The pressure intensifies as girls scramble to find their dates for Carlsbad High’s first ever winter formal. Keeping with the tradition from previous years MORP dance, winter formal is ‘girls ask guys.’

“It’s cool that girls get to step up to the plate and take the risk of asking guys,” junior Collin Snyder said. “I love the fact that they get to ask us.”

Winter formal differs from MORP, which called for casual attire and places more pressure on students to attend with a date on their arm. Unlike prom and homecoming, the guys get a chance to sit back and relax while the girls take control for a change.

“I had a lot of fun asking someone because it gives girls a chance to be creative, and it gives the guys a break,” senior Sarah Scudder said. “I asked my date by spelling out formal in big letters, so he could wake up and see them. It was really fun.”

However, asking guys intimidates some girls and may be the reason students do not attend the dance. Are you asking as a friend or more than a friend? Are they going to want to go with you? How do you ask? All these questions burn in the girls’ minds as the talk of asking boys lingers around campus.

“The biggest reason I’m not going to formal is because asking guys is really scary,” junior Chloe Blish said. “There is unspoken competition between girls, you don’t know if the guy wants to go just as friends and it brings up so many awkward questions between you and your potential date. But it’s definitely fun to see the creative things girls come up with, versus what guys come up with when they ask girls to homecoming and prom.”

Although it’s nice to mix it up sometimes and let the girls ask the guys, students seem to favor the typical ‘guys ask girls.’

“I like the traditional ‘guys ask girls’ style of dances because you can choose who you go to the dance with,” junior Julian Ortega said. “It’s like a wild card with the girls asking guys, like this year’s super bowl, it can go terribly wrong.”

Throughout the history of dating, males are typically the ones to approach the females. Winter formal places girls out of their comfort zones because they desire the customary approach to school dances.

“There is so much less pressure when it is guys ask girls, and traditionally, it’s what the guy does,” Blish said. “Guys should always be the ones to pursue girls, not the other way around. It makes things so much easier when the guys ask the girls to the dances because guys are usually the more dominant ones in the relationship. They should make the first move.”