Cook Inclusive’s office, just off Main Street in Carbondale, was bustling with the flurry of prom preparations on Saturday.
Blow dryers were whirring, the smell of nail polish was in the air, and there was the chatter of high school students of all ages.
“The point of Queer Prom is that it’s a place for us to celebrate ourselves and each other,” Clare Williams, a senior at Aspen High School, said.
She is co-president of her school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance and joined AspenOUT’s youth leadership program last year. Williams was tasked with organizing this year’s Queer Prom at The Launchpad in Carbondale, and she said celebrating queer youth is more important than ever.
“It’s been a very scary time, especially since the inauguration, to be a queer youth,” she said.
During President Donald Trump’s inaugural address in January, he said, “the official policy of the United States government is that there are only two genders: male and female.”
Later that day, Trump issued an executive order threatening federal funding cuts to institutions that provide gender-affirming health care for patients under 19 years old.
“So giving spaces where we can celebrate and have fun is what keeps us going, is what keeps us fighting for our own right to exist,” Williams said.
The idea for a queer prom came after Basalt teen Jack Raife died by suicide in 2023.
AspenOUT began conducting focus groups following his passing to see how organizations could better support queer youth. The studies found young people wanted to have a dance focused on the queer population, and they wanted it to be created and run by queer youth themselves.
Cook Inclusive Executive Director Ashley Stahl said there are a lot of things at traditional proms that do not feel accessible to the LGBTQ+ community. At queer prom, queer youth are never the minority.
“You’re not going to stand out because there’s two people of the same sex dancing together,” she said. “It makes a much more comfortable environment for young people.”
Queer Prom had no king or queen, and kids could shed family expectations to go with a particular person or dress in a particular way.
“We’ve seen a lot of the challenges they’ve been having and (we’re) giving everyone a chance to feel seen and feel visible and do a lot to fight against those negative outcomes,” Stahl said.
Stahl is a transgender woman and said she is still figuring out how to do her own hair and makeup, so dance organizers gathered volunteers to provide gender-affirming hair and makeup styling before the dance began.
There were also pronoun pins at The Launchpad so that attendees could be recognized how they wanted.
A study from the National Institute of Health found that social experiences that affirm a young person’s gender identity are associated with a lower risk of depression and suicidality over time.
Carbondale-based therapist Janet Gordan said gender-affirming care helps queer youth to feel less isolated, particularly in more rural communities like the Roaring Fork Valley.
“Isolation is so incredibly mentally draining, especially for kids that identify as queer and don't feel accepted in their environment,” she said. “It sets them up to feel like they're wrong or bad. And if that's all they've heard or all they've seen or all they felt, how would they know any different?”
Gordan works with Cook Inclusive and AspenOUT to support LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming community members. She has attended queer proms in the past and said these types of events can change a person’s outlook by developing friendships with people who are similar to them.
That is one thing Aspen High’s Clare Williams had in mind when planning the event.
She is graduating this month. In the fall, she will head to New York City to attend Sarah Lawrence College to study theater. She wants to continue to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community while she’s there.
“You need to celebrate and have joy and dance and have a reason to love yourself, and there’s loads of different ways to do that, and queer prom is just one of them,” Williams said. “It’s to celebrate being different and diverse in all the ways you can be.”
