What Barbie taught me about homecoming mums in Texas
“I’m stereotypical Barbie. I’m like the Barbie you think of when someone says, ‘Think of a Barbie.’ That’s me.”
– Margot Robbie as original Barbie in Barbie, 2023
I started begging for my first Barbie when I was four, too young by my parents standards. They finally broke down and got me one when I was six. For several years after that, all I ever wanted for my birthday or Christmas was to enhance my Barbie world-building. She was a constant source of entertainment, imagining, and figuring things out. I don’t remember when I stopped playing with Barbie, Ken, Skipper, and the two other Barbies who lived together inside the Townhouse in the corner of my pink gingham bedroom. Maybe it’s because they’re all still with me in my fond memories.
Yep, that's me on Christmas morning. Note Barbie (or Skipper?) on a horse in the lower left-hand corner.
When I saw the Barbie (2023) movie for the first time, I remember both agreeing and disagreeing with the notion that Margot Robbie’s Barbie was Stereotypical Barbie. Yes, of course, a blonde, blue-eyed, Caucasian Barbie with an unattainable body type can be considered broadly stereotypical. But if you were a kid like me whose Barbie era was meaningful, it is the specific dolls of your generation that you think of when you think of Barbie.
The 1959 version of Barbie—the one Margot Robbie portrayed in the opening scene of the movie—was the Original Barbie, but she was not MY original Barbie. My Barbie didn’t have a high pony tail, wear a striped bathing suit, or demurely look out of the corner of her eyes. My Barbie looked straight ahead, wore cool hairstyles and clothes, worked in a different career every day, and traveled in all the vehicles I couldn’t wait to someday drive or fly myself.
Barbie of my childhood will always be my Stereotypical Barbie. The Barbies that came before and come after may remind me of her, but never the other way around. I imagine this is true for every girl and boy who loved a particular toy. That toy will always be Day One, even if its manufacturing date was decades after the first release.
I wonder if it just hit you like it hit me?
Homecoming mums are just like Barbie.
The Dawn of Homecoming
When school-based homecomings started taking place around the turn of the 20th century,* they weren’t all called “homecoming” because the concept of a stereotypical homecoming didn’t exist.
The first homecoming at the University of Michigan, for instance, is considered to be the first Alumni Game, which pitted former football players against the varsity squad in 1897. But it took some time before the Wolverines used the term homecoming to describe a particular “home vs. away” football game plus the events surrounding it.
In Texas, the first schools to use the word homecoming to describe similar events were Baylor University and Southwestern University in 1909.
The Dawn of Homecoming Mums
We know that homecoming mums date back to at least 1913 because of the photo below, which shows women at the University of Missouri homecoming football game holding chrysanthemum flowers.
Because this was still the dawn of homecoming itself, in no way were these chrysanthemums considered the stereotypical homecoming flower. Preferred, maybe, but not stereotypical. It takes time for something to become a stereotype.
Baylor University claims that it introduced the homecoming mum to Texas in the 1930s. By the time Baylor University homecoming queen Marguerite Joyce posed for this photo in 1936, chrysanthemums were considered the customary, if not stereotypical, homecoming corsage flower in many states.
Women who attended school during the early years of homecomings, up until about World War II, think this style of chrysanthemum corsage is the stereotypical homecoming mum.
Homecoming Mums & the Baby Boom in Texas
Amanda and her date, 1974. Click for source.
In the years and decades after WWII, especially the 1950s-70s, ribbons, plastics, and other manufactured materials became prettier and more plentiful at the same time the first round of Baby Boom babies were becoming teenagers. More teenagers meant more high schools, particularly in Texas where the population growth was above the national average. And here’s the important part—that population growth in Texas has been above the national average ever since.
If the Lone Star State could barely stay ahead of the need for more high schools, imagine what was happening to the demand for homecoming mums in Texas every Fall. Florists in Texas began offering ribbons in ALL the new school colors, and to compete with each other, they also began differentiating their corsages by integrating small school- and football-related charms and flourishes into their homecoming mum designs.
Baby Boomers—and there are a lot of them—think this style of chrysanthemum corsage is the stereotypical homecoming mum.
Homecoming Mums get Personal in Texas
For several very Texas-specific reasons that I talk about in my book, homecoming mums in Texas and only Texas moved from being a “standard” corsage to a highly personalized keepsake. This process began in earnest in the 1970s.
Coppell High School, likely 1980s. Click for source.
At some schools, for instance, it became the norm that girls could wear more than one mum from more than one source, such as a date or boyfriend, parents, or club advisor. Another trend was to use more than one flower in the overall design to indicate class year: such as, one mum for freshman and sophomores, two mums for juniors, three mums for seniors.
These new practices eventually normalized the idea that the older you are, the bigger your mum. This resulted in upperclassmen having more mum square footage to fill with embellishments. And really, how many tiny footballs does one mum need? This is the era that welcomed longer ribbons, bells, and a much greater variety of mum trinkets representing the interests of the student herself (and starting in the 1980s,* himself) in addition to generic symbols of team spirit. Once mums got big enough, the practice of affixing teddy bears became a significant step toward total mum anthropomorphism (a fancy way of saying bringing an inanimate object to life).
Kids who were born at the end of the Baby Boom, Gen X, and early Gen Y think this style of chrysanthemum corsage is the stereotypical homecoming mum.
And like my attitude towards Original Barbie, they had little interest in wearing a mum that looked like their mother’s.
Homecoming Mums Bid Farewell to Live Flowers in Texas
There are two more very important changes that started in the late 1960s* and took decades to fully manifest. I go into them in much more detail in my book, including a particularly heart-warming story from a florist who was there.
moms making mums, © Amy J. Schultz (photo presented in black & white to give it a nostalgic look)
First, homecoming mums in Texas went from being anchored by a live chrysanthemum flower to a silk one. A silk flower is So. Many. Things. It’s sturdy. It’s less expensive. It allows you to make mums way in advance. It turns a perishable corsage into a lasting keepsake. You can sew things to it, glue things to it, and staple things to it (you know, like a teddy bear). It can hold much more weight than a live flower. Add all these traits together, and why wouldn’t you take advantage of all the possibilities?
Second, silk flowers completely blew up the homecoming mum monopoly. Florists used to be the only retailers of homecoming mums. When consumers finally fell in love with all the advantages of silk flowers, they started making mums themselves… and some of them were so good at it, they went into business. From then on, there was and continues to be an EXPLOSION of mum specialists, mostly in Texas, including manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, printers, home-based makers, professional mumtrepreneurs, and retailers. Economics 101 tells us that when there’s a huge supply side, there is enormous pressure for each supplier to differentiate their product every single year. The more choices that are available in the market, the more consumers demand personalization so they will both fit in and stand out.
Kids who went to a school where artificial mums were the norm think this is the stereotypical homecoming mum.
Oh, and this is an important point. Unlike me and my opinions about Original Barbie, these kids likely didn’t even know that Original Mum was a corsage made with a live flower, let alone have any opinions about it.
Homecoming Mums are Bespoke in Texas
spidermum, © Amy J. Schultz (photo presented in black & white to give it a nostalgic look)
To describe Texas’ current mum era, I’m going to use a word that comes from the distant past but has new meaning today: bespoke.
Centuries ago in ye merrie olde England, the verb bespeak meant to order something in advance. By the 1700s, the adjective bespoke had emerged to mean “custom-made” and was often used to describe things you wear. Today, the word bespoke has seen an increased usage in the U.S., perhaps due to current trends that champion all things artisanal and curated rather than mass produced and off-the-rack.
Bespoke mums. Yep, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Notice I didn’t say that we are in an era of gigantic homecoming mums. Sure, the average homecoming mum today is much larger than the average homecoming mum of the past. Sure, every year there are students in nearly every Texas high school who go over-the-top with their mums, especially in their senior year. When they do, photos of those mums tend to be disproportionately shared in social and main stream media, reinforcing the impression that all mums are gigantic and the stereotype that Everything really is Bigger in Texas.
But to claim that today’s Texas homecoming mums are all gigantic is a false stereotype. Here, let me show you. These twelve photos of 2024 homecoming mums were shared on the same Texas Homecoming Mums & Garters !! public Facebook group within hours of each other:
What I like about the word “bespoke” for describing the current homecoming mum era is that it focuses on the heart of what’s happening: mums reflect the personality of the individual. Whether the mum is created by a professional mum maker or DIY’ed at home, it contains both subtle and obvious symbols of the wearer’s identity. When you’re in high school, that’s a big deal, especially if you’re a Gen Z in your senior year.
Meanwhile, a mom (or grandma, auntie, or another loving female surrogate) is almost always involved in the giving of the mum, and that means LOVE is in the mix. Mums today are more than just personal; they are a form of self-expression for the wearer AND the giver. You can’t get more bespoke than that.
When they’re in their thirties, I wonder how Gen Z will describe their generation’s stereotypical homecoming mum. We’ll just have to wait to find out.
Do homecoming mums exist outside of Texas today? Yes, sort of. Click here to learn more.
*The Never-ending Story
My blog and book are based on my own original research using authenticated source materials. I haven’t repurposed content from third party or questionable sources. However, I am very eager to learn new facts about the evolution of homecoming mums, so if you are aware of any new or contradictory information that comes from a verifiable source, I would love to hear from you. Email me at mumentousbook@gmail.com. Thank you!
Shameless Plug for Mumentous
If you enjoyed reading this, I think you’ll enjoy my book, Mumentous: Original Photos and Mostly-True Stories about Football, Glue Guns, Moms, and a Supersized High School Tradition that was Born Deep in the Heart of Texas.
You don’t have to take it from me. MUMENTOUS has loads of independent reviews, like this one:
“MUMENTOUS is a powerful photo-driven memoir steeped in the roots of Texas and motherhood, and captures a social and cultural expedition across Texas with a focus on mums and their mindsets. Its first-person journey attracts from the start with a candid observational style that opens on the football field of Texas life:
"The humidity pushed down on the football stadium that homecoming night, capping and coagulating the din rising from the student section. Each individual sound, movement, and breath taken seemed to stick together in the atmosphere, forming a singular, dense mass of joyful disharmonies. I love it. When I'm in a big crowd like this one, I play a game my mom taught me back when I was a wiggly child sitting next to her at a concert. First, she told me, find the sound of one instrument. The trumpet, maybe, or the piano. Listen to its melody until you can follow its story. Once understood, open your eardrums just a little in search of a complementary tone. Try to add a third, then a fourth. Take care you don't add too many storylines at once so that the first ones disappear back into the murk, because every instrument is equally important. As I applied her game to the homecoming-related chatter around me, there were so many harmonic stories from which to choose..."
This passage captures the feel and process of MUMENTOUS in a nutshell, representing the rich flavors that Amy J. Schultz mixes into her story of Texas homecoming mums and the milieu that exhibits a special countenance to the world that is uniquely and "...outrageously conspicuous and totally emboldened, just like a teenager making a big noise in our big, noisy world."
…MUMENTOUS will attract, delight, and surprise those who think it will be yet another coverage of motherhood alone. By exploring and exposing the unique traditions of Texas mums, Schultz succeeds in crafting a history that captures homecoming games, queens, and the powerful countenance of the Texas mum, whose persona and drive are explored nowhere else.
Libraries and readers interested in women's history, literature, and especially regional probes of women's traditions and experiences will relish MUMENTOUS for its lively celebrations of the Texan woman and the energy she brings to the playing field of women's literature and life.”
- Midwest Book Review and Donovan's Literary Services
by D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
