Ask a Bogan: A Metal Prom Dress

Dear Steff Metal

Prom is coming up soon, and I’m really worried about it. I don’t have a date, and all the girls in my class are making such a big deal about it. My best friend has asked the guy I have liked for ages, and my group of usually-close friends are all pairing off, and no one has asked me, and I feel yuck and nervous about the whole thing.  

I don’t have the money to buy expensive dresses or shoes, and I’m clueless about makeup, etc. I want to wear something really awesome, but there’s nothing in the shops around town. Our school has strict rules on what can be worn – no low-cut necklines, no mini-skirts, which cuts out lots of the Lip Service stuff, etc.

Do you have any advice?

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Let me preface by saying we don’t have “prom” in New Zealand. We have a “School Ball” which is pretty much the same concept: it’s for yr 12 and 13 students only (the last two years of high school – Juniors and Seniors, I think you call them), there’s a theme and a committee and everyone dresses up and gets horribly trashed at the after party. They are a big deal, and a lot of time and effort goes into planning them (even at my high school, which was a poorer public high school in a tiny town), but they probably don’t compare to the hype surrounding Prom at US high schools. So, while I’ll try and answer as best I can, I’m only working with my own experience and what i know about Prom from reading Sweet Valley High books.

Prom isn’t really an “alternative” or “metal” thing. You dress up in pretty, feminine dresses, or a suit or tux, spend a lot of time and money on jewellery and makeup and hairdos, you slow dance or shuffle to pop or ballroom music, you drink punch from plastic wine glasses, pose demurely in front of painted backdrops, and you do this for about five hours before you finally get to go to the after party and get shit-faced.

dress from Sisters of the Moon

Everyone makes a big deal out of Prom because:

1. As little girls, we all watched Disney movies like Cinderella and always wanted to dress in ball dresses and dance with a prince. It all seems so lovely and magical and we would love to forget about the difficulties of our life and experience that magic for one night.
2. As guys, we do these things for girls becuase we know the after party is the best party of the year and the girls are in that fairy-tale mood which means we’re probably going to be out all night, if you know what I mean.

The dream is nice. The reality of Prom is a little different.

 I shall tell you about my two school balls: The first one, I had a boyfriend, but he was in year 11 and not allowed to go. my BFF Linley had a boyfriend, Trev-a, who was two years out of high school, and thus allowed to go. So she hooked me up with a friend of hers, Ben, who she’d “always wanted to take to a ball”. We’d met briefly before and he seemed to be a nice - although shy - guy.

So I was to be taking this Ben guy, and Linley was taking Trev-a, and all was right with the world. We got ready at my house (in the same town as the ball) and then were staying the night at Linley’s house in the next town over. We would not be going to the after-ball, as we were too unpopular to be allowed to buy tickets.

My dear Mother Metal got stuck in Ball-fever and decided to make my dress, as she knew (rightly) no ordinary ball dress would do. My dress (which I still own and still fit) is a beautiful burnt orange, with a full skirt of tulle and satin, a corset-style top, and a stole. it’s gleaming and luminous and totally not what anyone else would wear, and I loved it.

There were no digital cameras back in the day, so I don’t have a picture, I’m sorry :(

We brought shoes and black pearl jewellery and had a makeup lesson and brought makeup and gold wire hairbands and all up spent a small fortune (I won’t say how much in case Father Metal is reading this blog and has a heart attack). It was really fun shopping for these things and being excited about something with my mum, who really does “get” me.

Unfortunately, she’s not the most organised lady in the world, and was, in fact, still sewing my dress the night of the ball. But that just makes me smile.

Rebecca dress, from Dare Gothic UK

You can probably guess how the evening played out. Linley and Trev-a danced and whispered sweet nothings to each other, and Ben and I awkwardly shuffled and tried to have a conversation.

We had nothing in common. I mean, nothing. I thought Ride the Lightning was the best album ever recorded, ever. He liked christian worship music and thought a song from the point of view of a biblical plague (“Creeping Death”) was blasphemous. I loved horror films, he liked romantic comedies. I liked art and history and archaeology and dinosaurs and classical writers, he believed the world was 4000 years old and played soccer. Awkward silence ensued, and didn’t leave for the rest of the evening.

(I’m not against anyone having the above beliefs or hobbys, just trying to show how little we had in common.)

Everyone looked amazing, but they were still the same people I went to school with. They ignored me or sniggered about the colour and style of my dress, save a few nice people who went out of their way to say something nice (there were several “nice”, more popular girls who never did anything to hurt anyone and were always nice to me and my ilk, but just had so many friends already they didn’t need us. There were several people who just found us too weird, and several who were outrightly mean.)

The music was shite. The theme was “Wild Wild West” and the decorations consisted of hay bales strewn about the place. If you weren’t dancing, the music was too loud to talk, so we just stood around, nodding and drinking more and more of that non-alcoholic punch and counting down the minutes till I got to go home.

After five hours of this, you start wondering what’s wrong with you. Everyone else is having a blast, why can’t you? Why can’t you be the princess? Why can’t you fit in?

I repeat: balls are not for alternative people, just like one of those popular people would feel out-of-place at a metal show. They’d stand at the back and wonder why they just don’t get it. You can’t dress everyone up in nice clothes and expect them to become different people – you’re still the weird person, and they’re still whoever they are.

When the ball came around in my seventh form year, I decided it had to be different. I no longer had a boyfriend, but had acquired a much larger group of about 20 friends, made up of various outcasts and not-quite-rights. We were drama geeks, Christians, pagans, goths, nerds, gamers, genuine weirdos, and one rugby player who preferred our company to his own herd.

I didn’t want to take a partner for the safe of having a “partner” again, so I just went alone. Alone but not alone, for we all gathered at my place for pre-ball drinks, nibbles and photos. I’d found an amazing deep purple medieval-style velvet dress to wear, complete with lacing and bell sleeves and D-rings galore. I curled my short hair into tight ringlets and wore flat, comfortable shoes. Trev-a brought me a corsage. We took humorous photos and piled into my uncle’s vintage cars for our ride down to the ball.

We danced all night – with each other, in big circles, in a weaving “walk-like-an-egyptian” line through the crowd. We invented silly dances, and headbanged to the slow songs. We took silly photos. We took nothing seriously. One of my friends, Iris, got voted the princess of the ball, and we cheered for her loudest of all.

The five hours sped by, and we returned to my house for our own afterball, an all-night party just for us. Mother Metal stayed up with us too, making chilli fries and chicken nibbles, and Father Metal cooked a huge breakfast in the morning.

One ball was horrid, one was awesome. The difference was my attitude. You have to make the ball experience fit you and who you are.

Be yourself, and realise no one changes just because they’re dressed up nice. The cool kids are still cool, and the weird kids are still weird. Instead of lamenting it, embrace it.

prom dress from Fairy Goth Mother

Buy a dress you want to wear: try Sisters of the Moon or Gloomth or Dare Gothic or Fairy Goth Mother, or find someone to sew you one. Remember Lip Service cater to a specific market – they sell a lot of PVC / fetish / industrial style – if that’s your thing, roll with it, otherwise, what about a more medieval dress? A Victorian or Edwardian ensemble, a 1940s pin up outfit, something covered in skulls, or even a steampunk costume? If you don’t like dresses you could always go in a tux - I went to a ball with my BFF Shane once, where he wore a beautiful pink dress and I wore a top hat and tails. I will find a photo of that and post it later today.

Instead of the usual accessories, brandish a steampunk ray gun, wear a top hat, carry a fan, add some devil horns, wear stripy Alice stockings, buy day-glo dread falls - heck, just do whatever you want.

Organise a pre- and after-ball for your friends, one where you can do what you want - don’t sit around and watch the popular kids get drunk. Be silly, be weird. Hell, you’re expected to, right? You might as well live up to your reputation.

If you don’t like makeup, don’t wear it. No one will notice. If you want to wear your New Rocks under your dress, do it. What are they going to do, kick you out? If so, sounds like a dumb party anyway. “I got kicked out of Prom” makes a great story for the kids one day, don’t you agree?

another beautiful gothic prom dress from Fairy Goth Mother

The music is going to be crap, so make up some crap dances to go with it. We love doing the “egyptian” (you know how it goes!) and lining up along one wall and doing the box step, all in unison. It looks like we’ve choreographed it. I have a signature dance called the “jittery pengiun” and my BFF Shane is a particular fan of the “Cat Burgler”.

Did your best friend know you liked this boy before she asked him? Has she asked him to go out with him or because she was afraid to go without a partner? If you go as a big group of friends, everyone constantly swaps partners on the dance floor, so you’ll probably have time to dance a little with that boy you like. Don’t waste that chance – tell him he looks amazing, smile and have a great time. Be the life of the party and even if you didn’t get the guy, you might have intrigued the guy enough that he might find opportunity to get closer to you in future (unless of course he and your friend are genuinely falling in like, in which case disregard this paragraph).

Lastly, don’t go to the after-party just because it’s meant to be the best party of the year. Go if you get on okey with half the people attending the party. Otherwise, it’s going to blow chunks. Have your own party, or why not go to a show or club instead? Be with your people, and sod all the rest.

I sincerely hope you have a wonderful time and I would love to hear all about it and see photos, if you cared to send them in! Other Steff Metal readers, I’d love to see pics of you in your prom / ball getups, metal or goth or no. Send to steff AT steffmetal DOT com.

Don’t forget, I can only keep writing this column as long as people email me with questions. So if you want advice on something, anything, no matter how serious, no matter how trivial, shoot me an email, and I’ll see what I can do.

Horns Up \m/
Steff