Newsday’s Project Prom winner is Nabila Alim of Deer Park High School
Nabila Alim, 17, is a self-admitted "total nerd" and admires Amal Clooney for her brains and style. Credit: Nabila Alim
We found her!
Deer Park High School’s Nabila Alim, 17, is this year’s Project Prom girl. The senior, an honor student who has already been accepted into the accelerated pharmacy program at St. John’s University, confesses, “I’m a total nerd. I love chemistry and school, but on the other side I love makeup and fashion.” Her style crush? “Amal Clooney. She’s this super powerful lawyer who has both beauty and brains. You can still be smart and super fashionable.”
Hardworking in school and outside of it, Nabila is a volunteer at the Red Cross club, has won regional DECA (the student business club) awards two years in a row and for the past four years has performed Bengali dancing at her school’s International Culture Night, which raises money for scholarships.
But prom is a new concept in the Alim household, where Nabila is the oldest of three. “My parents never had anything like prom in Bangladesh, so this is a very big day for me,” she says. She has marveled at the changing standards in fashion and beauty industries, which is why she applied to Project Prom, wanting to underscore what she views as a new diversity from a size and racial standpoint. “I thought it would be a brave way to participate and show girls that do not feel as beautiful because of their race, that they are beautiful, too. It’s important to be confident in who you are.”
Her classmate in AP chemistry, Jerry Arsenis, 18, says we picked the right girl. “She is so sophisticated, down to earth, intelligent and a sweetheart and the greatest friend. She definitely deserves this.”
We think so, too, Newsday readers, so it’s up to you to vote on what glamorous frock Nabila should wear to her prom (we’re buying) at Land’s End in Sayville. Stay tuned.
