With prom season rapidly approaching for high schoolers across the United States, get ready for your Facebook newsfeed and Snapchat stories to become cluttered with the most creative, daring, but also deeply problematic promposals. I started to become critical of promposals when my school’s administration published a letter speaking to the implications of promposals through the student newspaper. According to the Oxford Living Dictionary, a promposal is, “an elaborately staged request to be someone’s date to a prom.” Although on the surface promposals appear to be a playful community spectacle, when examined with a more critical lens, promposals begin to seem isolating, exclusive, outdated.
The first and foremost criteria of an extravagant promposal is that it takes place in public. Although a school is not technically a public space (because there are certain rules that govern the institution), cafeterias or outside spaces like fields or hallways act as public space within high schools. It is space where teachers, staff, administrators and students are free to roam, converse casually and interact. Usually, promposals are marketed to peers as spectacles, and when not many people are present, the events are, of course, filmed and documented to share on social media platforms. The public aspect is the most damaging part of this mindless tradition, for it forces upon community members a certain standard and expectation to take part in.
The value that high schoolers place on these promposals, made evident by the hundreds of thousands of views and comments on viral promposal videos or even Google Trends can be viewed as a twisted form of training for future endeavors like marriage proposals. The personal is political, and to participate in promposals sends a very specific message about marriage and relationships to the people observing, willingly or not. Also, the public nature of a promposal adds immense pressure for its recipient to reply yes in order to avoid embarrassment for both parties which can also be tricky to navigate especially with the issue of consent. The emphasis on promposals perpetuates anxiety and more importantly, exacerbates strict and outdated gender roles that foreshadow experiences one often encounters later in life.
Not only do promposals mimic the optics of traditional marriage proposals, but they also further a narrative too often exclusively accepted in straight relationships. Only in June of 2015, roughly two years ago, was same-sex marriage legalized in all 50 states. What is the purpose to practice and replicate an act that perpetuates a tradition exclusively available to straight couples? The very nature of promposals, a portmanteau of the words “prom” and “proposal,” finds its roots in marriage, a label for a union to describe a sexist and possessive relationship between a man and woman. Public promposals are applauded, and thus inherently socially elevates those who are comfortable enough to display their sexuality (and sometimes class, if the promposal requires more than poster and some markers) proudly. Students who are uncomfortable or still in the process of figuring out what sexuality is and means to them are placed, often unintentionally, in confusing and stressful positions. Although the intent is not to further some heteronormative agenda, the impact is doing just that; the impact takes the center stage in this case. Promposals look like attempts to imitate and conserve this antiquated idea of publicly declaring a relationship which has its origins deeply rooted in marriage which originated as a religious practice.
If you are thinking about doing a promposal, think twice about how your actions come off, even if the impact does not match your intention. Personally, I also feel awkward viewing a promposal, let alone a proposal in public, of some stranger. Why am I sharing this moment with you? Maybe you really love the person you are asking to prom. To that, I ask you why you feel the need to make it a public spectacle. I urge you to think beyond the Instagram likes or Facebook fame that might come from promposals. Schools should be places devoted to learning, fostering community and inclusion, and having a space to figure out who you are. It is important to think critically about the traditions we choose to pursue, what messages they send to the community and whether or not they act to exclude rather than unite.
