Ah, the spring time. The season for sundresses, classes winding down, long afternoons of lounging on the turf, and yes, formals. Before I came to UD, I had no idea what a fraternity formal consisted of, let alone the fact that I would be going to one.
Sure, formals are exciting because you get to spend the weekend away from the impending doom of finals and instead hang out at the beach, you get to dress up for a nice dinner, and you get to spend time with your friends or make new ones. However, anymore it seems as though those things pale in comparison to the creation of a cooler. Each year, the stakes are raised for better coolers, with more creative designs and features. Girls become competitive over whose cooler will look the best, and they grow to be very protective over their pieces of artwork that they spent hours slaving over.
When I was asked to formal, I knew I had to make a cooler, but I had no idea how invested I would become in it, and how large of a community there is for girls that make them.
I started out by Googling "formal coolers," and I was not disappointed. Hours of looking at Pinterest posts and pictures online went by quickly, and I soon found myself as a member of The Cooler Connection on Facebook. It was there that I saw the craziest and most amazing things that could be done to a cooler. One girl had somehow attached speakers to hers, and another had color-changing lights on the inside. I was in awe.
On the other hand, though, there were the horror stories. Some girls' coolers had been ruined when they tried to seal them. Designs that had hours of work put into them were destroyed. Other girls found that their dates didn't appreciate the coolers and hard work as much as they should have. These guys let their coolers be covered in dirt, with the paint chipping off, and be abandoned in the backyard of a frat house.
These girls shared their stories, and other girls sympathized with them, gave encouraging words, and talked about how those guys didn't deserve their beautiful coolers and all of their hard work. The coolers had created a community of girls that gave advice for designs, how to save all their hard work when Mod Podge went wrong, and inspiration for people that had no idea what to do.
Of course, there is still the feeling of competition regarding the coolers. Each girl wants her cooler to be the best at whatever formal she's going to, with the most creative designs and the best execution possible. With the stakes getting higher every year, guys are expecting better coolers, and girls want to make the best ones.
Even though there is competition between girls, there's also a strong sense of community on pages like The Cooler Connection. The art of formal cooler painting is stressful, but the end result, and hopefully your date's reaction, makes the all-nighters, stress, and paint-covered nails completely worth it.
