Every spring I think back to the day I went shopping for my senior prom dress. Senior prom is supposed to be a magical, unforgettable night full of laughs, good food, and dancing. For most teenage girls, their dress is a big part of that magic.
When I think back to my senior prom dress, those memories of magic are non-existent. Instead, I’m served a reminder of the controlling relationship I was in at the time.
It was a sunny Saturday in 2010, and my mom and I headed down to a dress shop in Pittsburgh. I was never a “girly-girl” and I’ve always disliked trying on clothes, but I was actually pretty excited to find the perfect dress.
I tried a few on, but they either didn’t fit right, weren’t comfortable at all or they didn’t have it in my size. After a while, I found it.
It was blue and had sequins, making it look as bright and shimmery as a swimming pool in the sunshine. It also had a few small cut-outs in the abdomen that added some nice detail.
I’d worn plenty of formal dresses prior to this, but this one was different. This one had that magic. I never wanted to take it off.
I was afraid my mom wasn’t going to approve of it because of the small cut-outs. They were smaller than a can of soda, but my mom was a modest woman. Though it probably wasn’t the dress she would have chosen for me, she said it was perfect anyway when she saw how much I loved it.
She asked if I was ready to change back into my clothes and go to the checkout counter. I told her I wanted to see what my then-boyfriend thought of it, so I had to wait for his text after I sent him a picture of me in the dress.
I knew he would love it and I couldn’t wait for him to tell me how pretty he thought I looked.
A few minutes later, I sheepishly walked up to my mom and mumbled something about having to find a new dress.
She had a confused look on her face and said she didn’t understand. “I thought you loved this dress.”
“He doesn’t like the dress, so I have to find a new one,” I said. My boyfriend of a few years didn’t like the cut-outs. According to him, I looked too slutty.
So, instead of the dress I loved and that I felt great in, I settled for a plain black strapless dress with small pink flower details on the top and along the bottom. It was pretty, but it wasn’t comfortable and I kept having to adjust it since it didn’t have any straps.
It was just a dress. The magic was gone, back on the rack with the blue dress for some other girl to find.
When we left the dress shop, I was disappointed and my mom was mad at me for not getting the dress I wanted. But, despite being disappointed, I didn’t see a problem with how the experience played out. The way I saw it, prom was a special event for both me and my boyfriend. It was important for him to like the dress I was wearing as much as I did.
I didn’t want to wear a dress that he thought looked “slutty.” I wanted to wear a dress that he thought made me look gorgeous. The blue dress that I felt gorgeous in became tainted when I read his reaction to the picture I sent him.
The thing I never processed about this until a few years later is that I was asking for his permission to get the dress instead of sharing my excitement of finding the perfect dress.
I understand now that if he loved me as he said he did, he would have wanted me to have the dress I felt the best in and would have been excited that I found a dress that I absolutely loved. The dress I wore shouldn’t have mattered to him as long as I loved it.
See, over the few years we had been dating, he had slowly made comments that ended up influencing my appearance without me realizing.
He would make passing remarks about thinking sweatpants looked sloppy, how he thought long hair looked better than short hair, and that a full face of make-up just made a girl look like she cared about how she looked.
Next thing I knew, I would only wear sweatpants around the house, rarely in public. I refused to cut my hair shorter than shoulder-length despite how much I disliked trying to tame long hair. I would put on expensive makeup any time I had to leave the house, even to go somewhere as simple as the grocery store.
He never directly told me "you can't wear sweatpants" or "you have to wear makeup every day," but I still found myself always making sure I looked the way he thought girls should look rather than how I wanted to or how I felt most comfortable.
That’s the thing about controlling behaviors. They aren’t blatant and they don’t happen out of nowhere.
A controlling partner will gradually introduce these behaviors to a point the other person doesn’t realize it’s happening until it’s too late.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking that I overreacted and my prom dress situation wasn’t actually him trying to control me.
But then one day a few years ago my mom called me and told me she ran into his mom at the store. She was telling my mom how he was getting married and my mom asked if his fiancée found a dress yet. His mom said yes but that he had to sign off on it first. She said that since he’s paying for his fiancée’s dress, he had to make sure he liked it.
It was the prom dress situation all over again, just with a different girl.
While I hate that he’s still controlling and that his now wife is stuck in that kind of relationship, hearing about his fiancée’s wedding dress reaffirmed that I didn’t overreact and that his reaction to my prom dress was problematic.
Even with that validation, my senior prom memories are still painful to think about. every time I look at pictures from that day or hear other people reminisce about their prom, I don’t think about how much fun I had dancing with my friends or how the food was.
I think about how my boyfriend at the time said I’d be a slut if I wore the dress I wanted to wear.
Until next week,
Rychelle 💜
Nothing could so effectively communicate your point as a real life example like this, told so well. Thank you for sharing your stories.
Ugh I'm so sorry this happened. I cannot believe he's still the same dude!