At debutante balls held across Australia each year, girls wear long white dresses and are presented to their communities. Supporters say these balls give young women a chance to shine, critics say they are outdated. Why are deb balls still a thing?
Debutante balls might have started after a split from the Catholic Church, but Maria remembers these balls as being part of the tradition of going to a Catholic school in Australia."There is a scene in the Anne of Green Gables mini-series where she has this blue dress and I had sort of modelled it on that."
Maria's older sisters had taken part in debutante balls before her, back in their hometown of Boggabri in north-western NSW."Boggabri only has a thousand people and they would have the deb ball every year … so that was a community thing," she says.She believes feminism and debutante balls can go together.But Kristen Richardson isn't so sure about that. She generally sees debutante balls as being "an inherently patriarchal tradition".
In places like New York, she says, some balls have celebrities attend and the events are covered by fashion magazines.Television show Gossip Girl, which followed the fictional lives of uber-wealthy teens in New York, even recreated these high society balls for the screen. "If you are an oligarch or a new gilded-age tycoon in the US, I think it is a great way to launder your reputation, you know you create this great elegant thing and it is a great way to hide who you are."
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Inside East Melbourne’s newly opened ‘purple’ public gardenOf all the public gardens that have been established in the city, the Family Violence Memorial is the first to have been fashioned as a “political intervention”.
Read more »
Inside a knock-down rebuild in Melbourne’s south-eastStarting from scratch with a rebuild created the perfect home for this couple and their growing family. | Sunday Life
Read more »
‘It was guerrilla warfare’: Inside the fight for the future of the Australian ClubA Machiavellian plan to stop women joining an elite all-male club has led to broken friendships, high-profile resignations and divisions that have rippled across legal, business and political circles. | newsandimages
Read more »
‘It was guerrilla warfare’: Inside the fight for the future of the Australian ClubA Machiavellian plan to stop women joining the elite all-male club has led to broken friendships, high-profile resignations and divisions that have rippled across legal, business and political circles.
Read more »
Oliver Mol on surviving a 10-month migraine: ‘If I didn’t tell this story it would rot inside me’Suddenly unable to write, the acclaimed young author took a job on the railway. His memoir Train Lord tells of the refuge and reckoning he found there
Read more »
Five golds, four silvers, two bronzes: Australia’s sizzling first night in the poolAustralia’s swimmers have wasted no time in Birmingham, with Elijah Winnington, Ariarne Titmus, Zac Stubblety-Cook and Timothy Hodge all winning individual gold.
Read more »