Was prom the best night of your life? Did you decide to skip it? Lose your v-card? Were you prom king or queen? My favorite part--hands down---was the dress shopping, followed by the hair-curling, mascara-applying, getting ready process, then spending it with my friends (or, one year, an actual date), dancing and everything else. Prom brought my artsy, girly self out and gave her the keys to the kingdom. I loved going shopping with my mom, imagining what I would wear and eventually picking out the perfect dress.

I actually went to four proms: my high school senior prom, and three church proms that my friends and I sort of crashed in a neighboring state. Within my religion (I'm a Mormon) modesty and respecting one's body are pretty important, so naturally there were some lightly-enforced rules regarding prom attire: covered shoulders, knee-length skirts, etc. Nothing unusual for Mormon kids, these are the recommended guidelines, especially for church events. My outfits for these events were: an A-line dress (and shrug), ball gown (and shrug) and a semi-backless dress (with a camisole). For my high school prom I had a floor-length dress that did show off my shoulders (gasp).

So with prom season comes a slew of news articles illustrating young women who were either kicked out or barred entry from their proms because of what they were wearing. One girl's dress was too tight, another's showed too much of her back, while another showed too much cleavage and another was wearing a suit (apparently suits are a no-go for some schools).

Within religious settings, modesty is intended to be empowering, not restricting. In legal settings for some states, a woman is allowed to walk around topless. Scout Willis did just that in New York to point out that nudity can also be empowering. It just depends on your personal choice. I personally didn't feel more or less empowered with my shoulders exposed than I did wearing sleeves.

At the end of the day, the debate on what is acceptable for public school dress codes, especially at prom, stand at an impasse. The one argument we can throw out with dress codes--especially for women--is that they are in place "to prevent distractions for boys." One, boys can and should control themselves if they are "distracted" by a girl with attractive features, and two, my shoulder, back and cleavage-covering dress was no more distracting to my boyfriend than my shoulder and cleavage-revealing dress was. Even if you're wearing a paper bag, a guy could still think you look cute. So let's not make the conversation about protecting boys from being attracted to girls on the basis of what the girls are wearing, shall we?

When determining what is "acceptable" behavior for public school students, say it revolves around the concept of respecting the learning environment for the goal of furthering one's education. You can't mouth off at the teacher or throw chairs across the room, and you get detentions for talking too much, being late or distracting from the learning environment. Having school be a safe place is also part of the "respect the learning environment" idea.

Then how does prom fit into this equation? It's a school-sponsored event, but students tend to organize, fundraise and pay to attend it. Students aren't allowed to smoke, drink, etc, so behavior is still somewhat enforced by the school. But can we loosen the grip on public school prom dress codes? It's a party. This is the one day a year where kids can dress up and have fun - and it's supervised. Just let girls wear whatever empowers them and protect the punch bowl from getting spiked.