Alexandra Senior Youth Forum member Jeff Afan will this year make history when he becomes the first male to vie for the Alexandra Blossom Festival crown.
As the prince on the youth forum float, Jeff (17), a year 13 pupil at Dunstan High School, will be up against the festival's traditional princesses, who every year are judged on community involvement, social skills, ambitions, presentation and how well they represent Alexandra.
Breaking gender stereotypes was far from his mind but he acknowledged his appearance would be ''kind of unique. It will be something different. It will be cool.''
Some special measures were needed to cater for the male royalty, Dianne Elliot, who has been the ''princess convener'' for about 15 years, said.
A ''male'' crown has been ordered in case Jeff makes it to the top three - ''a wire one with all glitzy stones on it, kind of like Game of Thrones'' - and a special ''festival king'' sash in case he wins. The first and second runner-up princess sashes will also lose the word ''princess'', and just be first and second runner-up, in case Jeff is a runner-up.
Mrs Elliot said males had represented groups on floats before but never competed against females in the traditional princess competition. The youth forum's request to have a prince instead of a princess had been approved and supported by the festival committee, as there was nothing in the rules that said entrants had to be a female to represent a group's float.
Festival event manager Martin McPherson joked the princess competition might need to be renamed the ''regal'' competition and said the festival was ''moving with the times''.
''The competition is about young people in this community and how they can best represent Alexandra and Central Otago and themselves, and there are two genders of young people in this town ... if you really wanted to politicise it we could be challenging gender stereotypes, but I think in this case we just have a young man who wants to do the best for the group he's representing.''
Alexandra youth worker Jason Barron said the youth forum wanted to keep politics out of it and was proud to support Jeff to be the best he could be.
''Jeff is an awesome member of our senior youth forum. He's really committed to it and he's got such a positive attitude and outlook on life.
''It's really awesome to have him representing us as our prince for the blossom festival this year. He's going to do an awesome job, no doubt.''
