Greetings! A great big hello from the hallways of high school!
For my very first post I thought I might get off my chest what has been on 168 girls’ minds for the past 8 months. I am currently sitting in my spare class at school in our fantastic library (design based on QUT’s very own library) and stressing. Not about school and my three assignments, or even about my uni work due next week, but about this Saturday. What do the steady ins and outs of formalwear shops and boys walking about with suit bags and girls frolicking around with bags of shoes and clutches and jewellery mean? FORMAL SEASON! Now for most people over the age of 40 this is a bizarre and nonsensical phenomenon where girls spend their yearly wage on a dress they will hardly ever wear and endure the gruelling pains of high-heeled travel for far too many hours. However for those in their twenties or even thirties, this mass hysteria over matching ties and ‘how do I tell him I want a corsage!?’ Even though you don’t want one you just like the idea, is a glittery, sparkling, hair-sprayed blast from the past.
For approximately 8 months now, the girls of my school have been anxiously awaiting what will be exploding into action on the 28 April. For approximately 5 of those 8 months, the girls of my school have been filling their brains with sequins, chiffon, silk, taffeta, Napoleon Perdis, Wittner, manicured nails and fake eyelashes to the point of an incapability to learn. It’s brilliant. If anyone ever wanted to pull a Pied-Piper act and steal the young women of our generation they would plan a ball. “Why aren’t you doing your school work!?”
“I’m sorry, are you unaware of the formal in a days time? I haven’t booked a tan. I’m not doing my work.” It is a perfectly reasonable excuse! So instead of Google-ing the representations of illegal immigrants in the chosen film through specific techniques and discussing their validity to modern day life, we are ALL Google-ing hairstyles;
- Up-dos,
- Down-dos,
- Side-dos
- Round-about-dos,
- Curly-dos,
- Straight-dos,
- Braided-dos
- Slick-dos.
- Loose-dos
- Tight-dos
- Pony-dos
- Bun-dos
I never knew there were so many dos to do! I could almost sing the different types of dos to that good old Aussie song “ I’ve been everywhere man”. And with all of the possibilities awaiting our young hair in the salon, we are overcome with a growing sense of drowning in lovely, hair-sprayed goodness instead of what we should be feeling; the growing sense of drowning in the not-so-lovely sense of English assignments and discourse.
What is it about formals that get girls so unbelievably hyped!? Every middle-aged person I have spoken to about the formal shakes their head and mutters under their breath about their wasted money and the loss of concentration. But this is the formal, this is the reason we stay in school, this is the reason we save our money and keep our nails nice and treat our hair and mildly starve ourselves – this is our chance to be the girl we aren’t. We can take that guy, dress him up in a suit and introduce him to our friends, we can take photos that will give us free entry to memory lane for the rest of our lives and we can afford to be children again, dressed up as glorious adults. The event isn’t even the best part; the getting ready and the hype leading up to the formal is 80% of the fun. We can luxuriate in our rooms, fiddling with our hair, painting our faces and perfecting our nails, we can take a long bath, we can use expensive perfume and dance to ridiculous pop songs and it’s all acceptable and normal and simply fantastic! Boy’s get to whip on a suit, brush their hair and fiddle with their tie. They get it easy for sure but girls like having something to do, being busy; having a whole day to get ready for an event is like winning the lottery!
English, Study of Religion, Art, University work and all of the other work I am supposed to be doing can wait; I have eyebrows to prune and nails to paint.