The meaning behind prom

By Herman M. Lagon

A student once told me, half-laughing and half-serious, that prom now feels like “Met Gala meets anime convention meets class reunion with soft launch potential.” That was a joke, but only partly. Anyone who has seen recent prom photos online knows what she meant. There are entrances staged like celebrity arrivals, gowns with enough architecture to qualify for engineering review, makeup teams on standby, and themed outfits that borrow from K-drama royalty, fantasy films, and cosplay culture. Somewhere between the ring light, the rose wall, and the third retake of the staircase pose, one begins to wonder whether the event is still a school ritual or already a production number. Yet that question is not meant to mock the young. It is meant to take them seriously. Prom matters to them precisely because it is not just a party. It is memory in formal wear, nerves in polished shoes, and a very public attempt to make sense of a life stage that feels both exciting and awkward. That is why the phenomenon deserves more than old people rolling their eyes at Gen Z fashion choices. It deserves a fair reading.

Prom, after all, did not begin as a TikTok backdrop. It came from older Western traditions of the promenade and the debutante ball, eventually becoming what scholar Amy Best described as a “democratized version of the debutante ball,” a ritual that let ordinary students participate in a formal coming-out moment once reserved for elites. Historians trace proms to the late nineteenth century, with schools first using them to teach manners, social grace, dress, and decorum before they gradually turned into the high-gloss cultural machine we now recognize (Kennedy, 2025). It later reached high schools and spread to countries like ours. Here, it did not stay imported for long. Like many borrowed customs, prom eventually found its own local shape. JS prom used to be modest: a school gym dressed up with effort, a rented speaker system, pancit, soft drinks, and maybe a fancier entrée if funds allowed. Students came in borrowed gowns, altered coats, or whatever could pass for formal without wrecking the family budget. I still remember hearing of one classmate who bought a corsage from a funeral parlor to save money. It sounds absurd now, but it says something real. Prom once felt less like a performance and more like a shared threshold.

That threshold still has value. Even the student who rolls their eyes and says prom is overrated often understands that it marks something. Researchers have long argued that rites of passage help adolescents make sense of identity, belonging, and social growth (Blumenkrantz & Goldstein, 2010). Prom, when done well, gives teenagers a small rehearsal for adult life. It teaches courtesy, timing, self-presentation, restraint, and how to carry joy without chaos. In a school setting, it can also level people for one night. The achiever, the athlete, the artist, and the shy kid all enter the same room dressed not by rank, but by occasion. For teachers, that has meaning.

But prom today is no longer just one evening in the school calendar. Social media has stretched it into a whole season of performance. There is now the promposal, the peg, the fitting, the pre-shoot, the glam team, the reveal, the reel, and the caption that must look natural after being edited ten times. Studies on adolescent social media use show how online comparison and visibility affect how young people see themselves and their experiences (West et al., 2024). That has changed the pressure around prom, sometimes before the first song even plays. That does not mean every glam prom post is harmful. Many are joyful, creative, and harmlessly extra. But it does mean the event no longer belongs only to the students in the room. It is now staged for the wider audience in the pocket. A decent prom can feel inadequate when compared with somebody else’s cinematic edit from a hotel ballroom in another city. A teenager who simply wanted to dance with friends may suddenly feel underdressed because someone on her feed arrived dressed like a moon goddess with detachable wings and a violin soundtrack.

This is where our local version becomes especially revealing. We are a country that knows how to turn gatherings into emotional theater. We do it in fiestas, weddings, graduations, baptisms, funerals, and now, very often, in school rites. We are warm, relational, and communal, but we are also vulnerable to comparison. The prom can become a family project, a barkada competition, a soft referendum on class, beauty, and popularity, all under hotel lighting. Fantasy writer Steven Sy wrote years ago that prom had evolved into a status symbol, with the date, the image, and the social display becoming part of the pressure surrounding the event (Sy, 2017). That observation still lands. The pressure now may not always be about having the prettiest partner or the most dramatic promposal. Sometimes it is subtler. Who had a stylist? Who arrived in themed couture? Who looked “main character”? Which school had the more aesthetic setup? Which student got reposted the most? In some corners, prom has become part fashion show, part cosplay platform, part social ranking exercise wearing the innocent face of a school dance.

To be fair, the cosplay and edgy-fashion turn is not automatically a problem. A teenager dressing in a way that reflects fandom, imagination, or identity is not a sign of social collapse. In fact, there is something refreshing about students refusing to be trapped inside stale formulas of the black tux, pastel gown, and ballroom beige. The youth have always mixed borrowed culture with local wit. That is why one sees prom looks inspired by anime, Victorian fantasy, K-pop, gothic glam, streetwear tailoring, and even gender-bending silhouettes that would have scandalized more rigid generations. Creativity deserves air. Individuality should not be mistaken for disrespect. Schools do not need to produce students who all look like wedding sponsors. But creativity still works best when the event remembers its center. A prom should allow self-expression without rewarding humiliation, exclusion, or unnecessary risk. The issue is not whether a student wears something bold. The issue is whether the whole event quietly teaches that attention is the same thing as meaning.

The money question, of course, sits at the table whether people mention it or not. One of the reasons prom provokes strong reactions from parents and teachers is that it can be expensive in a country where many families are still stretching every peso. American data have long shown prom as a major spending ritual, with costs covering attire, flowers, beauty services, tickets, photography, transportation, and the ever-expanding ecosystem around the dance (Kennedy, 2025). The numbers differ by city and school, but the pattern feels familiar. It is the gown rental, the tux alteration, the salon package, the corsage, the hotel room reservation, the contribution for the venue, the shoes, the makeup artist who suddenly charges “event rate,” and the photo and video add-ons nobody originally planned to pay for. One teacher in Iloilo told me she knew a parent who was more stressed about prom than quarterly exams because the child wanted a ‘bongga” setup “para hindi mapahiya.” That phrase says more than the receipt does. The deepest cost is often not financial. It is social shame. The fear is not merely spending. It is being seen to have spent less.

That is why schools and formators need to anchor prom more clearly, not by strangling it with sermons, but by designing it with purpose. Young people do not grow from being denied every risky, exciting, memorable event. They grow from entering such events with structure, dignity, and room to reflect. A well-handled prom can teach far more than a badly delivered lecture on values. It can teach consent in how invitations are handled. It can teach inclusion in how students without dates are treated. It can teach modesty without shaming bodies, elegance without elitism, and celebration without waste. It can teach events organizing and leadership. It can teach that a beautiful night is not measured by how viral it looks, but by whether people were respected, safe, welcomed, and allowed to be fully present. The best educators know that formation is not only what is said at the podium. It is what is normalized in the atmosphere. Teenagers learn from the script of an event: who gets centered, who gets ignored, what gets rewarded, and what gets quietly excused. Prom is not outside education. It is education, just wearing better fabric.

That also means adults should resist two lazy reactions. The first is total romanticism: pretending prom is a sacred tradition that must remain untouched, as if all old practices are automatically wise. The second is total dismissal: treating prom as shallow nonsense unworthy of serious attention. Both reactions miss the point. Prom is neither holy nor useless. It is a cultural container. What goes into it depends on the adults who organize it and the young people who inhabit it. If schools turn it into a pageant of money and appearance, students will learn that lesson well. If schools strip it of all delight in the name of discipline, students will learn another dreary lesson: that adulthood means joyless compliance. Neither is ideal. Educators who have watched teenagers grow up know that development rarely happens at the extremes. Young people need spaces where enjoyment and reflection can exist together.

That is likely why prom continues to exist, even in an age quick to mock it. Beneath the gowns and camera flashes lies a simple human impulse—to mark a transition with witnesses. Students do not attend only for photographs. Some come because high school has been exhausting and this night feels lighter. Some come because friends will soon scatter across different paths. Some because courage finally won over shyness. Some because they simply want to remember how it felt to stand at that uncertain doorway between youth and adulthood.

So yes, allow the creativity and the formal wear. Let teenagers enjoy the pageantry for a night. Life will soon demand seriousness from them anyway. But the glitter is not the real prize. Prom’s deeper value lies in reminding young people that they can celebrate themselves without losing sight of who they are becoming. A prom does not need to become plain to become meaningful. It only needs to remember that the point was never to produce the sharpest photo. It was to mark growth with grace before the lights go out and ordinary life begins again.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.