships in Recent American History and Pop Culture (Class Lecture, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 16, 2023). 

(13) 10 Things I Hate About You, directed by Gil Junger (1999; Burbank, CA: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1999).

(14) John M. Richardson, “The Promposal: Youth Expressions of Identity and ‘Love’ in the Digital Age.” Learning, Media and Technology 42, no. 1 (2016): 74, https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2016.1130055 

(15) Diaz, Nina L., Adam Gonzalez, executive producers. Promposal (2017; New York: MTV)

(16) Katherine Parkin, “Sadie Hawkins in American Life, 1937~1957.” Journal of Family History 46, no. 4 (2021): 392, https://doi.org/10.1177/03631990211021153. 

(17) Katherine Park, “Sadie Hawkins,” 394. 

(18) The Prom, directed by Ryan Murphy (2020; Los Gatos, CA: Netflix). https://www.netflix.com/title/81079914