16-year old Cassidy Lynn Campbell became homecoming queen Friday night, making history as the first transgender queen at Marina High School in Huntington CA to win homecoming queen.
She is the first homecoming queen in her school, and in her city, to win the title.
The sixteen year old accepted her crown in tears of joy before a camera crew and a crowd of family, friends, and schoolmates in her school's football field.
"I wasn't doing this for me," she tearfully told the crowd after being crowned, "I was doing this for so many others, so many others around the nation."
Campbell is not the first transgender woman to bag the homecoming crown. A 19-year-old had also won the title at her school however, her schoolmates had been unaware of his being previously biologically male.
Such is not the case with Campbell, whose schoolmates are well aware of his situation.
"I think it's really cool how we allowed her to run, and I just think it's a really good thing," schoolmate Kelsey Callanan said of Campbell winning the title.
But that is not to say that there had been no backlash in response to Campbell's nomination as homecoming queen.
"They think that I'm just a boy doing this for fun, and I'm just a boy dressing up as a girl and trying to win a crown when that is completely the opposite of what it is," she says, trying to explain the cause behind the negativity, "I've always seen myself as a girl."
The 16-year-old homecoming queen, who was previously known as Lance Campbell a few months prior, simply brushed the negativity aside and focused on her goals.
"My goal isn't to be famous, it's to open people's eyes to the world around them, to teach people to be open-minded and to rethink social norms," she wrote defiantly on her twitter account. She spends a lot of time on the internet, and is posted videos of her transformation from Lance to Cassidy Lynn onto her YouTube account.
Campbell's mother, Christine Campbell, expressed utmost joy with her daughter's achievements.
"I never would have thought in my lifetime that I would see this," said Christine Campbell shortly after Cassidy Lynn was declared queen among five other nominees, "It's wonderful. She really did it."
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