The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

The student news site of Westford Academy

WA Ghostwriter

Social Dress-Working alive at WA

By Abby Cianciolo

Staff Writer

Prom is the social highlight of the year for seniors. Between finding a date, renting a limo, and hair appointments, this dance has become quite an extravagant function. However, nothing compares to the importance a prom dress has to women of this age.

Derived from debutante balls of the upper class, prom was introduced in the early 1900s. Debutante balls were a gathering of the rich citizens to show off their teenage daughters. When prom was first started, it was a quiet and modest affair for seniors about to graduate.

Girls would wear their “Sunday Best” to these dances and not the outrageous prom dresses we see today. During the 1980’s, prom dresses began to expand in designs, colors, and price.

However, during the early eras of prom, the phenomenon of dresses has never been as high as it is at this time period. Certainly, at that time there was no Facebook for girls to post their dresses, like there is now.

Recently, a group of seniors from Westford Academy have changed the prom dress realm to a new technological position, Facebook.  The Facebook group entitled “WA Prom Dresses 2011,” has taken off with over 200 group members.

“I made the group so people could see each other’s dresses, so they wouldn’t get the same dress that somebody else had already,” says group founder and senior, Jackie Lawlor.

Girls who are attending the event join this group and upload pictures of the dresses they have either purchased or ordered. It gives other students a way to see what their friends and classmates are wearing.

It is also a way to make sure that two girls are not wearing the same dress. Regardless of what dress they purchase, a girl’s worst nightmare is walking into a prom and realizing someone else has the same one. This is a girl’s one night to really shine in their senior year, and having it upstaged by another’s dress starts to dim that light.

So far, there has not been too many issues with the site. Many have “liked” and “commented” on other girls’ dresses.

“I think it’s good to have it [the group] to prevent any girls from the devastation of having the same dress!” says WA senior, Gina Theodore. “The girls at WA are really sweet, too, because sometimes I’ll walk into school like in the hallways or in class and girls I don’t even talk to will say ‘Gina I saw your dress on Facebook and I love it, it’s gorgeous!’

However, as is typical in the world of women, sometimes the claws do come out when one girl buys the same dress as another, unknowingly.

“It is fun to be able to see what everyone is wearing, but it can sometimes get mean. The current one [group page] is actually the second one made because the first one had mean comments on it about dresses or if someone had the same dress. But it is very helpful so people don’t buy the same dress,” says WA senior Avery Langille.

Danielle Craig, also a senior attending prom, adds, “There have been some mishaps with the site. Some girls forget to check the page before going out to get their dress, and they get one someone already has, but that’s pretty much the reason we have it. Just to make sure no one’s upset because someone else has ‘their dress’.”

One of the cool things the girls mentioned was that it still leaves the surprise factor. Most girls post pictures with models wearing their dresses. This leaves the wow factor of the dress on the girls for prom night.

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