Pride Prom: a queer-ly positive experience
On April 6, Sayles Hall transformed from a large hall prided for its magnificent and large organ and walls of portraits into a colorfully lit hall filled with music and queer pride. Pride Prom had come to Brown yet again, thanks to the many hours of deliberate planning from the Queer Alliance. This year’s theme was Astrology, and so Pride Prom was appropriately titled Star-Crossed. There was a photo booth with a professional photographer ready to capture all of this years’ attendees’ gorgeous looks. Most importantly, there were dozens upon dozens of fellow queer people. Some of my friends wore very handsome suits. Some wore rainbow sequin dresses. I put on a button up shirt and plastered on some rainbow suspenders and a colorful bowtie, just in case the suspenders weren’t enough.Over the course of Pride Prom, various iconically queer bops resounded through the hall, such as Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko and Toxic by Britney Spears. One of Brown’s own student bands, Strawberry Generation, rocked out with the rest of us for a part of the night. Cupcakke’s LGBT made the DJ's playlist as well. The real beauty of it all? The great juxtaposition between the queer couples dancing calmly and closely and the crazy singletons who can’t dance for shit, going ham on the dance floor, both happening to the same song. And I may have been one of those crazy singletons, and I’ve never felt more welcome. I loved being able to look around and see everyone having a grand old time, dressed in ways that they usually wouldn’t dare to dress in a regular context. Some put on shimmery makeup in ways they hadn’t before in their entire lives, some wore genderbent clothing. I loved the openness, the lack of hesitation before just doing whatever with their friends. I loved feeling free.All the formal events I’d been to and heard of had come with the implicit gender dress code and the heteronormativity. They always felt a little restrictive, a little tight, a little bit like I was holding in a breath.One of the reasons I’d chosen to come to Brown was because of its queer student body. I’d heard about Pride Prom at ADOCH and had been so excited to attend such an event - an event made by people like me for people like me. As a first-year, I’d met many fellow queer people and had been to a couple specially queer events, but this was for sure the largest queer event I’d been to. And to be able to dress however I wanted, to just open up and feel actively welcome in the space? It sounds like the bare minimum, and yet it had taken so long to find an event like this. It was so refreshing to have a Pride Prom and actually talk to and interact with other queer people at Brown. There isn’t always an obvious space for it, and it can feel so isolating. It isn’t to say that Brown “isn’t queer enough” at all. Rather, I always find instances where I feel hesitation to speak about my lived experiences or feel like my queerness has no place. Obviously, I knew I was going to have straight friends, but being constantly surrounded by “straight talk” gets overwhelming. It’s a window of a life that will never belong to you, but a life you still somehow expect to see in the mirror. But at Pride Prom, I was seeing life as it was. Not through a window, not through any surface, but simply through my own eyes, my own body. This was my space. This was an event for me and others like me. After the constant bombardment of heteronormativity and gender norms daily for all your life, entering one queer space is like stepping off a stage and realizing that you were just an actor in a play all along. I’m still here, though, and I stand here, real and proud. And it is thanks to events like these that I feel empowered and hopeful enough to do so. To those fellow queer people who thought about attending Pride Prom this year but weren’t able to, I hope that you attend next year and feel the same sort of hope and comfort that I did. It’s a rare, beautiful thing, and it’s worth cherishing. Images via.
