Youth + Family

Lesbians Take Girls to Prom: We Have a Gallery For That

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So this girl Constance McMillen wanted to take a girl to prom, and wear a tux, and the principal was like hell to the no, and then the ACLU got involved, and then the school just decided it would be better to cancel prom altogether. Why are they so afraid of how cute girls look in menswear? No but srsly.

We have a feeling, even though we are old, that some girls are bringing girls to homecoming/prom/fancy-wear day dances these days. Amirite? Are you one of those girls/boys? Well let’s celebrate those photos everyone is so f*cking afraid of! VISIBILITY, LADIES!

Send us your prom photos!

1. Email your photo to autostraddle [at] gmail [dot] com.

2. We won’t publish your name [unless you give us permission] but…

3. If you can, we’d love to know when & where the photo was taken — city/state & year of the event.

4. We’ll start putting up the gallery this evening and keep building it as we get submissions. [You can see it here in this post, or on its own page.]

5. If absolutely necessary we can smiley-face over your ex-girlfriend if she’s really crazy or a famous tennis player.

6. Everyone who sends in a photo will be entered to win a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate, we’ll draw a name at random on Sunday and announce it in the Sunday Funday.

7. When you’re done with that, check out LezGetReal, where the ladies are putting a full-court-press on Ellen (yah, that ELLEN!) to organize a prom in Mississippi so this girl can freakin’ go!

And let’s hope that come springtime, we’ll be able to add Constance McMillan and her ladyfriend to the gallery.

Tell everyone! Tweet this, put it on your facebook, — we wanna see a bajillion cute gay faces ready to embark upon the most overrated night of their lives — fight the lesbian shaming.

Note: All of these photos used to have captions with the year, the location, and the girls in the photograph indicated. However when our photo galleries were transferred when we switched the plug-in we use for galleries in March 2013, the captions apparently weren’t transferred. We are looking into why this happened and if there’s any way to fix it.

Related:

Riese is the 39-year-old Co-Founder and CEO of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, blogger, fictionist, copywriter, video-maker and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and then headed West. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 2862 articles for us.

210 Comments

  6. See, this is something I’ve never understood about homophobia, or people wanting to deny equal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples. Look at those pictures. Look at how friggin’ *happy* so many of those couples are (the ones not acting like goofy teenagers, anyway). *Why* would anyone want to deny someone that happiness? Why? I just don’t get it.

    And for the record, I’m a flabby, middle-aged, heterosexual white dude. Just so’s you know. (Now, we *did* have gays and lesbians in our wedding party . . . maybe I should send in a picture?)

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  7. Looking at all these photos, I’m struck by the clear abundance of love, joy, friendship, fun, and yes some fab rags too. I wish the folks running Itawamba school district could get beyond being freaked, and maybe in these photos people will be reminded that y’all are/were their childrens’ classmates and friends and are … yunno … PEOPLE!

    So fun, yes! Solidarity, yes! But I also hope this opens some eyes.

    I hope that when my daughters (eventually) go to prom, they’ll have the freedom to go with whomever they want.

    Seriously, you all look FABULOUS…

    Much love, be happy, take care,

    Ru (and thanks for listening to an old straight guy)

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  8. Nitpicky request:
    For photo #53, could the order of the names be switched?

    I’m sure I sent it in as “Emma and Jessica,” but I am Jessica, and I am on the left. Hahaha. Thank you.

    Emma and I are honored to have our picture among all the rest.

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  9. Pingback: Gay Rights: Catholic Fail, Prom Win | Tomfoolery Blog

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  17. Back in high school you could not have dragged me kicking and screaming to a school dance – my friends tried, but it’s just not my scene. Hell, I still don’t like clubs and the likes, so I probably wouldn’t go even now. Still, I’m relenting on some of my prom disapproval just this once because, hey, it’s hard to say no to a bunch of young women who look like they’re having such fun! Seriously, after reading the recent press releases, it’s gives me hope seeing there are schools were the prom is meant for students to come dance and hang out and not as a way to showcase old fashion “values” about boys bringing their future high school sweethearts (that goes for both the schools that won’t let students go with same sex dates and – just as disgusting – the schools that don’t even sell single’s tickets but force people to “pair up”. Because nothing is better than telling our children that they’re not allowed to go out to what’s made out as the biggest night of their high school lives unless they’re straight and dating – everyone else is apparently just a freak. Great educational values right there.)

    Also, the nice looking suit wearing girl in the first pic (Kassie & Samara) has got to have one of the hottest suits I’ve ever seen (not a big fan of the full out formal tuxedo, but loving this suit look) PLUS I’m just jealous of her hair and wish I could pull it off. Seconds later I felt bad about considering a teenager cute and being in anyway jealous of her consider I should be a little too old for this behavior.

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  20. Sent my photos in last week – are you still posting them?

    I will look at this gallery every time I get down about the state of the queer world (DADT, Prop H8,etc.) It makes me smile. Thanks so much for doing this.

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  21. It’s so wonderful seeing all these pictures, even in light of the recent news about the two young women in Mississippi denied the right to attend theirs. My prom was 21 years ago and I didn’t attend – I couldn’t even be out of the closet. I would have, if I could have – and you girls (and guys) that want to, or are able to, please have extra fun for those of us that didn’t get the chance. And good luck and best wishes for an amazing future. It’s a different world, only because we make it. :)

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  22. Hi! This is an amazing collection of photos, and very similar to what I am intending to start on this blog – http://fuckyeahlgbtqprom.tumblr.com/. I would like to start a collection of photos that can be constantly developing. If any of you are able to submit photos, it would be really appreciated!

    This tumblog is mostly a response to the Constance McMillen bullshit (http://tiny.cc/lwcx7),but we also want to recognize that lots of queer people are silenced
    and unable to be public about their sexuality. And by sending in your pictures, we’ll start to break those chains of silence.

    lgbtq.prom@gmail.com

    Please forward widely!

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  23. I went to a very christian high school… I wonder if I had worn a tux what the would have done haha… pretty sure taking a girl would have been a huge no-no though. We only had one formal at the very end of high school though, and I dropped out before then, so never went.

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  28. Pingback: In All the Big Ways… Part 3 | Weddingbee

  32. Is it weird that I’m a straight boy who wants to take a straight girl to prom, but I would secretly want my date to wear a tuxedo? I’ve always had a thing for a girl in a tux, but I don’t know a lot of single straight girls in my school that I like who would actually go along with that. Not to mention I’ve never been on a date before. Any advice?

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  34. 2010 was my final year! I took my then girlfriend to mine, and under duress wore a dress, but the next year, at her final year I got to rock a suit. These photos bring back so many memories!

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  35. I didn’t go to my senior prom with a lesbian but later in the night when my date started paying more attention to his friends than me a lesbian classmate filled his place. My first lesbian experience happened that night and he went home alone.

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  37. What a happy place! Just ‘shared’ this page with my daughter to encourage her to ask her GF to the year-end senior formal. As a proud dad, I’d love to see that awesome couple’s smiles join the others on this web page.

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