Hey, kids? Know what's a terrible idea? A pre-prom diet.

Since prom is coming up and prom is the absolute most important day a teenage girl can possibly hope to experience (it's like Wedding, Jr.), of course now's the perfect time for a million articles about how you're not good enough for the event that's about to occur. And those concernmongering articles are even worse when they come from someone who thinks their gentle nagging about how you could be much hotter is helping.


A registered nutritionist named Darlene (you know it's legit because in the picture accompanying the article, she's authentically shopping for vegetables, nature's best kept secret that only nutritionists know) would like to remind you that unless you start eating right, you won't be quite hot enough for prom — but instead of words like "hot" and "losing your fatty fat ass," she uses code words like "picture-perfect" and "managing your weight," which almost makes it worse. Darlene suggests that teens be "selective" about what they put in their body, because eating healthy food will perfectly prep your fingernails for manicures and make your figure "sleek" enough for a prom dress by the night of the Big Dance, you'll be a prom-bot engineered to perfection by eating kale and almonds.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy, but framing health like it's a diet designed for optimal hotness is depressingly retro. Being healthy feels awesome, and enjoying good food while using your body for more than a meatsack plugged into the internet feels much better than skinny looks. You're in high school. Your body is still growing and your brain is still growing. You should eat healthy as often as you can, anyway, but you should eat healthy food because healthy food is delicious and you love your body enough to take good care of it, not because you want to fit into some bullshit beauty standard. To frame health as a worthy pursuit because... of... prom? is about the most bullshit possible support for the whole "be healthy, teens!" argument.


Anyway, everyone knows that prom isn't the most important day of a young girl's life. Menarche is. And as an amateur menstruation expert, I recommend beets.

[Post-Standard]