Pride at Pace held its annual Fabulosity fashion show last Thursday night in Gottesman Room to bring awareness of transgender issues around the nation.

Tyra Ross, the event’s hostess, spoke to the audience before the show began about the many struggles that transgender women face today.

“[For] transgender women, especially transgender women of color, there have been 22 murders this year alone,” Ross said. “For us it’s a really serious issue because people are killing us and thinking that it’s something that is justified, and it’s time that it stops.”

Ross explained how family life is for transgender people and challenged the Pace community to try and make a difference in how people perceive transgender men and women.

“We have fathers that shoot their daughters in the head because they transition. We have mothers who stand aside as people in a community beat their sons to death because they are transgender,” Ross said. “It starts at the top but a lot of you here can make a difference because when you talk to someone else, someone else is going to talk to someone else.”

The event showcased a number of drag queens as well a dance competition by Pace students.

Drag Queen Ricky Da Luca took center stage and shone with his rendition of “Singing in the Rain,” called “Twerking in the Rain.”

The students who participated in the competition all dressed as the opposite sex and danced to a number of songs by popular artists.

Sophomores Ashleigh Titre-Barnor and Chey-Ann Coleman took second place with their performance of Next’s “Too Close.”

Sophomore Keyshana Dupuy won the contest for the second year in a row with her performance of “No BS” by Chris Brown.

“It was really exciting, I didn’t expect it. [My routine] was freestyled and I had fun doing it up there. Last year I won [the contest] with “Take You Down” by Chris Brown, so I wanted to have another sexual song. I’m really excited I won for a second time,” Dupuy said.

Pride at Pace’s Treasurer Mercedes Major spoke about the purpose of the event.

“This event was about bringing awareness to transphobia and really enlightening people,” Major said. “It’s not just male or female, it’s a spectrum.”

Major encourages students to learn more about what the Pride at Pace organization is doing to spread awareness on campus.

“We have weekly meetings. We talk about different topics every week and really we want to build bridges and we want to say that we’re not the Gay Straight Alliance anymore. We want to be proud of who we are,” Major said.