
Sean Mulroy an openly gay college swimmer at USC has a unique collection of swimwear. He has a very skimpy sexy Sharon Needles Swimsuit that he had custom-made in her honor. The Sharon suit has a large picture of her face on both the front and back along with the text "Sharon Needles: Welcome to Party City." He was planning on debuting it at this year's Pacific-12 swimming championships, but the suit caused quite the controversy. Swim parents were appalled that he was "promoting drug use" and "perpetuating an inappropriate message in a public setting." His interpretation of the controversy was that most people didn’t know exactly who Sharon was and that they thought he was hinting at explicit drug use, which wasn’t the case. He was promoting the fabulousity of drag queens, if anything.
Sharon was so upset about the criticism for her suit, she almost called my coach as well as the Pacific-12 conference for halting the Sharon Needles show. Although he makes a new custom suit before all his important swim meets, this suit in particular really made people a bit uneasy. But in the end, all was well. He changed from the Sharon suit into a pink glittery Mean Girls-inspired suit and got on with my event. Also, he got to meet an idol of his and hopefully she was flattered that a collegiate athlete would go to all this trouble to walk around a pool deck with her face on his crotch. This shows how his role at USC is a little different than his straight teammates. Instead of wearing plain black Speedos, he chose to add a little flair and a lot of glitter to his warm-up and cool-down attire.