On May 10th, 17-year-old Clare attended her home school prom (which is apparently a thing?) in Richmond, Virginia, with her boyfriend and four other friends. While wearing her dress-code required “fingertip length” dress, she danced to, if Parks and Recreation is any indication, the latest R.E.M. jams; spiked the punch, if EVERY movie is any indication, with no-no juice; and did the hand jive, and then she was escorted out of her prom because a some “perverted 45-year-old” dads were ogling her.
From a guest post Clare wrote on her sister’s blog, via WTVR:
When I got into the ballroom I laughed, because I was surrounded by girls in much shorter dresses then me, albeit they were shorter, and therefore stood out less in the crowd, but it was still frustrating. I joined my group of friends, (there were six of us), and told them what happened, they were all appalled, especially considering we’ve been attending this prom all four years of high school and usually wore much shorter dresses then we chose this year. We were also a little grossed out by all the dads on the balcony above the dance floor, ogling and talking amongst themselves. We weren’t dancing, but swaying with the music and talking and enjoying ourselves, when Mrs. D again approached me, and gestured me off the dance floor. She took me into a corner in the hall way, with another woman, (who I’m assuming was a parent/chaperone) and told me that some of the dads who were chaperoning had complained that my dancing was too provocative, and that I was going to cause the young men at the prom to think impure thoughts. At this point I said to her that I hadn’t been dancing at all! Much less seductively, and that even if I had been being inappropriate, they should issue a warning instead of just kicking me out.
When I was 14 years old, I wanted to impress a girl I had a crush on in my grade. So I bought us tickets not to see Pearl Jam, which I could have done, but Britney Spears. I regret nothing, and by nothing, I mean everything. I remember very little about that, other than two things: 1) I bought my crush a necklace, and was planning on presenting it to her during the part of “Oops!… I Did It Again” where the astronaut gives Britney the Heart of the Ocean, but I wisely chicken out at the end; and 2) as we were leaving the outdoor venue, I remember a group of 40-something, paunchy men, all clearly without kids, huddled together at the edge of the lawn, watching both Britney and the crowd.
That’s what I imagine the dads at Clare’s prom looked like. Maybe it’s the same of batch of vagabond pervs, traveling the country for public events to act like scumbags at. They moved on from Britney, and now they’re huge Ariana Grande fans. Once a creepo, always a creepo.
