Where Have All the Prom Queens Gone?

Glory Days

deemorales — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:47:20 +0000

Did you sit at the cool kids table in high school surrounded by the popular kids?…or did you sit alone wondering when the prom queen or hunky jock was finally going to recognize you? You have to admit you knew exactly who you were in high school. You knew your place. It’s prom season once again and for many that’s equivalent to sticking a knitting needle in your eye socket and going to bed with a migraine.

We all know that maneuvering within the social confines of a high school society is a little like penetrating a secret cult. Chances are that prom queen never did see beyond the metal mouth and the slight brush of acne. The question I pose is this….do you ever leave high school? Are you doomed for a life of quite desperation and acceptance… or a life of “what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-these-people….I was in the popular clique?”

I’ve been asking this question for years and have gotten the most incredible answers. Some people are true professional successes who never feel good enough and others are still waiting for life to hand them the prizes they feel entitled to. I’m a television journalist who has been posing this question with my writing partner following a summer of watching teen movies as a background for a screenplay. We had to ask the question What the hell happens to all the mean bitchy prom queens in the movies? And why is everyone so obsessed with high school? We made up a questionnaire, passed it around, and were blown away by the answers. High School is pretty much a common experience. But can you leave it behind and get on with your life?I thought I did. I loved high school until my Air Force dad brought us from England to the Bible Belt. So I can see both sides.

We want to know your deepest secrets about high school.We want to know those stories of glory and heartache. Anonymous, of course. E -mail us directly at PromQueensForever@gmail.com or give us an answer here. (Be sure and give your first name only and the year you graduated) I will be taking a look at the common groups that our survey designated. You know, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the bad boys, the bandies….and of course, the prom queens. So brush off those tiaras and football trophies , clarinets and leather jackets. This is your time.

Best High School Movies

deemorales — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:02:17 +0000

Disney has a new movie called Prom coming out Friday. It’s our duty to check it out, but I must say the expectations aren’t too high. How can you Disney-fy that gut- wretching-bad-decision-makings iconic ritual called prom. We’ll let you know what we think.

Meanwhile there are some really great teen movies out there. Some you may know really well…others you might think are too old school. We think good movies are good movies. So pull out the popcorn and the junior mints. It’s Teen time at the movies.

Our Favorites:

The Outsiders
Sixteen Candles
Carrie
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Clueless
The Last Picture Show
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Breakfast Club
Pretty in Pink
Grease
American Pie
Mean Girls
Easy A
Heathers

Do you agree/disagree with out faves? What are some of your all-time favorite high-school flicks? Have at it!!!!!

In With The “In” Crowd

deemorales — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 03:29:52 +0000

I truly loved high school. I adored being the popular girl. I may not have been the prom queen, but I had all the benefits just by hanging around with her. Walking in to school every day brought glances and sitting at the cool table made my life worth living. Wish things were still that simple.

Mary

San Francisco

the prom queen tables have turned.

deemorales — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:13:08 +0000

Hey Prom Queen—

You were the bitch from hell who stole my boyfriend , spread rumours about me and ruined my reputation. back in the 90′s. Well the tables have turned. there is such a thing as karma. You were the way-too-pushy realtor that showed my husband and I a new house. I didn’t let on, and believe me you had no idea who I was . You were shrill and brittle and you look ten years older than you should. Yet somehow, underneath the polyester suit and the fake designer purse you had that prom queen attitude. Go figure. Have a nice life with your tiara honey, while I enjoy every minute of mine.

Letters From High School Survivors

deemorales — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:52:23 +0000

We had them all: jocks, trouble-makers, geeks, party-annimals, teacher’s pets, weirdos, bullies, pot-heads, and sluts. But no Prom Queen. Our private, college-prepatory school was above that silly stuff. Beauty contests were reserved for the public schools. However, in reality, my high school was as absorbed in reputations and gossip as a hot-off-the-press edition of an US Weekly magazine.

Rumors galloped from person to person at a feverish pace and with urgency as if we’d just been told the sky was falling. The juicier the gossip the quicker it spread throughout the school. In our tiny school we knew everything about everyone and what we didn’t know we assumed or fabricated. We didn’t give a damn, we just wanted excitement. A secret quickly entered the realm of public knowledge. Fact and fiction, scandal and deceit, all of it out in the open. Having my life put on display, assessed, and critiqued, that part I won’t miss.

But high school really was a blast. Who can forget weekend parties while the parents were out of town? Even though a small get-together always turned into a school-wide jamboree and something always got broken. Friday nights when a vivacious crowd gathered to support the school’s grid-iron gods. The blue and white bleachers filled with rowdy Cyclone fans. The elaborate dances that were the most anticipated and dreaded events of the year. Waiting to be asked, finding the perfect dress, trying to shed those extra pounds.

But all of it was about appearances: who looked the best, who scored the winning touchdown, who showed up with who. I always got the guy, made good grades, stayed enemy-free more or less, and ended up at one of the hardest colleges to get into; there wasn’t too much they could say. That’s probably why I liked high school after all.

Mallory, 2006

check out my blog Wanderlust

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My high school ‘experience’ started out quite normally, I would suppose. Coming out of 8th grade, some of my friends were the ‘popular’ kids. . . some were the ‘band people’ (like me), and others. . . well…others were just regular kids.
But, when I got to high school, everything changed. Where once my grade school and junior high had been filled with kids I played with from the time I was five or six, my high school was now a melting pot of kids from other schools in the town I grew up in, those ‘Catholic’ kids, plus kids from the area where all the blacks lived.
High school was very different. It was class-based. Of course, I didn’t know that then, but I certainly can see it now. The kids that I considered my friends from my early years had now become part of the crowd of kids that were the jocks, the student council member, the beauty queens.
But I was no beauty queen. I was different too. Having contracted arthritis at age 10, my jaw somehow stopped developing and I had a severe recessed chin. And, to top things off, having been conceived by two parents who were both of British decent, I had big, round, green eyes. Have you ever been to England? I hadn’t, and this, of course, was how people in my family looked, and they seemingly accepted me just fine. So, what I was in for was completely unexpected. The ‘new’ kids in High School soon realized that I had these ‘abnormal’ features. So, with a recessed chin and big eyes that I was so fortunate to have inherited, I became known to those kids I had never met as ‘Fish’.
Being called ‘Fish’ every day of my freshman year had a profound effect. I withdrew. I contemplated suicide. And, my parents, rest their souls, had no clue. Not because they didn’t want to know, but because I refused to bring them into my tortured world.
I did what I could to self-preserve. I tried to avoid these kids. I would take stairs between classes that I knew they didn’t take. I would come to school through different doors, and I began to limit my interactions to those kids who were more like me… ostracized. Band members, geeks, unattractive kids, kids with good hearts.
I soon found myself. I became a people pleaser. I did whatever it took (within limits, of course), to be accepted. I found that I needed to focus on making a career that I knew later I could throw in these kids faces. So, I hunkered down with my new-found friends who thought I was fun, funny, smart, and had a clue as to what was really important, and in my last

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I LOVED high school! In fact it was probably the most genuine fun I’ve ever had!!! I was in the ‘popular’ crowd. I always had a boyfriend. I usually broke up with one because I already had another one waiting. Where I went to high school there were definite groups: the bandies, the nerds, the hoods, the aggies, and us. You never associated with another group, I’m not sure why, you just didn’t. I was beat out of Best Looking of my senior class and Wrestling Queen which hurt at the time because the whole school voted on it. But at my ten year reunion, I realized how much better my life was than either of those girls and so what if I didn’t get a couple of extra pictures in the year book.

Meredith 1986

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Q What did you think about the Prom Queen at your school? What happened to
her?

I hated her. It was years of Twiggy and I was chubby…Harold’s clothing
ruled and the one who was prom queen had made sure I was the one wearing
the clothes from TG and Y when they did the fashion show…I went to a
class reunion hoping that someone would be leading her in on leash…That
the years of dippity doo had gone straight to her brain and nothing worked
everything sagged and the world had dropped something akin to pidgeon doo
on everything she had hoped and dreamed of…. But I got over it… Years
passed and when I actually went to a reunion she could have been lead in on
a leash and I was sad… I needed a little more good honest hate you till I
die kind of attitude to get me through the rest of life … What am I going
to do… Twenty years of hoping to show her how I had out shined and I’ll be
damned if I hadn’t done it and neither one of us cared… Who knew…

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I was never one of “them”. Strictly a sidelines girl watching, with I have to admit, some small envy. That perfect, self-assured posse in their pastel mohair sweaters – all pink and lavender. Tight fitting, of course. They even got good boobs early.
Then there were the cheerleaders so little, cute and perky while I was tall and gangly.
However, years pass, and as I discover at high school reunions – those cute little cheerleaders are not so cute as chubby little ladies – though still perky. Strangely, the mohair girls so full of themselves now confess they too were scared and insecure

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I guess I was thought of as a slut, but I could never figure out why. My parents wouldn’t let me date until I was 18. I wore trendy clothes when everyone else wore tennis shoes and sweat shirts. I got straight A’s all three years. One guy said he thought I drank and took drugs. Never touched the stuff until college. I recall girls calling me a slut and pushing me in the halls between classes. A group of girls would wait for me after school and threaten to beat me up. I know a lot of guys I know a lot of guys were interested in me. I had a D cup by 10th grade.

My prom date dropped me and I spent my senior prom in the girls restroom crying.

Michelle 2006

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I was the Quarter back . I dated the captain of the cheerleading squad my entire senior year who was jealous of the prom queen….who was a fellow cheerleader. I like the prom queen as well. It’s funny looking back on some of the dirty looks in the hallway between the girls.

Jamie 1976

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I fit in the middle–not jock/cheerleaders, but a more affluent, intelligent group that was still very social. As far as the prom queen goes she was a self centered bitch who thought the world revolved around her. At our ten year reunion she was divorced, two kids to dads and quite large.

Clay 1990

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I became a lawyer. Going to my 20 year class reunion was important to me, mainly because I had became successful by then. I could throw it in their faces. I could confront the kids that had made fun of me. What did I discover? That the kids who had made fun of me didn;t even remember. You mean I have suffered all these years, still remembering those extremely hurtful comments, and you have no recollection of what you put me through?

How could you no know? How could you be so impervious to the pain your caused?

Well, they didn’t. And that taught me the most important lesson. Kids are kids. They say and do hurtful things to other kids. Sometimes they lash out like the Columbine boys. Others commit suicide. And some, like me, although deeply wounded, realize there’s something more out there and they make their statement the old fashioned way–they earn it.

The Bullies

deemorales — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:37:00 +0000

Not all bullies in high school were 230 pounds and gave a mean purple nurple. Some wore pink and smelled like heaven-on-earth .But whether they were petite and wiley or large and menacing…bullies were the curse of high school. If you’ve ever had your head in the toilet or been publicly humiliated for wearing the wrong color shoes…you know all about the power of the bully.

They were even worse when their friends were around. Somehow humiliation is even more satisfying when you have an audience. Power in numbers, That’s precisely how they gained fearful control over their victims.. You can look back now with high school a safe distance away and say they must have had personality disorders or a dysfunctional family. Sounds good now doesn’t it? But in high school it was hard to have any empathy for the people who made your life a living hell. And if you felt bad for the people they stalked, you were powerless. Bullies don’t take kindly to rightful indignation.

It’s hard to say who were feared the most…the big lugs who could break your neck or the mean girls who could break your spirit. They were a force to be reckoned with. Has this new world of politcal correctness and diversity changed the bully-victim cycle. Hell no .It’s getting worse. And now there’s U-Tube and IM’s to make it more public and even more humiliating.

Tell us your bully stories.

REUNIONS

deemorales — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:16:58 +0000

Ok big shot. You put high school behind you and become tremendously successful and have a life that Donald Trump would envy. You have the spouse that causes a fair amount of rubber-necking and your kids/pets are stellar. Good for you. Because one day there will be a letter in your mailbox that will bring you to your knees. It will look innocent enough. But we guarantee that this one will stop you dead in your tracks.

No, it’s not the IRS audit for your private jet. It’s the invitation to your class reunion. And it’s a bitch. All of a sudden your entire high school history will come flying through your head. And no matter how successful you are now you will start to panic. Should I ? Shouldn’t I? Do I have time to loose 20 pounds/have plastic surgery/buy a new sports car?. It’s Oh my God. And just to make it even more fun once they’ve found you you’ll get another and another….every 5-10 years.

Of course, there’s the brave front that everyone puts on. Avoiding the “oh my God, what happened to you?” Or the equally disturbing.” Wasn’t she the girl that picked her nose? Wow…now she’s a babe.” Of course you’ll drink too much, say many inappropriate things and try way to hard to hook up with your high school crush. It’s not pretty.

Geeks

deemorales — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:48:36 +0000

Is there anything more heartbreaking than seeing a lonely figure in the middle of a hormone smorgasbord? High school was a bitch if you cared and weren’t included and if fellow students considered you a nerd. . . No matter what you did, no matter how hard you tried….being a loser was rough stuff. Just ask Frasier Crane or any of the other sit com regulars who made a career out of playing the outsider.

People were mean. There waslittle or no regard for anyone else’s feelings. After all teenagers have the compassion and manners of Neanderthals. No one was out to look after anyone else’s feelings. If you could dart under the radar…that was about all you could do.

There are urban legends about teenagers who went out of their way to be nice to the new girl (especially if she was hot). But come on….we all know it didn’t happen very often. There’s a pecking order…a food chain if you will and we all knew our place. If you are at the bottom …each hellish day was a marathon of self preservation.

The good news is that losers often become winner in real life and nerds become bright successful and take the world by the storm. Do they ever forgive and forget? Doubt it. We are, after all just mortals. Hats off to the success stories…there’s some magic there.

Runners Up

deemorales — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:24:46 +0000

She just seemed to know she was getting the tiara Didn’t she? That oh-my-god expression and teary-eyed reaction was all put on. That slow motion walk to stand up near the quarterback was as deliberate as a bitch slap in prison. She had some nerve. You should have been the Queen. You’re the one who decorated the gym and made cookies for the pep club. You were the student council president and the girl that was nice to everyone. And you had to stand there and watch her walk the walk and take the prize. Excruciating. Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.

–ANONYMOUS

If you were a runner up things had to get ugly. After all you put yourself out there and you were publicly rejected. Brutal. Either you went on with your life and became an anchor woman or a courtroom diva ….or you simply put yourself in a position where you never had to compete again.

Running for Prom Queen begins way before high school . Tea parties and secrets, best friends and pink Barbie parties were the breeding ground for crowns and handsome princes.. We learn then that life isn’t always easy or fair. Our mothers taught us to invite everyone to our birthday party. But some mothers didn’t…and sometimes we were left out.

We quickly learn the art of pleasing to stay afloat in that world of parties and movies and sleep-overs. Sometimes we would give up our training bras to be invited. There were always some girls that were always invited. They didn’t have to do anything. They just accepted that they would be invited…and they were. These are the girls that are in Prom Queen Training. A ritual we were clueless about. But an invisible training camp that produced those icons of American high school life as carefully as the SAS.

The tiara takes a toll.

Bad Boys Bad Boys Whatcha Gonna Do?

deemorales — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:51:35 +0000

God we love those bad boys. Mmm……mmm . Our fathers hated them, the school cliques scorned them and we would deny to the death that we were attracted. But the truth is we were. Those misunderstood greasers, J.D.’s, bad boys, playas, no matter what you called them. They were exciting and they were HOT, even when we didn’t know what that meant. That’s why bad boys traipse through life thrilling us in many, many ways.

Some, like Mick Jagger, never grow up. Some turn into the soccer coach. And them some, like in Grease, end up with Olivia Newton John. But those memories in high school of the secret trips to building behind the school , all that cigarette smoke, well that was good stuff. No one told us about second hand smoke then, so it was a first hand experience of tasting the forbidden fruit. And it was fantastic. Who didn’t have a secret crush on James Dean? That’s why he’s still a male icon.

The girls that were in that group usually didn’t have the same effects on guys. Most of the time the handsome jocks would turn away from the girls in the tight sweaters that hung around with the greasers. They were tough talking and hard living. Rizzo knew her place….but Sandy….well she just couldn’t resists a little Travolta on the side. Let’s face it — the bad boys have always had their following . That misunderstood rebel with dreamy eyes and the tight jeans…he’ll always have a following. .

We love the bad boys.