M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Girls Campaign for Modest Prom Attire
by Sally MacDonald Ooms
From the Overland Sun

Every girl wants to look stunning on her prom night. But a group of high school girls from the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is objecting to what stores are offering for prom attire.

They say they can only find dresses with plunging necklines, non-existent backs, skirts with high slits, bare midriffs and spaghetti straps or no straps.

There1s something the girls call the tube top dress dance. Ashley Hamrick, a senior at Blue Valley High School, mimics the motion of girls dancing to a fast dance and hanging on to the top of their dresses lest they expose their breasts.

Annie Kershisnik, a senior at Shawnee Mission East, tells how she hugged a friend at the prom last year and the top part of her dress fell down.

Both girls and their mothers were preparing for an interview with the CBS program Inside Edition Monday. The national program's coverage of their plight will help spread the word that the 17 local young women have already begun, that modesty in clothing is OK and appropriate for their age group.

Or, as their motto goes, 'Modesty is always in style.' "Movie stars and Hollywood set the trends," Kershisnik said. "The videos (on MTV) are more about the body and less about the music," said
Hamrick. "If you're buying those types of clothes, you're agreeing with it."

The movement to find appropriate dresses and other formal clothing for special events began in 2000. Cynthia Cockriel, a member of the church, and her 14-year-old daughter, Amanda, were browsing in Nordstrom's, looking for a dress for a formal occasion.

They could find nothing in her size that wasn't too revealing, so Cynthia Cockriel spoke with the manager of the store. Cockriel said the manager offered them the opportunity to present the types of dresses they liked and other fashion requests to a buyer who was coming in April.

A group of 17 girls of like mind was mustered, and they went to work, organizing themselves into a small company of sorts, called Evaluate. In order to show the Nordstrom1s buyer that they were not just a bunch of irrelevant teen-agers in Kansas, they wrote letters to their peers all over
the country and the world. Within one month, they received 2,500 replies. They were from people of all ages, some of them even from boys who said they were "sick of seeing girls dressed immodestly and that it made them feel uncomfortable," Amanda Cockriel said.

The girls studied fashion magazines, noting that the only model in a prom dress they rated acceptable had a sad face. "All the others were gleefully hopping into fast cars and such," said Mary Voss, who has helped the girls with publicity for their cause.

Her husband, Dennis Voss, helped the girls put together their own magazine with photos, done professionally by another church member, of the girls in the types of dresses they wanted to see on store racks.

She said the presentation to Nordstrom's managers and buyer was impressive, and the store responded that season with dresses that were more modest.

The girls now have a Web site (www.goodworks.net)

and have generated 10,000 signatures on a petition they want to take to stores to show how important this issue is to them. They are hoping for 200,000 signatures in all.

Nathan Jarvis, designer at Hallmark, created a logo for the group, a hanger with an E draped on it. The girls have put together a publicity packet showing lively dresses with higher necklines and cap sleeves.

Ashley Hamrick's photo was in The Wall Street Journal, pictured in what the girls dub a 'hot' but still modest red dress.

More important than finding specific dresses, the girls are learning they can make a difference in influencing merchants, said Ashley's mother, Annie Hamrick.

Now it's spring again and the girls have been shopping for acceptable prom gowns. Unfortunately they have come up empty-handed for the most part, they said, as they prepared for the INSIDE EDITION film crew. Ashley Hamrick showed a red dress she found that has spaghetti straps but also a bolero jacket to wear over it. Annie Kershisnik said she might have to recycle last year's prom dress, a navy blue satin with cap sleeves and a square neckline.

"I don't want to be boring, but everything I saw was totally sleeveless or for a grandma," she said. "Dresses that are for the mother of a bride. I don't want to look like the mother of the bride."

"I shopped all weekend. There would be so many things that would be just as nice if they were a few inches less bare," Annie said.

Michael Nolte, the owner of Nolte's Bridal Collection at 119th and Roe in Hawthorne Plaza, said Tuesday that Annie had found a suitable dress during the filming for 'Inside Edition.'

She and Ashley spent about an hour and found a dress that Nolte described as "more understated than blatant" a mint green, A-line Italian satin with short sleeves and an open scoop neckline, decorated from bodice to toe with a beading pattern of leaves and vines.

Mary Voss, who accompanied the girls on the filming of the shopping tour, said "Annie talked about that dress all the way home."

The interview with the girls and the shopping excursion are scheduled to air on Inside Edition on May 20th, Voss said. She said Inside Edition planned to contrast their spot with one about high
schoolers at a prom in Los Angeles.

Note: Come to www.goodworks.net to join 10,000 others who have signed the petition asking department stores and design houses to market more modest clothing.

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