We’re in and at an age where we romanticize romance, and high school is the place to find all that. 2000s movies cast elaborate schemes followed by grandiose confessions. There are passionate debates on the dress to sparkle and glint, but also of the date to ferry your two-inch heels. However, in a brute fashion, the romantic comedies are more of a romantic fantasy to me.
A sister to Valentine’s day — 24 hours that celebrates how a Zack Siler has never been dared to date me — homecoming is a sentimentally difficult season for me.
Posters are crafted. Pinterest is consulted. Proposals are showcases. There is this societal convention fortified around homecoming. That to attend a formal, an escort is required when strolling through metallic streamers. There are even intentional correlations to obtaining a partner as the homecoming posters are taped against school walls.
But there is a refuge: platonic date(s). It can even be the initial vision — on a bathroom counter, crimping hair until salty smoke wisps, cautiously furling mascara on and squeezing on French tips.
By the night’s finale, the press-ons have been severed off and the mascara is carefully lived in. Even the Urban Decay setting spray could not defy the workout of homecoming. But with the blisters from stilettos regretfully elected, there’s an embracing question: would homecoming have been more memorable with a Channing Tatum who paid for my ticket and offered me their jacket? Would it have been like a romantic comedy?
There’s this idolization and instantaneous identification with homecoming and dates. Yahoo Style’s “Prom Across America” survey circles the patterns: 70% of teenagers presented at a dance with a date, while 9% attended without one. It’s numerically proven that to have no date is to be a minority within the majority.
As I am starting to unfold homecoming as a freshman, I realize I’ve naively glorified high school through Mia Thermopolis and Viola Hastings. The pep rallies, Canon camera photoshoots and cocktail dresses have never been in my shopping cart; it has always been The Date.
The Date is the vehicle of American high school culture. The blonde cheerleader covets the football quarterback and they pirouette into homecoming as textbook high school sweethearts. However, that’s a miscalculation.
Homecoming has never been a synonym for romantic comedy. It’s four years of aspiration, desire and impulse. So when Valentine’s Day finds its home on Feb. 14 and “She’s All That” reprises, even Laney Boggs can decree that, with or without Zack Siler, the night would still premiere like the homecoming you’re promised.
In the early 1900s, homecoming was initially an event to celebrate the “coming of home” for college alumni and occurred at a football game. Over the century, with the media annotating on the proposal aspect, there has been lost substance to its sincere meaning. To go without a date is a commemoration of homecoming’s original narrative and a memorial for its enduring legacy.
