A pair of scissors glints in the dim lighting of the dance floor. There’s a muffled sound of cutting, a dull thump and then a scream. When the light finally flickers back on, there’s crying girls and scraps of sequined polyester and tulle scattered all over the floor.
The horror story of seniors cutting off the hems of juniors is something of pseudo-legend; no one can quite tell you where it comes from, when it happened or if it’s even true.
Whether or not the story is real, its effect definitely is; the fear of this pervades just about every conversation about dress shopping and length. Every year there are juniors falling in love with long dresses, only to hesitate at the last minute because they’re worried about breaking tradition. On the flip side, though more rarely, there are seniors who want to wear short dresses getting caught up in the image. Others who follow the tradition end up confining themselves to fewer options than they would have had if they’d simply gone in looking for a dress they could fall in love with. Following tradition inevitably leads to conflict, confusion and hesitation in the days leading up to prom.
In the grand scheme of things, we’ve dropped a lot of traditions when it comes to clothing as they become outdated and uncomfortable. Girls come to prom in suits, braver boys can come in dresses, heels are out and flats are in, modest and skimpy dresses are more common in equal measure, the list goes on and on. We tell ourselves that we’ve stopped policing what women are wearing, but dress length is one tradition that seems to have remained in Ladue’s prom culture — and maybe it’s time to drop it too.
