Teenage girls must struggle to overcome numerous crises during their high school careers, including: the texting elbow, the heartbreak over their break up with their month long boyfriend, and of course, the drama that happened on last night’s Glee. Yet even this merciless barrage of seemingly insurmountable challenges pales in comparison with one particular threat faced by adolescent females everywhere. That threat is Prom Stress.
According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Prom Stress causes more total and complete mental breakdowns among young women than driving tests, SAT prep, and stupid annoying brothers combined. Often called “The Ebola of the First World,” Prom Stress is almost impossible to treat due to the alarming rate at which it mutates from dress anxiety to hair panic and back. However, the most frightening and dangerous symptom of Prom Stress is the sheer mortal terror that engulfs female high school students as they anticipate the brutal moment when they will actually be asked to Prom.
Known to anthropologists as the “promposal,” this barbaric ritual can occur at literally any moment, without any warning. As a result, vulnerable teenage females spend the weeks (or even months) leading up to Prom in a state of extreme agitation. Some have been known to jump several feet into the air and emit a piercing shriek merely because a male called them by their name to tell them that they dropped a pencil. Although the sacred Promposal ritual is clearly intended to be performed only by tall, popular boys (or “Anointed Ones”), in practice it is often desecrated by physically and/or socially undesirable boys (or “Rejects”). These misguided boys, who are nice enough you guess but whom you just don’t like in that way, will often perform a corrupt and debased version of the Promposal ritual without even asking your friend who has a class with their sister to scope out the situation first and spare everybody some embarrassment.
Why is this so important? Well, scientists once believed that a teenage girl who attended Prom on the arm of a Reject might expect to experience nothing worse than short-term disappointment and chagrin. However, meta-analysis of qualitative case studies using a randomized nonlinear regression model has since proven that the long-term effects are actually much, much worse.
“The science is conclusive,” says Dr. Mona Costalas, a Rutgers University associate professor of psychology. “The wrong prom date will literally ruin your whole entire life, forever.”
But what if a girl scores straight A’s, is class president, yearbook editor, cheerleading squad captain, and spends every summer volunteering in a Nicaraguan orphanage? According to Costalas, “It doesn't matter. Going to Prom with a boy whose skin is imperfect, or who is unaware that he has food stuck in his teeth, or whose last name is not Hemsworth, will snuff out any chance for a bright future.” Yet with so many female high school students at risk for a blighted tomorrow, what can be done? Some have argued that Prom should be abolished altogether, but before entertaining such a radical solution, we should first consider less drastic alternatives. For instance, each girl could designate her ideal partner, who would then be legally required to escort her to Prom. (Chosen boys who demonstrate reluctance to attend could be lured with electric prods used to herd cattle.)
But what if multiple girls designate the same boy? To determine which girl gets Promposed to, a process of elimination would naturally ensue – and here it is only fitting that we should draw inspiration from the literary classics. The competing girls (or “Tributes”) would therefore be transported to an outdoor arena for a forced battle to the death, until only a single girl survives. She would then be declared the winner of the “Prom Games,” and awarded a corsage by her dream date. This scenario would be repeated until every girl was blissfully matched, or dead.
There would be many side benefits to this plan as well. Live broadcasts of Prom Games death matches could help alleviate the tragic boredom epidemic that is so rampant among the teenage population. A percentage of the proceeds could also be donated to charities such as Nicaraguan orphanages, which do so much to improve the extracurricular resumes of young women preparing to apply to colleges. Finally, the Prom Games follows Darwin’s process of Natural Selection. It would help weed out the weak, paving the way for a future utopia ruled only by those fit enough to attend Prom. Now, that’s Girl Power.
As for the losers, at least they will be spared the unspeakable humiliation and horror of an Unsatisfactory Prom Experience (UPE), and saved from a fate worse than death, by death. Isn’t this the least we can do? After all, what is more important than the social status of a teenage girl?