Four years ago, Zachary Willmore made headlines for being crowned Missouri’s first male homecoming queen. Wearing a glittery gold gown, his Rock Bridge High School classmates and teachers cheered as he was presented with the honor, and the videos they snapped quickly went viral.
According to People, Willmore was already beginning to set himself up as an established social media influencer, and since his viral moment, he’s gained more than 2.3 million TikTok followers.
Willmore, now 22 and a senior at San Diego State University, has continued his social media endeavors; he routinely posts tutorials, get-ready-with-me clips, and has tackled serious issues through the lens of his own life. He’s openly documented his HIV-positive journey and his experience joining a fraternity as an openly gay man.
His viral high school moment recently had a resurgence of media interest, but with it has come a lot of the kind of hateful commentary that seems to have defined 2025.
“I feel like some of these articles that have come out recently are meant to enrage people,” he told the magazine. “I see the highlighted words. It’s like, ‘Homecoming queen in the state of Missouri — who is a man.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is so obviously trying to rage-bait people.'”
When he originally posted the video of his victory, it was after a countdown to the big day he had done and a lot of people were following. He told People he thinks a lot of people were upset by the idea of him winning. His instincts proved right, and his video got five million views in just a few hours, but so many people reported it that he ended up getting banned from the platform.
“I think a lot of people were coming to report it just because they were really upset,” Willmore said. “I am definitely so much tougher of a person because of that experience, because I did get death threats [sent] to my house.”
People even negatively insinuated he “stole” the title from a female student, but he claims that’s impossible because they were only going to crown one king or queen regardless, and he simply chose to be crowned as a “queen.”
Despite all of this, he said that overall it was worth the hate he’s fielded throughout the years, and at the time, he was “really excited” about the honor.
From a purely logical standpoint, I don’t understand homophobia. It genuinely makes no sense to me. How on earth could someone living their own lives in the way they want affect mine? As a woman married to a man, I don’t live a life where homophobia impacts me, but I can speak on what it is like to live with commentary.
In 2016 I was really struggling with my self worth. I am a plus-size woman and have largely believed my whole life I am unattractive. I made a commitment to take one selfie a day for a year and post it on Instagram in an effort to get more comfortable looking at myself. The experiment was wildly rewarding for the most part: So many women uplifted me and supported me. But there were a few, namely men, who were genuinely offended by my existence.
The fact that I dared to be a person wearing what I wanted, how I wanted, with the body I had deeply infuriated people. Hate videos were made about me, I was mocked across the internet, and it reinforced everything I feared. Still, my biggest takeaway was that being myself, and living unapologetically, was the best way to live.
So for Willmore, I hope he knows he did right by himself walking away from his defining moment with his head held high. He was a beautiful homecoming queen and is enough just as he is.
