STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) - For many high school students, spring is the season of prom and the ultimate prom proposal, or “promposal.”
Stroudsburg High School student Breanna Stieve got asked while out to dinner with her boyfriend, Zach Herman.
Stieve and her boyfriend have been together for three years, and she said she had been asking to go to The Melting Pot restaurant for 2½ years. When she got home from school on a Friday afternoon, there was a new dress on her bed and a note that read she needed to be ready by 3:30 p.m. the next day and to wear the dress.
When Herman picked her up for their date, he told her they would be going to a play, but he ended up taking her to The Melting Pot in Bethlehem. They ate dinner and then dessert was brought out.
The dessert was a plate decorated with graham cracker crumbs and “prom?” was spelled out, along with a rose and a small piece of pound cake with a candle.
“I was surprised,” she said. “I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
Stieve said Herman and she had established he wasn’t going to propose prom to her because they figured they would go together anyway.
Shop talk
Stories like these are discussed among teenage girls while shopping for prom dresses.
Dawn Notaro, owner of Dawn of New York dress shop in Stroudsburg, said she started hearing about the promposals about three years ago, and the topic is often brought up in her shop.
“This is a huge rite of passage,” she said of its popularity, spread by social media sites like Instagram and Twitter.
One search of the hashtag #promposal on Twitter and pictures and videos of boys and girls asking their significant others to prom will flood the results.
Notaro hears about all of the proposals in her line of work, whether it’s by social media sites or just girls talking in the shop. She said she has heard of promposals that included writing on a driveway in chalk, decorating a car and a cupcake.
Many times, the proposal will then be carried over into the couple’s theme for outfits for prom, she said.
“They both play a role in it,” she said.
Child psychology Professor Paul Bartoli at East Stroudsburg University explained there a few reasons why the trend has taken off among teenagers. One part has to do with social media; it’s harder to grab the attention of teenagers. The more outlandish an act is, the more attention it’s going to grab, he explained.
And because of the multitude of social media outlets, like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, the response it has from friends serves as validation.
“They are judging how they are doing socially,” he said.
And the validation has changed over the years, from passing notes in class to instantaneously over social media. This could be the first step in how marriage proposals will be five to 15 years from now.
Bouncing balls
Bartoli’s own daughter, who graduated from high school last year and played tennis, was asked to go to prom by her boyfriend in a big way. The boyfriend wrote on tennis balls and stuffed them in her locker. When she opened her locker, they all fell out.
Bartoli said he asked her daughter what she thought about it. She said she would’ve been fine with one tennis ball.
Of course, the same thing will happen to most people through their lives, and how the next generation asks a special person to prom will change. The process may be more private and minimized in 10 years as a reaction to all of the media saturation in our lives.
But overall, it’s not unhealthy, but just the way teenagers communicate with each other on social status, Bartoli said.
Stieve said she didn’t know of any in-school big prom proposals, but some of her friends have decorated bedrooms with balloons and posters, getting parents in on the act as well.
“One of my friends put Christmas lights on a garage that spelled out ’prom,’” she said, adding it was impressive. “It was in cursive, too.”
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Information from: Pocono Record, https://www.poconorecord.com/
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