Amy L. Best - Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture

The date, the gown, the tux, the theme, the corsage. Everyone remembers the prom. For many teenagers the prom is the highlight of their high school career, seen as a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. For Amy Best, the prom presents an ideal forum to explore teen identity and to show how this seemingly trivial event speaks volumes about the world of today s kids.Today s proms have gone upscale; no longer held in the high school gym, many schools hold their proms at luxury hotels, complete with full banquet facilities and professional entertainment. Students arrive in limousines, dance the night away in rented tuxes and skin-tight sheaths then leave for a weekend of unsupervised activities with friends -- for many their first extended trip without parents. Amy Best interviews countless teens about their prom experiences, and she looks at popular media to understand today s teens. She finds that with the rising purchasing power of youth culture, the prom is now an industry unto itself with its own m