Coming Of Age

You might think the age of the aristocratic marriage market is long gone, and you’d be right, but not that of the debutante ball. Melissa Twigg meets a cohort of glamorous young women with a lot more than marriage on their minds

- Melissa Twigg

Who’d have thought a debutante ball would be a hotbed of feminism? Traditionally, these glittering events were designed to introduce well-born young women into society to attract suitable husbands, so they weren’t exactly the apex of equality and female empowerment. But try telling that to the 19 young women who recently made their debuts in Paris at le Bal des Débutantes, a glamorous group of lawyers, doctors, journalists and actresses all possessed of a sense of destiny and a desire to play a role in changing the world.

“Oh, I definitely think it’s feminist. It’s about celebrating female talent—and we all care more about what we’re doing professionally or educationally than the way we look. And it’s just fun,” said True Whitaker, a willowy American journalism student who opened the night’s dancing with her father, Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, in the ornate ballroom of the Shangri-La Paris. Le Bal, as it’s known, was a delicious spectacle to witness. Earlier, standing in the ballroom a few hours before Forest and her confrères were to be presented to Parisian society, my eyes drank in the old-world beauty of the venue and the lavishly dressed young women, whose lace, velvet and silk skirts were strewn across the Louis XV furniture on which they were posing, looking for all the world as if they had just fallen out of a fairy tale.