Overalls tradition meant to be personal, rewarding experience
Coppell High School seniors Maya Joseph and Payton Kirk pose on Sept. 8 during the first pep rally of the year wearing their senior overalls. Senior overalls are worn during the school day before Friday night home football games and have been a tradition among schools in Texas.
October 3, 2017
With a student section considered one of the best in the state, a 3,700 plus student body, and a mum and garter tradition dating back decades, Coppell High School is the epitome of the Texas high school stereotype.
Coppell is known among Texas high schools for its strong tradition of senior girls creating overalls to wear during Friday pep rallies.
Just Google the terms “senior overalls” and the top hits are photos of CHS graduates wearing unmistakably handmade creations.
For Coppell senior girls, wearing overalls in honor of Friday Night Lights is almost considered a rite of passage associated with graduation and celebrating the last year of school.
Wearing a handmade creation while standing in solidarity on the front row of the bleachers during a pep rally with the rest of the girls of your graduating class is a fulfilling feeling.
The creative process is also an opportunity to undertake an artistic endeavor, explore a hidden talent or simply a means to destress.
In recent years, this has no longer been the case.
Many girls have outsourced the job of making overalls to someone else, partly eliminating the emotional and personal value associated with the creative process.
This has been caused by overlooking of benefits associated with using motor skills to create a handmade product, prioritizing different digital skills in the modern age, and emergence of businesses catering to this need.
While the end product will look much more finished, professional and polished, the original intention of the tradition to be a fun, independent project and to personally remember the important aspects of your high school career is lost.
The feeling of physically wearing your final product which reflects the time, money and work invested into it, is unmatched.
Senior overalls memorialize the years spent at CHS and serve as a symbol of the past but also represent artistic and self-independence.
Documenting these four years is much personal when you remember them through a creation you planned, developed and designed yourself.
Many business have a base price of $275. By paying someone else to create this memento, it is an unnecessary investment and lacks the intangible rewards such as fulfillment.
As girls prioritize the aesthetic value of their overalls rather than its meaning, the process is no longer considered a personal project. The tradition will instead develop into a superficial competition based on the willingness to spend money.
Although ideas and trends will evolve, this tradition should not. In order for the senior overalls tradition to remain sacred and to continue to be passed on from one graduating class of girls to the next, girls of the class of 2019 should consider investing their own time, money, and creativity into the process.
Lili Lomas • Oct 3, 2017 at 3:59 pm
Super well written Tanya! I agree, senior overalls should be something you are proud to wear because they are your own creation. When you are complemented for them, you can’t really accept the compliment unless you made them.