Bad Advice Women Get: Get Fit for Prom

March 9, 2010 11:00 am     Posted in Reality  Hillary - Columbia g+ page


By Hillary

If teen magazines are to be believed, from January to June, there’s exactly one thing on every female high school student’s mind: prom. Or should I say: ~~*OMG PROM!!@! Only writing out the word like that can give it the respect it deserves.

According to sources like Seventeen, CosmoGirl (now only a website—RIP, CG!), and even classier options like Teen Vogue, prom is the absolute apex of a teenage girl’s existence. The big night apparently requires months of preparation and planning: who’s your date going to be? What are you going to wear? Can you get your dad to spring for a limo? Are you going to lose your virginity, or your dignity, or both? How will you resist the pressure to drink at the after parties? (… Because obviously, nobody ever voluntarily drinks alcohol in high school.)

I know what you’re probably thinking right now: “This is a website for women in college! Why is this stupid blogger talking about something that we all experienced years ago? I can barely remember my own prom. Sure, it seemed really important at the time, and I guess I had fun, but it definitely wasn’t actually the biggest night of my life.”

And that’s exactly my point. Prom fever, frankly, is totally ridiculous. Which makes it a prime topic for this column—because our culture inexplicably imbues this event with so much significance (can you think of a major teen movie that doesn’t end with a prom scene?), any articles that focus on prom are inevitably going to be teeming with Bad Advice for women, if you can call HS seniors “women.” That’s because there’s literally no reason any girl should make such a BFD out of prom in the first place.

But the most egregiously bad prom advice I’ve come across stands in a class of its own. It’s a specialized website on seventeen.com called the “Prom Dress Workout Finder.” The point of the site? To determine what kind of exercises you should be doing so that you don’t look like a big ‘ole cow in your dress of choice, no matter what style it is.

See, if you’re wearing a backless dress, you need to do a move called “The Usher,” according to Seventeen Trainer Jenna Philips in this workout video. But if you’re wearing a minidress, says trainer Jessica Smith, you have to do a different exercise to target your thighs. God help you if your dress is short and you’ve mistakenly been doing The Usher anyway. Probably, your date will end up dumping a bucket of blood on you or something.

It’s bad enough that girls are tricked into buying into the whole prom industry in the first place—but now they’re supposed to perform special exercise routines for the sole purpose of looking nice on a night that, truth be told, is probably going to end with their best friend throwing up on their shoes? There are plenty of great reasons to try to stay fit, but doing it in order to squeeze yourself into a certain dress is not one of them. I wish I could say that I expected better form you, Seventeen… but if I did, I’d be lying. Just like I did when I told my mom I’d be spending the night of prom at my best friend’s house.

8 Comments on "Bad Advice Women Get: Get Fit for Prom"

  1. H says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 20107:16 am 

    "Probably, your date will end up dumping a bucket of blood on you or something."

    Hahahahahaha

    But yeah, prom was not a big deal & I don't really remember it. I wasn't drunk (there) but me & my friends ditched out early to start prom weekend riiight…(so did half the senior class).

  2. Samantha says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 20109:49 am 

    I know I may be the only girl to say this but: prom sucked. lol My prom was held in a (very) small space, the dj played songs like YMCA and it was about a million degress with no fans or air conditioning. My date and I skipped out early and got tim hortons. And the 'after party'….ugh….. in an attempt to save us terrible teens from ourselves our community threw us a party at a local hotel, which we had no choice in going to. You weren't allowed to book rooms, weren't allowed to leave the deisgnated floors, there was about a hundred chaperones trolling around and you weren't allowed to leave the party until 7 the next morning. At the end my friends and I were curled up together in a hall trying to sleep. Not fun. At all.

  3. Dia says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 201011:23 am 

    why squeeze into a size you barely got the weight to fit in than wear a dress that's your true size that most likely will look better on you? i never understood

  4. Lacey says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 20101:26 pm 

    By the time I was old enough for prom, my school was determined to make it miserable for us. With security around every corner, fifty bucks to get in, and breathalizers at the front door…. it was just not worth it. Overrated indeed.

  5. m says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 20105:44 pm 

    Prom=overrated. Luckily the one prom I attended I did not take too seriously, its not worth it! Spending all that money for a high school dance is a waste, and unless you are in a movie prom is not the best night of your life or even of high school.

  6. Jenny says:
    Tue, 9th Mar 20106:27 pm 

    I'm surprised that so many posters here disliked their proms. I've been to five proms, and each one was tons of fun. I guess it helped that my group of friends and I really personalized our prom experience. From dress shopping to the prom itself to the after prom adventures, we did our own thing and had a blast the entire time. It also helped that we didn't have any especially high expectations about prom (even though one of the proms in particular turned out to be extremely awesome and memorable).

  7. Keightee says:
    Thu, 11th Mar 20108:32 am 

    I enjoyed the two proms I went to, but I didn't overhype it beforehand. I'm with Dia, just buy a dress in your size — not the size you wish you were.

  8. brandi says:
    Tue, 30th Mar 201011:50 pm 

    Exactly how I felt. I graduated in 2008 and I made the decision not to go because I didn't want to and it was way too expensive for one night. It wasn't like I wouldn't see these people again the next week! Or at graduation! Or at college! When I told people I wasn't planning on going, they made it seem like I had killed someone. Two of my teachers staged an intervention. I kid you not.

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