Presenting ... Duke's Debutantes

Landy Douglas may not seem like a typical debutante. She calls herself a tomboy, is a Project WILD participant and plays club soccer. She is also preparing to "be presented"--for a second time--in November at Greensboro's presentation ball.

Normally, debutantes in North Carolina are presented the September after their freshman year at a statewide presentation ball in Raleigh. During the preceding summer, women attend city-wide parties, in Raleigh, Fayetteville and Greensboro, among other places.

"It's your presentation to society," explains senior Parker Bell of Raleigh. "It's very much a familial thing, very traditional. My mom was a debutante so I did it too. The traditional definition of it is that you're now making your entrance into society as a young woman, kind of a rite of passage, and in the South particularly."

Like Bell, Douglas was "presented" back after her freshman year at the state ball at the Civic Center in Raleigh with some 200 other young North Carolina women. This year, though, Greensboro officials, upset over problems with underage drinking at their city event, raised the presentation age to 21, so Douglas, as well as her friend and Duke junior Clay Farland, are going through the process all over again. This time it may be a little less stressful as, for example, they can use the same dress they used the last time (which, for many women, ends up being their wedding dress, too).

Not just anyone can be a debutante. In some cities in other states, you have to belong to a "club." In North Carolina, you must be invited, and though none of the women I spoke with were sure precisely how they got on the list, they all suspected it had to do with tradition and family--whether or not their antecedents went through it. "My great-grandmother actually started the deb club in Greensboro, so I'm gonna be invited," laughed Douglas. "My mom's like, 'I have a sneaky suspicion you're probably gonna be a deb.' It's very hush-hush who is gonna be invited. It's so weird."

This acknowledgment of the process' weirdness, combined with some nostalgia for the event, is evident in the voices and demeanors of all the women with whom I spoke.

See, I'm from the North, outside Boston. Before coming to Duke, I didn't know any Southern debutantes (I didn't know any New York debutantes either, but we're dealing with Southerners--North Carolinians only--here). Debutante balls seemed to me kind of silly-sounding and steeped in the sort of Southern tradition Northerners like to laugh at so they may feel superior to their Southern friends. Not that there isn't plenty of merit in laughing at tradition. (And it's not like we don't have any of our own ridiculous traditions. Any of you Long Islanders ever been to a $10,000 baseball-themed Bar Mitzvah party? Right, that's rational). As I said, I'm from the North and don't want to be accused of making fun of Southerners for no reason.

So keep this in mind while you read a little about some of Duke's North Carolinian debutantes. What you see is basically an "informative" piece, relying mostly on the women's own words, about what being a debutante is and what the process of preparing for "presentation" is like. Alternately, I could write a serious, sociological study of debutantes in the South, addressing why, for example, most debutantes--maybe even all according to one of the women I interviewed--are white, Christian, upper middle-class and whether or not that's a problem.

LANDY: You take his hand and promenade to this circle. There's an inner circle and an outer circle and the Deb of Honor sits on this little platform in the middle.

After describing a part later in the ceremony in which the women walk around each other in a circle with ribbons, Douglas cracks, "It's like walking around the maypole."

Their description of the preparation process is a similar.

CLAY: You have to get your dress altered like three times. You pretty much have to get your clothes together in June.

LANDY: You wear sort of a petticoat underneath it. (Giggles) There are so many layers on the dress. Your gown is out to here. (Spreads hands out a foot from her torso on each side)

CLAY: And you get a stool! Because you can't sit on a chair or the dress will get all wrinkled, so you have to put a stool underneath the dress. And you just lean. It's just like a bar stool.

LANDY: The men are wearing tails. [The presentation itself is] really, really formal.

What strikes me most about the women is how down-to-earth they are. They realize how the whole process might sound to an outsider, and they recognize some of the absurdity of the tradition. "The idea behind it was you are presented to society and you are now eligible to go in adult circles and to date and to be married," says Douglas, who took the very unconventional step of wearing sneakers under her dress the first time around. "That was the tradition but now, obviously, it's not like that at all. So you want to have a connection with your roots but at the same time it's so traditional it's almost silly."

Adds Farland: "I think it used to be an opportunity for the bigger families in these smaller towns to show off their daughters for the first time... I was so reluctant to do it in the first place because it was so against anything I'd ever do. And then I just kind of got over it; it's been going on for generations in my family."

Both Douglas and Farland say the debutante process is a "big deal for moms."

"My mom always wanted a ballerina," laughs Douglas, "and she got me and I'm a huge tomboy, and so to see me in a big white dress and all dressed up was huge for her."

That said, they all agree the debutante experience is one they are happy they went through, in part because it means lots of bonding time with their parents, in part because it's fun.

"So many of my friends did it that it was very much an enjoyable social experience for me," says Bell. "I guess for some people it's something their families make them do and they don't want to, but for me it was so fun because all of my friends were doing it. It was a reason to get dressed up, to go have fun, to all be together. Especially after going away to college it was a great way for us all to see each other again."

Bell adds that, "the big parties are where you see everyone. If you know a lot of people doing it you basically have to go to [a lot] of luncheons, cocktail parties, pool parties. But, I mean, it's fun. There are some people I met doing it who go here and I didn't know them before so that was cool. I mean, I think sometimes it can be misconstrued as an elitist thing, something that's outdated, or kind of old-fashioned but I enjoyed it. I had a good time."

A public policy major and music minor with a certificate in journalism, Bell says if she ever has a daughter, she would be happy if her daughter went through the process, too, though she wouldn't force it on her. "I think it was definitely special for my mom that she did it and now I'm doing it. And it was something we could do together," she says. "It kind of requires a lot of clothes, so we had a lot of shopping/bonding time. I mean, I think they were glad that I debbed and it was a great experience and it was special, but I don't think they were obsessed with it."

Douglas says she's never met anyone her age who took the process as seriously as an outsider might expect. And she also says there isn't much stigma attached to the process at sometimes Northern-heavy Duke. "It's more that no one knows what the hell it is," she says. "When you say 'debutante,' they're just like, 'What?' Having to explain it when you don't really know what's behind it sounds so ridiculous."

Says Farland: "One of my friends freshman year, I told [him] it was a coming out party--which is the other terminology for making your debut--so my friend for like two years thought I was gay."

Still, they both say there are some negative connotations attached to the process. "I guess it's sort of like a status thing," says Douglas, "but not to me."

Laughs Farland, "It's not like I did it because I wanted to be like, 'Yes, I'm a member of the Greensboro deb club."

Then the two women break down in laughter, at themselves, at the stereotypes and at the older generation that might mean the same words seriously.