Teens are breaking old rules about gender. Now they want to change old rules about prom.

If you want to know how teens today feel about gender and sexuality, look no further than the spectacle of prom coronations. In Mississippi, a lesbian couple lobbied to become prom king and queen. In Georgia, the class president, who is gay, started a petition to change prom court titles to the more inclusive “Prom Royalty." Some transgender students are pushing schools to re-imagine what teen nobility looks like. 

Prom has historically been a bastion of stereotypical gender roles. The girl in a beautiful gown, the boy in a tux. Prom king is a guy, prom queen is a girl. But in 2018, more and more students are pushing for gender neutral prom courts, signaling how millennials are treating fundamental questions about identity and inclusion.

"Prom has reflected American adolescence, and it usually contains and magnifies the features of whatever is going on with that age cohort at the time. As the millennium changed over, and we're in a different generation now, there's just much more acceptance of gender fluidity," said Ann Anderson, author of High School Prom: Marketing, Morals and the American Teen.

Carter Hebert, a senior at Chattahoochee High School in Johns Creek, Ga., was nominated for prom king along with his former boyfriend. The school's current voting process permits one male and one female to win, but Hebert said the two wanted to be able to win together, as a couple. 

Hebert, who is class president, said the school has a track record of inclusivity, so when they brought their request to administration, they were stunned it wasn't granted. Hebert said the school cited "tradition" as well as time constraints. He said he was "confused" and "upset" by the response. 

A statement from the school district said "because nominations have been made and the process is underway, the school administration is not in a position to make changes at this time." To formally change the process, it said, student leaders should submit a proposal. 

Hebert, who started a petition on Change.org (with now nearly 5,000 signatures) to change court titles from “prom king and queen” to “prom royalty," said he is now shifting his efforts away from changing this year's prom — taking place next week — and toward making prom court more inclusive for future classes.

"What we were hoping for was to make a change not just for our school, but for schools across the nation," he said.

Hebert's school is one of many working to adapt to changing attitudes about gender. But some students wish their schools would evolve more quickly. 

When Al Martinez, a transgender teen at Brooke Point High in Stafford, Va., was nominated for this year's prom king, he said the school called his parents to make sure they were OK with it. He said he found the call troubling because he imagined what could happen to a student who was not "out" at home. He also didn't think it was necessary for his parents to "approve" his gender identity or expression. 

"It's not their decision ultimately," he said, "and it shouldn't be."

USA TODAY reached out to Brooke Point High for comment, but they did not respond by the time of publication.

There are still areas of the country where ideas about prom are firmly entrenched. Parts of the country where girls are forbidden to wear suits, where gay proms are unheard of and where same-sex dates are out of the question. But as more and more teens embrace gender fluidity and are open about their sexual orientation, more and more schools will be forced to look at how some prom traditions may need updating. 

If prom is a rehearsal for life, as Anderson said some would suggest, than many teens are sending clear signals as to what kind of world they'd like to live in as adults. 

"We just want the same opportunities," Hebert said. "We want equality. We understand that you may not have the same views as us, you may not understand what we're going through but we just want you to be open, and give us the opportunities that y'all have."

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