Anti-prom

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An anti-prom is a social event often staged by high school students as a protest against, or boycott of, their school's official prom, as an alternative celebration. Other times, it may be an unofficial prom, planned by the students themselves so that is not under the control of the school.

Some of the more common reasons for the creation of an anti-prom include the desire to curb the large cost of a traditional prom, to listen to music other than that expected to be played at the real prom, or to have a smaller, more personal get-together.

The attendees of an anti-prom usually disagree with the values of the in-crowd who, stereotypically, organize the prom from the preparatory stages to the after-parties. In particular, anti-prom attendees protest what they regard as the vanity, excess, and conformity that the prom culture expects from students. This ethos is captured in a recent article in online culture magazine Slate, Take Back the Prom, in which the author discusses such rebellion from popular prom culture. Anti-proms do not follow any prescribed format, catering instead to the varied tastes of the large spectrum of students who feel dissociated from prom culture. Nevertheless, anti-prom participants are generally concerned with arranging social activities that are not only fun and enjoyable, but which also serve as an assertion of solidarity and of the legitimacy of social difference.

Others avoid prom because of religious convictions. Strict Christians, Jews, or Muslims sometimes have beliefs that cause them to forgo social events, like prom, that typically involve close male-female interactions between young people. Different sects of these religions believe different things in regard to such environments, and some denominations are more permissive than others.

One anti-prom in Georgia, USA, gained notoriety for excluding African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and other minorities. [1]

[edit] Anti-proms in Popular Culture

Several popular American TV shows have featured anti-proms in one or more of their episodes, including Dawson's Creek [2], and Malcolm in the Middle [3]. In Veronica Mars, the prom is cancelled so some of the rich 09ers hold their own 'alterna-prom'.