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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.
Does this not seem problematic? At least perhaps, inconsistent?
If love, according to AfroRomance, is more than skin deep, why would you need to go to “AfroRomance” to find an “interracial partner”?
The ad setup seems so strange to me. Strange, literally, not judgementally. Yet.
Don't even start to think what I know you're starting to think. They're STRAIGHT.
I Love You, Man, is apparently a bromance.
This noun is homophobic and juvenile.
I Love You, Man = homophobic and juvenile?
What is a “bro-mance”? According to the Urban Dictionary, the word “describes the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males.”
In a not-gay way, of course, because that “straight”-ness has to be made explicit.
In order to subvert any kind of potential suspicion, they have to come up with ridiculous word antics.
The whole genre that has preceeded this “new” one, including but not limited to Superbad, Knocked Up (anything with Seth Rogen), Beerfest, Old School…is not without their blatant heterosexism and homophobia. That’s on top of the blatant sexism. And “retarded” jokes. And probably their fair share of fat jokes, even though Seth Rogen, Vince Vaughn (another usual suspect) and many more famous male comedians are rarely on the cover of US Weekly with the headline, “TOO OVERWEIGHT TO PROCREATE?” above them.
Just in from Star magazine: Seth Rogen still not on a diet! How does he maintain that rotund shape?
For the people who claim that this term comes from classic philosophy, since he did endorse extremely close male to male relationships, let’s consider a few things.
- Socrates was gay, friends. In modern terms, he was gay. Look it up. Read Plato’s Symposium, and tell me that there isn’t proof that Socrates was the town harlot.
- Let’s say they weren’t all 100%, tipping off the Kinsey-scale gay. The times then were different than now, since they killed off kids with “deformities”, had multiple slaves, and had sex with women primarily to procreate. They also did things like trample people over with elephants. That doesn’t disprove the theory that non-gay platonic male affection was essentially invented back then, but that does place the theory under completely different circumstances that simply cannot be translated into today’s jargon as “bromance.”
- As Stephen Colbert says, “All or nothing.” Claim bromance comes from one of the big three classical philosophers, but then you absolutely must promote gay sex amongst the military to build a more emotional (and therefore effective) fighting force.
Bromanticism
The term is not only homophobic. It’s really sexist against men. This is a mutated form of self-hatred propagated by males, against males. It assumes that males cannot have a platonic, respectful, and — dare I say — loving friendship that is not physical. Because they are incapable?
It stifles the male identity into not being able to be loved by another man for their personality or friendship. There must be a motive. That motive, with straight males, is generally sex. But deeming it a ‘bromance”, it makes it okay. It’s special and different and absolutely not gay.
Ideally, there should be exploration and encouragement, without stifiling of identity. Not schoolyard self-deprecation to save oneself the hassle of being called names like, “faggot” because of how you enact appreciation and friendship.
Some guy did a lot of research on bromance and should be given a bromance prize of some sort.
