Queer Prom: Fantasy Is a Radical Reality

UCLA’s Gender, Sexuality, and Society Living-Learning Community (GSS LLC) held its annual Queer Prom on March 1, 2024. The event was decorated around a “fantasy” theme — colored-paper windows resembled the stained glass of a chapel, long vines entangled every chair, and a projection of a firefly-lit forest flashed the words “Queer Prom 2024” in bold letters.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

It is a beautiful thing, wanting nothing at all from someone you love because you live with mutual understanding beyond the primal need for physical touch, found in fleeting evenings doomed to end with someone closing the door without looking back. It is a beautiful thing, telling them that you love them over the phone while you’re crying your eyes out because you don’t know what to do now; then you’re laughing until there’s a moment you allow yourself to forget. I remember life before my queer friends, how it felt begging for someone I could see myself in just enough to spark a casual conversation built on genuine interest instead of twisting those unwilling into sharing hyperfixations created for those of us who know what it’s like to have to fight for the ones you love.

Queer Fashion Staff Features

Photos by Zoë Collins/OutWrite Interviews by Min Kim/OutWrite This series was originally published in our Winter 2023 print issue “Culture.” Min Kim (They/Them) “Trends never really do dictate whether you’re dressing fashionably or not.” “[Fashion] enables me to put into…

Radical Visibility and Accessible Fashion with Sky Cubacub: Disability Pride (Month) Spotlight

Photo by Sarah Joyce For the second spotlight of this series, we have Sky Cubacub (pronounced Koo-BAH-Koob), an exuberant and innovative fashion designer and artist currently working in their hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Sky (they/xe) is the founder of Rebirth…

Work! A Queer History of Modeling

Elspeth H. Brown, Professor of History at the University of Toronto, visited UCLA on Jan. 23 for the second event of the 2019-20 QueerCurrent Lecture Series.  The talk was named “Work! A Queer History of Modeling,” after Brown’s most recent…