A gay teen in Texas got the last laugh against critics in his school.
Joel Mireles decided he wanted to run for Homecoming King at Brazoswood High School in Clute, Texas. While he thought that the winner would be someone “who’s in athletics or usually it’s football,” it turns out that he won.
That said, of course there were haters out there who weren’t happy with the results. That eventually led to someone creating #NotMyKing shirts and selling them among the other students.
“My friends kept showing me all these posts on social media that were really negative about me,” Mireles tells WMAZ.
“I didn’t want to go eat lunch because I thought people were looking at me so I stayed in the theater classroom and told my mom to come pick me up early.”
Luckily, Mireles turned that low point into a victory when he decided to buy a shirt of his own.
“I just thought, if I bought one, it would be a statement saying, ‘This isn’t affecting me and you guys aren’t hurting me.”
Then, a cousin of his took a picture of him all dressed up and that photo has now gone viral.
Part of the message that went with the photo goes:
“My younger cousin worked his butt off to put his name out there to be elected Brazoswood Homecoming King. It was a proud moment considering not a lot of people in my family have the guts to really go for something like that. He won. He worked for something and won. Soon after, a lot of kids were on the internet saying some really, really hateful things. Jealous kids. They even went to the extent to make shirts stating #notmyking.
I was angry, almost in tears, but Joel reassured me, “It’s okay, it doesn’t bother me. I won! They can’t take that from me.”
While Mireles does know the student who made the t-shirts, according to Chron.com, he has decided to be the bigger person and let it all go under the bridge.
