Speaking of High School...

Dear Supposed "Adults,"

We are now entering the late spring which means we are entering that season where the newspapers are full of articles about stupid people doing stupid things. Historically, this has largely meant stupid teenagers doing stupid things like, say, getting drunk at a party, driving home, wrapping their car around a tree, and dying, or perhaps engaging in the type of prank that requires the involvement of emergency services and insurance settlements with lots of zeroes.

So far, however, the news stories I've seen this year have been slightly different. This year, writers seem to be focusing on stupid adults doing stupid things to teenagers.

Now I will admit I have a slightly unique perspective on things in that I am dying. Therefore, it is clear to me in ways that it probably isn't to most other people that life is short. Moreover, I am not only dying but I'm dying of cancer,. This means it is also clearer to me than to most that life is not only short, but hard. And I say that as a relatively well-off straight white guy. If I think life is hard, how much harder must it be for someone who doesn't get to check off every single one of the boxes in the advantaged categories list?

So here's the thing, adults in authority: if a senior shows up at her high school prom wearing a tux, you let her in! You do not send her home for being "inappropriately" dressed. You do not take away her one shot at prom. You do not single her out. You just don't. First off, have you not heard of Marlene Dietrich? Ms. Dietrich settled the question of whether or not a woman could be sexy and female while wearing a man's suit eighty-five years ago. (Answer: Most definitely.) Moreover, if you want to get all moral on the subject, trying doing a Google image search on "prom dress." It will take you about three seconds to figure out that a dress is not a guarantee of appropriateness. Perhaps my values are skewed, but if I was attempting to create an "appropriate" venue for teenagers, I'd take a dozen girls wearing studded shirts and shawl collars over a dozen wearing the latest in porn star chic any day of the week. But more important, who cares? It's been a lot of years since I was in high school, but I seem to remember -- and I see demonstrated by the current generation on a pretty regular basis -- that if there's anything teenagers are good at, it's policing the walls of acceptable teenage behavior. It's the kids' dance, and if they're bothered by a girl in a tux, I am very confident they will let her know very quickly and in no uncertain terms. So why the fuck are you inserting yourselves into that situation? Life's hard enough for an average teenager, much less one pushing at the socially expected boundaries. What possible advantage could there be, to anyone, in making her life harder?

And speaking of making things harder, if you run an elite military college like, say, West Point; and you have a tradition of taking pictures of groups of graduating cadets wearing uniforms from the past as a way to celebrate their accomplishments and connect them with those who came before; and you have a graduating class of roughly a thousand people of which exactly seventeen of those people are African-American women; and sixteen of those African-American women elect to put on the old uniforms and get their picture taken with their fists raised in an expression of strength and unanimity, you celebrate them! You do not investigate them. You do not judge them. You don't do anything but congratulate them on their accomplishment. Granted, I did not go to a military college, nor did I serve in the military. But I am not a moron. You cannot tell me that sixteen African-American women -- i.e., sixteen individuals who basically don't get to check any of the boxes on the advantaged categories list -- you can't tell me those women didn't face more challenges in getting through school than most of their classmates, and didn't deal on a daily basis with more difficulties than most of the rest of us could handle on our very best days. Those women have earned the right to celebrate their accomplishments in a way that acknowledges the unique challenges they faced. And if that makes you uncomfortable, General Whiteguy, that's your problem, not theirs. 

But I do want to thank all the privileged adults running around trying to make things harder for the young people around them for one thing: the more of this kind of bullshit I read about, the less concerned I am with dying. If this is how the world is going to work, you can have it.