Prom at Home Is Sad, but Sweet
The pandemic has canceled proms nationwide, but teens are still re-creating the joy of them on TikTok.
“I’m sitting here, crying in my prom dress,” is the chorus of a low-fi, hand-clappy track by the singer mxmtoon—and now a hyper-literal anthem for American teenagers. On TikTok, teens are sitting there, in their prom dresses, talking to a camera, feeling very sad.
This is what prom night looks like in 2020. Rather than spending a night out dancing with friends, teenagers have been shoved back inside with their parents because of the pandemic. Americans have celebrated prom since the late 19th century, even during depressions and world wars. Families tend to spend on the event, and its place in popular culture as a high-school rite of passage has been romanticized by just about every teen movie ever. But now, this prom.
