NEWS: Daddy Longs for the Good Old Days. Yawn.

CULTURE: Daddy Longs for the Good Old Days. Yawn.

Everyone knows prom sucks. Except, I guess, the nostalgic daddies (and probably a few moms) who write columns like this one.

Sacrosanct? I'm not sure that word means what you think it means, pops. Dating as you're thinking of it--the boy asks the girl out, they go somewhere public, he pays, they make out a little bit (but no further than second base!!!), he gets her home by curfew--existed for about 50 years in this country.

What daddy's really upset about isn't dating, though. It's

all three of which are tied up in his mind somehow. It's not a "date" if it's not "chivalrous"--which is to say, if it's not unequal, with the girl waiting passively for the boy to ask her out and the boy making all the arrangements--and without those things, there's no "romance."

But in fact, the situation he's heartbroken over is far older than the one he laments. Here's the story:

Let's leave aside for the moment the question of whether the boy asked the girl to the dance (I'm not convinced that daddy here is a reliable narrator): he asked her out for homecoming, she agreed, the kids went out for a meal and then went to a private party rather than to the school-sponsored dance.

So? That's how young people dated for about 200 years, ever since they first started being allowed to court one another rather than relying on their parents to arrange a wedding. Read your Jane Austen, read your Henry James: respectable young people don't *pay money* to entertain themselves in public! They accompany one another to parent-supervised parties in respectable people's homes. When Evelina goes to Vauxhall Gardens with her low class cousins, she's accosted by men who think--since she's out in public--that she's, well, a "public woman," if you know what I mean. She's saved by Lord Orville (who eventually, of course, marries her), a gentleman she met at a *private party* earlier in the story, when she was being watched over by a guardian much better suited to her manners and (as we eventually discover) station.

So much for the "sacrosanct" dating tradition of the public date.

"Yeah right," I hear you getting ready to say. "You're not seriously proposing that we go back to late 18th-century dating practices."

No, obviously not. On the other hand, how about we consider, you know, maybe a nice new 21st-century idea? Which is that instead of sitting around passively

--dear god, the horror!--maybe girls, could, you know, actually ask the guys out. If, that is, they really want to go to the damn dance. Why, for god's sake, is daddy here wondering if he should have been

passively hoping.

and mistakenly--hilariously!--arguing that

How's about this: kids can hold hands at private parties if they want to, so that's a non-issue; "respect" goes both ways and wanting boys to think for girls is the antithesis of true respect; and empowerment means not only "recognizing your true feelings" but also acting on them.

For god's sake, daddy, don't teach her that empowerment means playing the old-fashioned girl who waits to be asked and waits to have sex. Bullshit. Empowerment means you get to make your own damn decisions. If your true feelings are "I want to go to the homecoming dance," then for fuck's sake, don't sit around wishing some boy would ask you. Try asking him. And if your true feelings are "dad, get over it," then, well . . .

Come to think of it, I kind of suspect that this guy's daughter might be a little more empowered than he realizes.

Bitch_PhD went to homecoming and prom and all that and had a pretty good time, actually. But it always annoyed her when she'd ask a guy out and then he'd try to pick up the tab.

Great commentary, I liked it.

Really? I always feel really sorry for guys regarding the 'who pays' issue. Its perfectly fine when a guy doesn't offer to pay, but I don't resent it when they do. I always get the feeling they're just trying to be polite and do what they feel is expected of them, rather than gain power over me or play into a patriarchal system. I think the 'whoever asks for the date pays for it' method is fine, but I don't know how anyone could be annoyed by someone who's trying to make a friendly gesture in an awkward situation. Just offer to pay/go dutch/get the next round in, and it's not a problem.

So, what does this have to do with Prom again?

if girl empowerment is me not paying for their mcdonalds number 3 with a hi-c AND them initiating the after date cramming and/or suck-off then by all means empower till the fuckin cows come home.

Reminds me of the time my mother told me she married her first husband because they wanted to sleep together. I asked why they didn't just sleep together and she just laughed and shrugged her shoulders and said "That's how we did it back then".

I just laughed at her.

People were kind of nuts back in the old days.

Please date me.

My husband is incredibly shy. I knew if I didn't make the first move and ask him out, it was simply never going to happen for us.

I think it's sad that this dad assumes that not going out in public (but attending a chaperoned party with friends) means that they won't "see and be seen" and that they are just trying to have sex. I remember dances being extremely lame at school. There were always fights, HUGE fights, and you never really got to spend any time with anyone because it was so fucking loud with the crap-tastic music.

I'd have much preferred a smaller party at a friend's house, myself. If the daughter was truly disappointed, then she should have said something. Girls will be disappointed, sometimes by boys, throughout their lives.

He can't handle a chaperoned change of venue? What's he going to do when some guy dumps her or cheats on her? He should be more concerned with encouraging his daughter to stick up for what she wants, and less trying to get her to do what he wants.

this dad sounds like a tool.
the kids are dressing up to hang out at someone's house with parental supervision? oh, the horror.

my parents had the "six man rule", meaning i could go out with a boy, but only if there were four other people involved. they would have much preferred i go to a gathering like this one than go to a school dance and ride in a car with ONE boy.

I think he's just pissed that he had to pay for a dress and hairstyling and she didn't even go show off at school and when bitching about it to the boys parents didn't work he decided to be "Constructive" and write and "open letter" that veils his anger at being ripped off by the sixteen year old fruit of his loins. Either that or the girl came home in tears because she didn't get the "happily ever after" slow dance she thought she would because she didn't realize the boy wasn't going to shell out 50 bucks to see the gym decorated like a jungle or some similarly silly theme.

Yeah, I'd like to find one of these rare specimens.

Fathers: History's Greatest Cockblockers.

Ah, the "good old days" ... I'd rather go back to the 1750's to 1850's in rural America for my benchmark.

Life was hard (but more equally hard unless one belonged to the upper crust), not a lot of easy money floating around (so the things one did didn't require it), and folks were calmer about sexuality in several respects.

Out this way the Pennsylvania Dutch have a long-standing tradition of "bundling", which, although it's been trailing off this last century, is still practiced in some locales.

My idle speculation is if one were to outline this practice in modern terms, and speak about it rationally in the presence of Bill "Poppa Bear" O'Reilly, or one of the other arbiters of what is socially acceptable behavior their heads would explode.

Not that any of this ties directly into prom night, but, anytime I encounter someone pining for the "good old days" they nearly always turn out to be ignorant of history, even to practices which were common in the period to which they reminisce.

The Upper Crust, eh?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

DeadBilly said:

BellyJack said:
Life was hard (but more equally hard unless one belonged to the upper crust),

The Upper Crust, eh?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

No no. The upper crust.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Those of us with daughters need to tell them that empowerment is less about sexual freedom and more about recognizing their true feelings.

That makes me angry. Cause true feelings don't involve anything sexual... of course! How could I be so blind.

Dads just don't want their daughters to go up. I would give anything to be able to sit down at a bar, have a drink with my dad, and have "guy talk". But because I'm "daddy's little girl" even at 26 I can't cross that line.

[Those of us with daughters need to tell them that empowerment is less about sexual freedom and more about recognizing their true feelings.

Well, I have known girls who seem petrified of romance or even just getting a serious boyfriend because of some strange sense of how this goes against empowerment. These are generally people who think empowerment just means acting like the atypical dumbass jock.

I don't know if this kind of thing is what daddy is writing about, but probably not, because it really has nothing to do with going to lame school dances. No one wants to go to lame school dances.

Formus said:

DeadBilly said:

BellyJack said:
Life was hard (but more equally hard unless one belonged to the upper crust),

The Upper Crust, eh?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

No no. The upper crust.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

No, indeed, I mean the UPPER,
Upper Crust.

Little known fact - a sketch eerily reminiscent of an 18th century English aristocrat playing a Gibson Flying V guitar was jotted in the margins of Cyrano de Bergerac's original folio of "The Other World: The Societies and Governments of the Moon ".

I would really, really love girls to do more guy asking out. I for one would finally learn whether I'm actually completely uninteresting or if I'm just noticing the wrong people.

proms are for tossers

you're right. let's have it so 8 yr olds are empowered to have sex with whoever they want.

also, get a new definition of chivalry or don't bother using that word. it's not what you think it is, or want it to be for your sad excuse for an argument.

Um....


what?

I can't believe his daughter is 16 and not already betrothed. I wonder if he's tried listing her here.

But seriously folks, I had a crappy time at one dance in high school and never went back to another except as the newspaper photographer. I had a similar experience as a bridesmaid. I feel like these dating rituals and contorted, demonstrative iterations of "chivalry" and "courtship" are orchestrated by a capitalist machine that started cranking its gears sometime in the late 40s -- remember? When we invented disposable everything and decided that convenience and the middle class are the way to go? We can call it the insatiable monster under the tulle.

And what came from this consumer-capitalist ideal love-process? A whole lot of disposable and fake and pained marriages.

I also can't remember ever being "asked out" or doing the asking, because it's become an unimportant step, I think, for a lot of people. Who-asked-who is something that maybe matters to the high-school kids, however, and in that case, you're super right that the young women shouldn't feel like they need to wait for someone to ask them anywhere. I think you can blame a lot of the teen-aimed Hollywood that is still coming out these days for that, however.

And yes, I love the classic Audrey Hepburn films, and they're full of misogyny and, yes, super pretty dresses too [but it's mainly because she's sooo dreamy].