Choose Your Own Prom Dress: A Story of a Controlling Relationship

Every year around this time 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 teenage girls, their dress is a big part of that equation.

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.

After a few tries and failures, I found it. It was blue and form-fitting, with some sequins and jewels sewed onto it. 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 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. But she saw how much I loved it and said it was perfect anyway.

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 couldn’t wait for him to tell me how pretty he thought I looked.

A few minutes later, I walked up to my mom and quietly said I had 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 still a nice dress and I felt pretty wearing it, but 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.

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.

They’re like the uninvited party guest who doesn’t know when to leave. 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.

Now, every time I look at pictures from my senior prom, I don’t think about how much fun I had dancing with my friends or how the food was. I think about how I didn’t get to wear the dress I wanted.