This ‘Performative Masc Lesbian Contest’ Made A Campus Plaza Gayer Than Ever
Cargo shorts, button-downs, and keychains the size of grapefruits took center stage in a campus showdown of (performative) masc energy.
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The University of Florida’s Plaza of the Americas was alive with denim, carabiners, and oversized button-downs this week as more than 200 students crowded in to watch the campus’s first “performative masc lesbian” contest.
Roughly 20 contestants stepped forward with thrifted outfits, heavy keychains, toolboxes, and guitars, competing for the tongue-in-cheek honor of being crowned the most performative masc. The event unfolded in two rounds: one centered on outfits and props, the other on a series of questions that bounced between academic and irreverent.
The crowd decided their favorite through a QR code vote, while judges selected an official winner. At the end of the night, the “People’s Princess” award went to engineering freshman Lindsey Gu, while the judges named political science senior Claire Busansky the champion.
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Busansky had never entered anything like this before. She signed up after seeing it promoted on Instagram and thought it would be a chance to push herself into new spaces. “Someone who embodies more masculinity and aesthetic, but not necessarily in personality,” was how she defined a performative masc. After winning, she told campus paper The Alligator, “I think it was really liberating and really fun to be in the middle of campus and kind of show out and be queer,” Busansky said.
For organizer Sophia Scribani, a health science senior, the contest was more than just parody. She had seen a version of the competition online and thought it could fill a gap in UF’s campus life. In years past, Gainesville’s lesbian community had been anchored by regular sapphic parties, but when the host graduated those gatherings disappeared. Scribani wanted to try something new. “I felt like that binding brick of the lesbian community had gone down a little bit, so I thought that this could help with that,” she said.
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The idea started as a joke, but momentum grew. Scribani found judges, created a QR voting system, and leaned into the irony of it all. The event followed a similar contest held at the same campus two days earlier, where men competed as “performative males” with jorts and tote bags.
Between rounds, students cheered their peers with the kind of energy usually reserved for sports games. Strangers met each other in the crowd, and the mood was light and easy.
Busansky summed it up best. “Right now, there’s a lot of negativity and low amounts of collaboration, especially within the queer community,” she said. The contest, in all its cigarette-pack-flexing absurdity, offered the opposite.
