In Texas, Mums Rival Football as the Big Homecoming Attraction
The elaborate adornments have come a long way since the days of simple chrysanthemum corsages.
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The J.J. Pearce High School homecoming football game was underway on a hot, breezy Friday night. Up in the bleachers, tubas swayed from side to side as if waving hello, and bare backs rippled with red and blue paint that spelled, “Go Mustangs!”
As the team charged down the field, a strange roar was building in the stands — the chorus of hundreds of cowbells swinging to and fro on the homecoming mums.
Mums are elaborate adornments typically worn by female students in a tradition across the South and Midwest that goes back more than a century. They have become as much a part of homecoming celebrations as the football games. In Texas, they have evolved into a statement-making ritual: The larger and louder the mum, the better.
Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York Times
On Sept. 22, hundreds of Pearce students wore mums festooned with ribbons, feathers, teddy bears, cowbells, whistles and various other doodads.
Some were the size of full-body armor.
Freshmen, sophomores and juniors wore them in the school colors: red, white and blue.
In a tradition within the tradition, seniors were draped in white and silver arrangements that shimmered and glowed.
The girls wore the mums for up to 12 hours — to class, to a pep rally and on through the game’s final whistle.
“When you walk through the halls, you hear bells,” said Sydney Brown, a senior and student government secretary at Pearce, a public high school with nearly 2,500 students located in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. “You see feathers on the ground. My friend said it looks like when you’re leaving a Harry Styles concert.”
Each year, teachers resign themselves to the noise. Students laugh as their classmates reveal their many shades of personal expression. Girls complain of being weighed down, at times with feigned annoyance. After all, a heavy mum is a status symbol. And they are heavy — many weighing up to 10 pounds. Knees may bruise if a cowbell is placed so that it knocks against bone. The neck strains.
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