February 1, 2002 - Hear Me Out

LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth

Hear Me Out: Yearbook Fiasco Cuts High School Lesbian's Portrait

If a picture's worth a thousand words, high school senior Nikki Youngblood has been silenced. All because she is a lesbian who wouldn't conform to whatever high school administrators deemed was appropriate for good little girls.

This spring, when the Excaliburthe yearbook of Robinson High School in Tampa, Floridacomes out, 17-year-old Youngblood will not be pictured with her 280 classmates. The reason she will be absent from the pages of her high school's memory is both ridiculous and infuriating. The high school has managed to take a trivial issue and elevate it to one of both sex and sexual orientation discrimination against a student.

But even more importantly, the silly incident that snowballed into a discrimination case at one high school in Tampa raises frightening questions about how gay and lesbian students are still being treated in high schools all across America, and what kind of out-dated gender roles kids of all sexual orientations are still being taught to mold and conform to.

It all started when Youngblood went to get her senior picture taken for the yearbook.

School dogma dictated that boys would be photographed in coats and ties, and girls would pictured in a scoop-necked, black-velvet drape.

But Youngblood felt uncomfortable in the frou-frou neck-drape thing. After all, she'd long ago sworn off dresses and skirts for jeans and T-shirts and other more rugged attire. Being forced to be remembered in her high school yearbook in such a matter felt all wrong to Youngblood. It would be "like asking a boy to put on a dress," she told the St. Petersburg Times.

So the stocky, 5'-8" high school senior and her mother agreed that the more appropriate image to memorialize Younglood's high school years would be one of the teenager dressed in a black suit jacket, white dress shirt and tie.

But when Youngblood got to the studio for her close-up, the photographers refused to photograph her in her chosen attire without the school's permission. Youngblood's mother called the assistant principal at the school to try to explain the situation, but was given a shockingly absolutist, set-in-stone response: Boys wear coats and ties; girls wear that weird scoop-neck thing.

At first, what most amazed me about this story was the Neanderthalic, immovable position of the high school. What was the big deal? After all, it's not like Ms. Youngblood was asking to be photographed topless, with tit-clamps, straddling a leather motorcycle. Furthermore, the teen's mother was fully supportive of her choice.

All the graduating senior wanted to do was wear totally acceptable formal clothing, so in the years to come, when she and her loverand maybe her childrenflipped through the Excalibur, there would be an image of a youthful Youngblood that reflected who she was as a high school teenager way back in 2002.

It wasn't until I thought more about the response from the school's attorney that it really hit me: For the educators entrusted to teach the young mind sat Robinson Highand at countless other thousands of schools across Americathis wasn't about a photo in a yearbook. Frighteningly, it became clear that this was about teaching kids right and wrong, that it was about teaching them who they are 'supposed to be" in our society.

To most of us, such a vulgar, rough conclusion seems unthinkable in the year 2002. But listen to what the school's attorney had to say in response to the media storm this case caused.

If the school had let Ms. Youngblood get away with wearing a coat and tie this year, said Crosby Few, the school's lawyer, then "the next year, you might have 10 boys dressing as girls and vice versa."

Shock and horrors. It's easy for us, as adult gay men and lesbians who are used to battling prejudice and conformity to a rigid system of authority, to laugh at the prospect of ten (even one!) high school boy showing up for his yearbook picture in make-up and heels. But to high school educators at Robinson Highand most likely at the vast majority of high schools around the countrythat is, in fact, a frightening prospect.

We like to think that high school teachers and administrators have loftier things to worry aboutlike seniors who can't read and write, or who don't know enough math to balance a checkbook, or teen pregnancy, or drugs in the halls, or a myriad of other pressing issues.

But we don't give them enough credit. So many of the narrow-minded people entrusted to educate the next generation of Americans realize that something like this is not just about a lousy photo. It's about undermining the rigid, out-of-date thinking about what is "good" and "bad" for boys and girls, what is "appropriate" for men and women in our society. And the clear message they are sending is that gays and lesbians are inappropriate misfits who should simply try to blend in.

It's no wonder the administrators at Robinson High and others like it around the country are so nervous and frightened by a 17-year-old girl in a coat and tie. She threatens their entire sense of order in our post-modern world.

Luckily, there are some bright spots in this whole ludicrous episode.

One is Nikki Youngblood's mother, Sonia. Mrs. Youngblood is an example of how and why we are finally making slow but steady progress for gay and lesbian kids in schools these days: Parents no longer allow their kids to be victims. After the ugly episode over the yearbook photo, Mrs. Youngblood took her daughter to another commercial studio and had family pictures taken to commemorate her daughter's last year in high school. In those photos, Nikki Youngblood wore a black tuxedo, tie and Burgundy vest.

The other bright spot in this ugly affair is Nikki Youngblood herself. She is a true gay and lesbian hero. It would have been easier to buckle under the enormous pressure from the school, especially since it is natural for all high school seniors to want to be in their school's yearbooks, as a historical record and as a commemoration of this first huge accomplishment in life.

But Youngblood was strong enough to stand for her principles. Rather than be photographed in something that would be a lie for her, she chose not to have her portrait appear in the yearbook.

Years from now, she won't have a yearbook, signed by all her friends and teachers, to look back on and reminisce about her high school years. But she'll have something much more important: Her pride and dignity as a brave young woman who stood up for herself in the face of discrimination.

Mubarak Dahir receives email at MubarakDah@aol.com

LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 01, February 1, 2002