Is Prom too Expensive?
Heather Martinson
Economics
Mr. Reuter
2/7/17
Is Prom Too Expensive?
For teenage girls, what are the two most looked forward to days of their lives? Prom and their wedding day. You know why those days are so important; because they are two of the very few days in a girl’s life where she can put on a dress, get her hair done, get her nails done, go tanning, finding the perfect makeup technique and put everything together in just enough time to feel like a princess. Every girl pictures their prom going a little something like this: find the perfect dress, get her hair and makeup done so she looks like a princess, find the perfect shoes, get the perfect date (and getting asked in a perfect way), and twirling the night away. Well let me be the first to tell you: that is not how it works.
Finding a dress can be a nightmare. You go from store to store trying on what feels like a billion dresses until you find the one. You fall in love with it because it fits perfectly and the color looks great on you. Then you look at the price tag and slowly back away. After weeks of searching through stores, I finally found my dress at a little boutique that was really hidden and hard to find. I found a dress that wasn’t as expensive as some others. It was still $400; however, it was a very well known designer. Dress stores during the prom season are estimated to bring in $2.7 billion during the prom season. That includes the department stores like Macy’s, Boston Store, and Sears. As well as specialty prom dress stores like Peaches, Amilition, and Savvy Seconds.
On the day of prom, the girl usually gets up around 8 am and goes to her nail appointment, then immediately after she spends an hour or 2 in the nail salon, breathing in those harsh fumes, she goes to a hair appointment and gets stabbed by what feels like 100 bobby pins and breathing in more hairspray than what goes in her hair. Then she goes home and puts her brand new makeup on. She wants it to look perfect so she spends extra time making sure she does it right, just to mess it up in the end. She doesn’t even have her corset back dress on yet and then she hears the doorbell ring. She tells her dad to answer the door while she frantically calls her mom to tie the dress on her while she’s tying her shoelaces. She finally gets everything on and looks good enough. She goes to the top of the stairs and sees her date standing there. She is now starting to realize that she should’ve gotten her dress altered because now she can’t walk down the stairs.
The price of prom is progressively getting higher and higher. Pretty soon families won’t be able to afford to send their kids to prom. The opportunity cost of purchasing a dress that is a little cheaper and maybe not your dream dress is being able to spend more money on makeup, hair and nails so that there is something in your appearance that will distract from the dress.
This year, there is expected to be 20 million students that attend prom. The average 17 year old is expected to spend $638 with each couple spending $1,200. Prom is getting so expensive that students are starting to choose to not attend, which is depriving them of a fun experience.
Works Cited
- CNNMoney. YouTube. YouTube, 24 Apr. 2013. Web. 07 Feb. 2017.
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