It’s that time of year again… prom season. It’s the time when everyone stresses to find a date, make a hair and makeup appointment, find great shoes, and most importantly find the perfect dress.

By the rules of prom dresses, this dress not only needs to be a certain length and color to compliment your skin tone, but also needs to perfectly shape your body and be the star of all your pictures.

All these rules are important in the scheme of dress shopping, but the most important rule to follow is to post your dress in the Facebook group page immediately after you buy it. This rule is placed in order to prevent people from wearing the same dress or even similar dresses.

But what’s so wrong with wearing similar dresses?

What would really happen if someone wore similar dresses or even the same dress? Would the world really end?

In most teenage girls’ worlds… yes. Showing up in the same prom dress as someone else would be almost as humiliating as showing up to school naked. But why is this so?

de Toledo junior, Gabby Resnick, says, “I think that everyone wants to be unique in their own way. Prom is that time for everyone to stand out and be confident in themselves and a big part of that is what dress you wear.  Showing up in the same dress as someone takes away that individuality and the ‘specialness.’”

Girls have become reliant on having a unique dress in order to stand out at prom. This isn’t a new belief, though. This idea is influenced by television and the media.

Shows like 90210 and Gossip Girl have paved the way for girls to believe that prom is one of the highlights of high school and has the ability to shape the way people think of you. By having the “perfect” look at prom, you are essentially qualifying your entire high school career.

And having anything less than this would result in harsh judgement from other classmates, like whispers to others, saying, “Her dress is a weird color,” or “Her makeup doesn’t look good.”

There is no need for these comments. All this money and time is put into preparation for this night and girls still want to shame others for what they look like?

Prom is just another school dance. Just like vice or the spring formal. So, why do we pour all this emotion as well as hundreds of dollars into making it a “perfect night”?

The answer must be rooted in our pop culture. Without TV shows, movies, and books telling us we must be nothing less than perfection, perhaps this night would be simply another school dance?

Our culture has turned prom into an outrageous concept, placing specific ideas of what the night must entail into our youth’s heads. If any of these standards are not met, then is prom really ruined?

Why does not having a date to prom result in judgemental comments or even sympathy stares from others? The common question of prom preparation is “Who are you going to prom with?” and when the answer “Nobody” comes up, an uncomfortable silence follows. Then there’s a sympathetic comment like “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll still have a great time.”

In honor of prom this weekend, the focus should not be about who’s wearing what or who doesn’t have a date. Instead, it should be centered on dancing the night away with your friends.

What will make prom the best night is feeling as confident and beautiful as you can. It really doesn’t matter what shoes you end up wearing, because by the end of the night they’ll be under your chair and you’ll be on the dance floor.