So are you trying to prove my point for me? You didn’t fit into your high school so you didn’t go to prom. It doesn’t matter if they were rich Wall Street types (whatever that means for high school kids).
Well, like I said, glad you had fun. 
No it doesn’t. Probably 30% of my 7th Form class went to the Formal. The next Monday at school, it wasn’t even a major topic of conversation.
American schools must be extremely cliquey. By 7th Form, I knew most of the other guys in my year, and hung out with any of the ones I got on with pretty well. Everyone else was simply an acquaintance, and chances are I’d run into them while I was out and about on the weekends anyway.
Why? It doesn’t cost anything to sit at home and play poker*, but the amount of hassle involved with getting a tuxedo, organising a Limo or something suitable as transport, getting a date (and a lot of girls didn’t want to go because of the pressure to get an expensive dress and an equally expensive makeover), combined with the fact that, really, the formal is just a disco that everyone’s gotten dressed up for, means that there’s absolutely no social stigma whatsoever attached to non-attendance.
Yes you will. Universities have Formals every year, and Black Tie Dinners aren’t at all uncommon in the professional world if you can wrangle an invitation. Personally, I’d avoid them if possible, but it can be a good idea to “Be Seen” at some of these things, so it’s not like you’re never going to have the chance to wear a tuxedo in the company of other people in tuxedoes and ball gowns…
FWIW, I went to my 6th form Formal, my (then-)girlfriend’s 6th form Formal, and my own 7th form Formal, and had a date for each event.
I don’t think anything in my life would have changed one iota if I hadn’t been to any of them, either.
*Except for alcohol or gambling money, if that’s the way you play
The British versions, “leavers dos”, that I’ve attended sound a lot closer to the Australian formal than the American Prom.
Maybe, maybe not. I wasn’t one of the “popular crowd,” by any means, but with a graduating class of over 700 people, it was quite impossible to know everyone well, or even to hang out with everyone once in a while. Even our little band of social rejects extended to 30 people or so, which was plenty to keep us busy on the weekends.
I don’t think that’s really the point of Prom. Look…it’s just supposed to be a chance for kids to do something nice with their high school friends before they go off to college or the Army or whatever they plan to do after high school.
It’s kind of like saying “I don’t like parties”. Who doesn’t like parties?
Years ago, you really were labeled a loser if you didn’t get asked to prom. The “go with a friend” thing started pretty much when I was in HS in the early 70s, though I don’t recall anyone actually doing that at our school. Prior to that, you would have been tossed out at the door if you showed up with a same sex friend.
So long as you hold a ticket, no one is going to stop you from attending the prom. However, there might still linger some old-fashioned social pressure that would make some people, especially girls, hesitate to attend without a date.
As I said, many attend without a date, but, really, unless you’re part of the whole popular crowd, there’s not much in it for you anyway.
Your date doesn’t even have to be a student at your school – there are the classic stories of someone attending with his/her favourite teacher, or his mother/father, or his older sister/brother, or a hot college girl/guy.
Well, the OP did ask about the American tradition. I think it’s been made clear that things are different in Australia.
Yes, very much so. There’s also a kind of rigid caste system, with the athletes and their cheerleader girlfriends at the top. At the bottom is anyone with a special interest, be it academics (nerds), scifi/fantasy/technology (geeks), the thespian club (theater fags), or music (band fags). (The use of “fag” here is as historical record and implies no approval of the term.)
Furthermore, classes are segregated by academic performance, usually in about three strata, so most of the time, you don’t even share classes with more thatn a third of your class/year.
There were about 700 people in my class. I regularly socialized with about dozen, regularly interacted with no more than 100, and regularly saw the faces of no more than 200. Those who weren’t among my friends, I rarely encounted outside of school.
Well, the percentage of high school graduates who attend college in the U.S. has historically been rather low. Furthermore, since the 1960s, formal dinners/dances are relatively rare in American colleges and workplaces and have nowhere near the social importance of high school dances.
In the United States, for the majority of people, the senior prom is going to be their only opportunity to cavort in tuxedos and ball gowns. Among adults, such occasions more or less died out during the Nixon administration.
And, yes, I do mean to imply that students who are interested in pursuing academic excellence are accorded outsider status in the social life of an American high school.
It depends on the school. At my high school, 99% of the class went on to college, so yes academics mattered to most, and you weren’t a nerd for studying hard. At other high schools, fewer than half go onto college, so maybe in that situation doing well academically isn’t as compelling.
My high school was weird, in a very good way. We had all of the usual cliques, except that they all overlapped. I doubt there were any two identifiable groups at my school that didn’t have at least one student in common. This melting-pot attitude, incidentally, extended to the prom, and as might be expected, made the experience considerably more enjoyable. I personally had a female date (my first, last, and only date with that particular young woman-- I asked her more or less at random, because I wanted to have a date for my senior prom, and I happened to vaguely know her), but many of my classmates didn’t, and there was no social stigma attached in either case. I borrowed a tux, and we got a parent to drive us there (I don’t remember if it was mine or hers), and didn’t do the whole motel thing. I don’t remember the total cost to me, but it was in the vicinity of $50-$100 dollars. I don’t know how much she spent, but it wasn’t uncommon for girls or their mothers to make their own dresses, or use ones from a thrift shop or garage sale (possibly altered, in some way), so the cost there was low, too.
I don’t like certain kinds of parties. One of the types of parties that I don’t like are formal dress parties with crappy music, crappy food and a bunch of people who I don’t like all that much in attendance.
It might “depend on the school” in rare cases, but we’re talking about broad American cultural trends here.
acsenray Forgive me for asking this and apologies if I come across as a bit dim 
Are you saying that the Athletes/Cheerleaders are all paired up with little or no chance for the remaining scholars to get themselves a hottie.
*I don’t think I’m dim but you never know
I would guess that this could result from a lack of interest in socializing in the first place; a dislike of the dance music and a disdain for getting out onto a dance floor anyhow. When I was a senior (in 1967), there were some people I knew who had urged me to attend, though without a date, a car, or any interest in socializing, I would have been better off staying home, listening to the Dodgers on the radio and working a crossword puzzle. If you don’t like the dances, you don’t socialize. That’s the way it eas for me, and nothing has improved in the last 39 years…
acsenray writes:
> It might “depend on the school” in rare cases, but we’re talking about broad
> American cultural trends here.
Have you done a scientific survey of this? I think you’re projecting from your personal experiences to the majority of American high schools.
Even if true, that would imply that only the athletes and cheerleaders are hotties. I would beg to differ.
I was known as “the walking mass of gray matter” in high school. No dates, no shopping at the mall (too tall, I made my own clothes, and no money), no knowledge of current music (played oboe in the city symphony).
Went to the Prom- with one of my older sister’s friends-that I barely knew. Totally boring (the band was the high school “Jazz band”)
Saw this guy a few weeks ago at a party at my sisters house (34 years later). Talked about the prom. Called him my “mercy date”, thanked him for putting up with me those many years ago. He was polite and just smiled.
But I went to the Prom! Golly, what a mess of mixed feelings that time still brings up!!