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mg

everyday love me your own special way melt all my heart away with a smile

by mg at 03:35 PM on December 04, 2002

I was watching some crappy daytime television, as a person is want to do when they are unemployed, and heard about a program called Project Butterfly. The goal of Project Butterfly is “to send young women to prom who would not be afforded the opportunity to attend due to their family's financial condition.”

Are you kidding?

Has anyone ever heard of priorities?

It’s a total cliché, but there really are starving children in China, not to mention everywhere else in the world, even, believe or not, here in the United States. Project Butterfly estimates the high end of ending prom to be around $1,500, and they aren’t including the cost of alcohol, money to grease your big brother enough to convince him to buy you alcohol, a hotel room, and a jumbo size box of Trojans, for the teenage libido.

Who thinks it’s a good idea to spend $1,500 on prom for a kid from a family that probably can’t afford to feed their kids on a regular basis? Am I the only one who thinks this is taking the urge to make people “feel better” way too far? I understand things like Toys for Tots and the Make A Wish Foundation. In those cases, a $20 Yu-Gi-Oh toy really will make some little kids day brighter. And if you are a child with a terminal disease, you should pretty much get to do whatever the hell you want; Winona Ryder all the candy you want, torture cats, have sex with your sister, whatever.

But, I don’t even care if your parents are Bill and Melinda Gates, you shouldn’t be spending $1,500 on something as meaningless as prom. You are celebrating successful completion of high school, something legally mandated in most states and easily accomplished even by the illiterate and West Virginian. They don’t throw fancy dress dances when convicts are released from prison (though that might make for some interesting Oz moments), so why do high school kids get a party?

Besides, if you are a chick that can’t even convince your date to pay for a prom ticket, a limo and enough booze to get you to say, “Yes,” a free dress isn’t going to help you out much. It won’t make you a princess, even for one night, and it wont take the shame away when your date pops your cherry and leaves the hotel the morning after without paying, waking you up, or giving you so much as a reach around.

No, this is absolutely a case where money doesn’t help the problem, and there aren’t a lot of such situations. I’m not philanthropist, but with all the problems in the world, isn’t this such a colossal waste of time and money?

You know what wouldn’t be a waste, though? A donation to the "Help MG Pay His Rent" fund:

comments (2)

Back in the day, it was considered uncool to go to the prom. Everyone in my 'hood could afford to go, but they stayed away in droves. Having watched my daughters get all gussied up and trundle off in limos, all I can tell you is that it's one among many of my regrets.

by annna at December 4, 2002 6:24 PM


you have got to be kidding me! this takes to the extreme the inability of people to put themselves in someone else's shoes unless that someone is pretty much just like them...
Oddly, my job as a secretary also involves very sick people in third world countries, and crap like this just makes me nauseous. It's the whole "if I can't see it, it's not there" phenomenon of upper and middle-class cushy ignorance. Also related to my gripe re: CNN reporting more about American Idol and Ms. Ryder than things like the fact that there is soon going to be a severe water crisis in the western part of our great nation.
Rant! Rant! Rant!
K. Sorry.

by Linz at December 5, 2002 9:01 AM