Looking back, I realize that interacting with girls was easy because I was so feminine, I was really a girl. However, dating girls was difficult because I had to act like a male and that was so foreign to me that I was lousy at it.
When I attended my high school's prom, my sister had to set me up with her best friend as my date. That date went fine because I already knew my sister's friend well; it was as if we were two girls out on a date. The only problem was that one girl had to dress like a boy.
So as the prom season winds down throughout the land, I think about the pretty prom gowns I wasn't able to wear to my high school's spring formal.
Times have changed. As Ray Davies once sang, "Boys will be girls and girls will be boys" and today, boys do wear gowns to proms and girls do wear tuxedos, probably not at my Catholic high school, but at some of the more progressive schools in the land.
And so it goes.
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| Miss Garber was way ahead of the curve attending her prom in Texas in 1996. |
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| Canadian lass, Rachel attended her prom in 2011. |
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| Chris attended her prom in the UK in 2012. |
In our youth we sang along with Bob Dylan that "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and over they years we have been able to see changes in the freedom to dress, express and present. While we may have wanted things to move at a different pace it is clear as we look back that the times have been a-changin'.
ReplyDeletePat
And Thank Goddess, they are a-changin' for the better!
DeleteI never went to my high school prom but I heard it through the grapevines that a girl that I knew wanted me to take her to her high school prom. I had to go out a rent a tux but I always dreamed of going in a prom as Diana. We dated through the summer but then we parted when we went off to college.
ReplyDeleteFlash forward some forty plus years when I graduated from grad school in 2011. I transitioned when I entered grad school and I attended the “Night to Remember” so I did get to go to a prom as Diana.
I guess the closest I came to attending the prom en femme was when I attended my law school reunion as a woman.
DeleteMy son attended a very progressive arts high school and graduated in 1989. Two of the "boys" in the school attended the senior prom in gowns with boys in tuxes as dates. One of them did the individual senior project performing a part from a play while sitting in lingerie at a dressing table, doing her makeup and seating her wig. This was done on stage in front of a theater full of parents. Maybe a couple of parents were upset but due to the nature of the school, most parents just thought it was interesting however a little over-acted.
ReplyDeleteI love transgender proms! Here's one from me:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/gisabelle89/37314509801/in/dateposted/