07:12:00
Utah High School Crowns Transgender Prom
Queen
A day after 17 million people watched former Olympian Bruce Jenner tell ABC News’ Diane
Sawyer that he identifies as a woman, a crowd of Utah high school students watched as their
transgender fellow classmate was crowned prom queen.
Maka Brown, 18
and a senior at Salt Lake School for Performing Arts, accepted her crown on
Saturday night after being voted upon by her peers, many of whom first knew her
as a boy.
“She started
that school about the same time that she transitioned,” Maka’s mother, Toni
Brown, told ABC News. “There were definite challenges. She’s a dancer so there
were challenges in dance classes in terms of casting.”
“Everyone had
to learn and come to terms with it,” Brown said.
Maka, who was
in school today and not available for comment, was the one who told her mom she
was transgender before Brown had even heard of the word.
“When she was
my son, she was just a beautiful boy and talented but was having some depression
and not feeling good about herself,” Brown said. "When she was beginning
to develop, she had some insecurity.”
“She ended up
going to a Pride festival, just for fun, and learned the word [transgender] and
brought it home and was happy and relieved,” Brown added. "She said, ‘I’m
not the only one who feels like this.'"
Though Brown
admits to being thrown “into a little bit of a tailspin” after Maka’s
announcement, she quickly got behind her daughter, who is a circus performer
and plans to pursue that as a career after graduation.
Maka took her
middle name -- Makali’I -- as her first name after her transition and the
family made it official on her 18th birthday, legally changing her name for her
birthday gift, Brown said.
On Saturday,
Maka's sister, 16-year-old Belle, helped her older sister curl her hair and get
ready for the prom.
“She was
probably her biggest supporter all along,” Brown said of Belle. “She watches
out for her.”
Both Brown and
the school’s principal, Dr. Susan Brady, give credit to the student body for
being so accepting of their classmate.
“She was
surprised that she was nominated in the first place but she was happy and felt
validated,” Brown said. “When I heard that she won I was really proud of our
student body.”
“She’s a
wonderful addition to our student body,” Brady told ABC News of Maka. "This
school is extremely accepting and non-discriminatory and we are very, very
proud of Maka and this incredible voting on her to be prom queen by the student
body."
Brown says
that for all the attention that was placed on Jenner’s announcement, her daughter
showed somewhat surprisingly little interest in perhaps the most high-profile
transgender announcement ever.
“I thought
she’d be a little more fascinated and she was kind of like, ‘What’s the big
deal? That’s normal,’” Brown said.
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