Last month, McKinney High School crowned its first lesbian homecoming queen—17-year-old April Swartz-Larson. It all started with a tweet from one of Swartz-Larson’s closest friends, spreading from a less-than-140-character message to reality. Since then, Swartz-Larson has found herself the topic of conversation, not only in her suburban community, but all over the internet. (George Takei recently picked up her story.) Swartz-Larson talks about how much life can change in a month, working toward equality, and applying to colleges.
Staci Parks: Your story is interesting because it seems like within the past year or so there’s been more of a conversation about gay and transgender teens. Do you think stories like that helped?
April Swartz-Larson: Absolutely. When you know someone on a personal level or you hear a story like this, or see how everyone at McKinney High is, it gets normalized. It’s when people go, “Oh, it’s not just a theoretical thing in my head. It’s actually this person.” It’s kind of weird because it is a news story, but I think it being a news story actually normalizes it.
SP: Right. I think it’s safe to say now that you’ve become part of that conversation. What does that feel like?
ASL: A little overwhelming, to be honest. It’s an amazing feeling that I’m part of that.
SP: More than two weeks later, people are still sharing your story and you’re getting new Twitter followers. What do you think is keeping it going?
ASL: That’s a hard question to answer. What’s made it so big, I guess, and so popular, I think is that there’s was next to no negative reaction. The first time that I saw any negative reaction was a couple days after homecoming when I looked on Facebook, and a local news stations had posted the video on Facebook. But that was someone I don’t know, and it was in the mass media. That’s inevitable.
SP: So have you looked at comments?
ASL: I can’t deny that I’ve looked at comments on Facebook and stuff like that, just checking it out, and people saying, “Oh, this shouldn’t be newsworthy.” But I mean, right now it is, and it definitely shouldn’t be newsworthy in the future. But young people, people my age, don’t feel it to be an issue.
SP: How have the school and the community responded?
ASL: It’s been awesome. It’s still hard for me to figure out because there’s kind of two contradicting messages. One, which is very symbolic for acceptance of gay rights and gay people–the human rights movement. And the other is that it’s really not a factor. I think they seem contradicting, but they actually go together. And it’s because, it is a symbol, but it’s a symbol for the fact that it soon won’t matter. High school has been, you know, it’s high school. (laughs) But there’s been no direct targeting. I’ve kind of always been a little bit fish-out-of-water. My family’s from San Francisco. We’re crazy liberals, pretty much. My last name is hyphenated. It’s less about me being bullied for being gay. That hasn’t happened. I’ve always been different, definitely. Being homecoming queen was kind of a validation that, even in what appears to be shiny, happy people McKinney, it’s not. I hope the R.E.M. reference comes across there.
SP: It’s appreciated.
ASL: You can get sucked in to the cynical view of what it is, but it’s not. People are overwhelmingly nice here.
SP: What do you hope to do from here? Has this experience incited any future plans?
ASL: One of the coolest experiences for me is I’ve noticed that, yeah, people are accepting, but people don’t talk about it a lot. It’s a taboo thing. What this did was make people have to talk about it, even though it might make them uncomfortable. I feel inspired, but part of me is still a scared senior looking at colleges. This sounds so dumb. But the other day, the student council president handed me a pamphlet, and apparently there’s an America’s Homecoming Queen contest.
SLP: Oh, really?
ASL: I immediately started laughing because there’s a girl in a nice gown with a sash, and I was thinking, “You have to have me mistaken. I am not the girl you’re supposed to be handing this to.” But then I was kind of like, “Let’s take this thing to another level.”
Staci Parks is a graduate student at the University of North Texas, and a D Magazine intern.
