Fairfax High’s Prom Queen

Fairfax High School’s “Prom Queen” title recipient won on a non-traditional nomination.

Sergio Garcia is an 18 year old male who “felt invincible” after beating out his female competitors.

The history of high school proms are riddled with angst, dashed dreams, fulfilled expectations, and a lot of teenage debauchery.  It’s a constructed rite of passage, that even if one skips it — intentionally or by lack of choice — helps shapes teenage social development.

My particular interest in the topic is how gender and sexuality is enforced by a matrix of forces wrapped in the prom experience.  As Event Fashion reports in their History of Prom article, the average prom couple spends $1200 for the night.  The pressures to conform are not opaque, and have given rise to anti-prom sentiments.

And so, I recently found this interesting news story by reading it from the LAtimes,  but wanted to reflect on some first impressions from the article.  To note: the bolded headers are stripped from the original article, which can be found here (Fairfax High’s prom queen is a guy).

• He’s among the first male students in Southern California to take the title usually owned by female high school beauties.

As same-sex Prom winners have happened already but, I believe, in the sense of Prom Queen-Queen, or King-King (as opposed to this normative sense of Queen-King) it is not so interesting that the winners of this popularity contest were both male.

“At one time, prom may have been a big popularity contest where the best-looking guy or girl were crowned king and queen. Things have changed and it’s no longer just about who has the most friends or who wears the coolest clothes,” Garcia told the crowd of seniors. “Sure, I’m not your typical prom queen candidate. There’s more to me than meets the eye.”

What draws me to this particular line from the article is how the journalist refers to the prom queen as “beauties”, calling to mind the institution of beauty pageants.  I’d like to eventually flesh out this idea, or — better — read someone else’s takes on proms as beauty pageants of a different frequency.  I’m sure they’re out there, so if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

• “It just shows how open-minded our class is,” said Vanessa Lo, 18, the school’s senior class president.

I love this line, as I find it potentially incredibly backwards.  Of course, it’s taken out of context of the speaker, so my judgement falls not on Lo, rather on the idea of generalizing “open-mindedness”, or even, the term in general.

I find the term a well-intentioned failure, or an unfinished thought.  It calls to mind the cliche that goes along the lines of: A friend to all is a friend to none.

To verbalize “open-mindedness” is to assert fair play, which would necessarily include the inverse opinion that the “open-minded” person is not.  This is, to me, similar to the idea of “tolerance”.

To assign Garcia’s winning of the title to “open-mindedness”  is to reinforce the norms of male Kings and female Queens.

I welcome any reader questions regarding this, as I myself consider my critique an unfinished idea.

• “His speech was great,” recalled Unique Payne, 17, a senior who said she voted for Garcia. “I did it because I support the gay community,” she said.
  …
  “I’m not really happy about that. He should’ve run for prom king,” said 17-year-old senior Juan Espinoza.
  Espinoza said he has nothing against Garcia but believes many students voted for him as a joke so they could see the prom king dance with another guy on prom night.

This brings up the “visibility at any cost” mentality, that drives supporters of Will and Grace and Aimee Mullins’ highly sexual photo shoots.

I am opposed to the things that will create a spectacle of one aspect of identity for visibility of another.  In the case of Aimee Mullins, defenders might argue that sexuality exists in all people and is frequently not considered by people of non-normate bodies.  By posing in ways that give light to her sexuality, she brings up that people of all bodies are sexual beings.

On the other hand, one cannot forget that female bodies are so often sexually objectified.

She becomes a symbol not of liberated sexuality for those with non-normate physicality, but of a reach towards being female by being seen and consumed by the male gaze.

Proms are highly hormonal and the spectacle of this event is to be considered.  Is it positive?  Or negative?

I think the ambivalent nature might be part of the story’s beauty.

An interesting post on the history of proms can be found at Event Fashion.

Listen to This American Life’s episode on proms, available here.

Aimee Mullins at TED

I had never heard of Aimee Mullins before watching this…but now I’m excited to see learn more about what she’s done.  She’s quite the inspiration.

This really is a must watch for anyone interested in identity and/or technology.