“Hello, world! I’m a tramp!”

That had to be the statement young Marche Taylor was trying to make when she showed up at her senior prom in Houston earlier this month. The dress she wore has been described in the news media as “skimpy,” but believe me, we journalist types are being way too kind.

I mean, have you seen this thing she wore -- and then had the nerve to try and get into a prom? (She never made it; she caused a ruckus and cops had to take her away in handcuffs.)

Earth to Marche (pronounced “mar-shay,” according to some news broadcasts I’ve heard): proms are by definition a school function. And schools have a thing we call dress codes. And no school in the country -- Lord knows, I hope I’m right about this -- has a dress code that allows young women to attend school functions looking like $20 hookers.

And that’s exactly how Marche looked, sporting a dress that came mid-thigh and exposed her entire midriff. But Marche trying to slip that garb pass prom chaperones isn’t the shocking thing. What really boggles my mind is that Marche’s parents apparently let her leave the house wearing that get-up.

My daughter’s senior prom was 18 years ago, and she knows to this day she would never have even tried to pull the stunt Marche pulled. My daughter knows if she’d even dreamed of wearing a dress like that, I’d have slapped her eyes around to the back of her head.

But I can hear Marche’s defenders now, can’t you? “This is the year 2008. Times have changed. Prom attire isn’t what it used to be.”

Times may have changed, but people with good sense haven’t. Some of us still cling to the notion that people should know when, where and how to dress appropriately. That’s why we’re so hard on the young brothers who love to wear their pants down on their butts exposing their underwear. It’s a style of dress right out of the nation’s prisons, one that says “I bend over and grab my ankles for my cell mate and wash out his underwear for him too.”

Well, we old fuddy-duddies may not have been able to put the kibosh on that “fashion” statement, but at least one high school in Houston managed to draw the line at prom attire. But judging from what I see when I Googled “ghetto prom,” Marche’s school might be the exception.

I’m telling you, it’s monstrous. Many of the young women looked as slutty as Marche, as if they were going not to a prom, but to a nearby hotel room to “entertain” a bunch of old farts in town for a convention and looking for a good time with “business girls.”
    
The kicker was the girl who looked to be at least six months pregnant and made sure the world knew that fact by sporting a dress with the entire abdominal area cut out, exposing her rotund tummy. Apparently, that guy we all know as A Sense of Shame was walking down her block one day when her family grabbed him, tied him to a tree and shot him between the eyes.

Girls wearing prom dresses that look like they were purchased at Sluts-R-Us. Guys sporting the pants-over-the-butt look. It’s as if youth are using how they dress as a form of rebellion, but the statement they’re making by rebelling doesn’t make sense. Believe me, I support rebellion when it has a legitimate purpose.

The year I graduated high school, 1969, the young ladies at Eastern High School in Baltimore did precisely that. Eastern was an all-girls school, located across the street from my alma mater, Baltimore City College, which at the time was all male.

Back then, all girls had to attend school wearing either dresses or skirts. Slacks and pants suits weren’t allowed. The rule was system-wide, not just at Eastern. One day, either one girl or no more than four girls -- I can’t remember the exact number -- showed up at Eastern wearing pants. She and/or they were immediately suspended.

The very next day, every single girl who attended Eastern came to school wearing pants.

It was a “Houston, we have a problem moment” for Eastern’s administrators. They couldn’t suspend all the girls who wore pants. From that day on, girls have worn pants in Baltimore public schools.

So I genuinely support young people who express their rebellion through their dress, just as long as the dress doesn’t make them look like hookers or buffoons.