The Future is here; Two best Friend Males Voted Prom King, New York

Two gay male best friends were voted prom king and queen by such a wide margin at an upstate New York high school that the school didn’t even bother with any runners-up. Seniors Charlie Ferrusi and Timmy Howard won their respective crown and tiara by a landslide Saturday. The guys say they ran the idea past advisers and the principal, who gave their blessing. FYI, the same school refused to let a male student run for prom queen back in 2008.

Maybe most of my knowledge of what a prom court is was informed by Mean Girls, but it’s hard for me to gauge what this actually means as far as the attitudes towards gay teens. While we can agree that the treatment of kids like Constance McMillen and Derrick Martin is straight up about homophobia, does that mean that gay kids being elected prom king/queen/america’s next top high schooler is about acceptance? I guess I feel like the stories we’ve heard recently about gay kids being elected to prom court, like Derrek Lutz of New Jersey, were all actually male-identified. And that’s fine, that’s awesome even, but I wonder a) where the lesbians are, as always, because some of us went to prom too just fyi, and b) whether there isn’t an element of patronization and accessorization of gay men. I’m not here to belittle Charlie, Timmy or Derrek’s crowns because maybe they are very important, I can’t remember prom, but I do remember my high school and I know that if this had happened there, it would have been because people thought it was cute or funny.

Probably I’m wrong though! Probably there are two dozen gay boys out there shaking their heads and saying “Funny, no one treated me like I was cute or funny when I was in high school,” and also Charlie and Timmy won by such a large margin that the school didn’t even both naming a runner-up, so they’re probably just really fucking awesome. The fact that their school didn’t even allow male students to run for prom queen as little as two years ago really does mean the future is bright, and that brave gay teens and their allies are forcing the environment to change, even if it’s slower than we would like. Way to go, guys!