ball culture

Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground subculture in the United States in which people "walk" (i.e. compete) for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Most people involved with ball culture belong to "houses" led by a single leader.

Houses

"Houses", also called "drag houses" or "drag families", are groups composed primarily of gay males and transgendered people, most of whom are African American or Latino, banded together under a respected "house mother" (usually a drag queen or a transgendered person) or "house father".

By far, the best known houses are New York City groups, especially those such as the House of Corey, the House of LaBeija, the House of Ninja, the House of Pendavis and House of Xtravaganza that were shown in the 1990 documentary film Paris is Burning. Other houses function the same way in several other cites.

According to the Village Voice:

...houses are loose-knit, typically same sex, confederacies of "children" who adopt a family name, usually swiped from a fashion designer, and adhere to rules set up by a presiding "mother" and "father."

This means that, for example, members of the house lead by Willi Ninja adopted "Ninja" as their surname within ball culture, members of the house led by Anji Xtravaganza used the surname "Xtravaganza" and so on.

One theme discussed in Paris is Burning is that racial minorities, non-heterosexuals, and poor people face certain disadvantages and are each a marginalized group; to qualify as all three makes one a pariah. In response, drag houses are:

...a whole new way of living, one that's highly structured and self-protective. The structure consists of system of houses where the young men function as apprentices. Reflecting a minority coping with hatred, the houses are associations of friends, presided over by a "mother," [...] that provide a substitute for biological families.

Under the house parents are:

...a big raucous band of "children": drag queens, butch queens (gay men who dress like men), transsexuals, a few real girls and one or two straight guys. The smattering of girls and straight guys notwithstanding, the houses are, essentially, cabals of young gay black and Hispanic men obsessed with being fashionable and fabulous.

House parents can provide wisdom, guidance and care for young people who otherwise might be homeless and without a parental figure. An exploratory study of two houses in Newark, New Jersey employed qualitative research methods including participant observation and in-depth interviewing to discern that:

Strategies employed by "house parents" have had an impact on the choices made by children of the houses regarding HIV risk behaviors. These strategies can be adapted for use by well-established community-based HIV prevention programs when they are comprised of staff who mirror the characteristics of "house parents" and engage in relationships that parallel this alternative family structure.

Competition

Besides providing a support system for its members, the main function of these houses is to compete against one another in "walks" or "drag walks" in which they are judged on dance skills, costume, general appearance, and attitude. Participants dress according to category in which they are competing and are expected to display appropriate "realness".

Dominated today by contemporary hip hop fashion and featuring much hip hop music, these events are actually part of a vivacious and ever-changing culture and are:

...a tradition dating back to the 19th century and going strong into the 21st. Balls continue to be held at bars or Masonic halls or other improbable venues. Across the country and throughout the five boroughs legends are still being born.

While these competitive walks may involve crossdressing, in other cases the goal is to accentuate a male participant's masculinity or a female participant's femininity so as to give the (almost always false) impression that the walker is heterosexual.

Categories vary according to the event but categories might include banjee realness, butch queen (emphasizes masculinity), executive realness (also known as Wall Street), drag queen (emphasizes extravagance), face (showcasing attitude and facial attractiveness), fag out (displaying androgyny and stereotypical gayness), fem queen (emphasizes femininity), hand performance (showcasing upper-body dance moves), military realness (typically featuring dress uniform), old way (showcasing dance styles from circa mid-1990s and before), preppie realness (also known as Town & Country), schoolboy/schoolgirl and so on.

Regarding these competitions and their importance to ball culture and the people involved with it, one participant wrote:

There is more to the ballroom scene than chopping, mopping, "fierceness" and shade; and there is more to vogueing than striking a pose. [...] Drag is a form of control. By looking good one can feel good. By looking powerful, one can feel powerful. One can be powerful. Therefore, beauty begets control. Artifice equals power. [...] Then again, it may just be a bunch of bitches competing for trophies. Either way, its fun. There is of course a distinction between the casual runway that would erupt at a "normal" club, and the formal runway of a ball, where there are judges and prizes and actual vogueing.

Having evolved over the years, the largest balls are competitions that can go on as long as twelve hours. There can be dozens of categories in a single evening and the categories. No longer attracting the same number of spectators, almost everyone comes to compete. Some of the trophies are twelve feet tall and a grand-prize winner can take home $1000 or more.

History

As a phenomenon of a counterculture (or of several countercultures), the origin of ball culture is a story of both of necessity and defiance.

New York City

As told by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham. the ball culture of New York City is the product of:

...the underground drag balls that had been going on in and around New York City since the thirties. Those balls were merely drag fashion shows staged by white men two or three times a year in gay bars, with prizes given for the most outrageous costumes. Black queens sometimes showed up but they were expected to whiten their faces and they rarely won a prize.

In the 1960s, black drag queens started holding their own events in Harlem where they took the concept to:

...heights undreamed of by the little gangs of white men parading around in frocks in basement taverns. In a burst of liberated zeal they rented big places like the Elks Lodge on 139th Street, and they turned up in dresses Madame Pompadour herself might have thought twice about. Word spread around Harlem that a retinue of drag queens was putting together outfits bigger and grander than Rose Parade floats, and the balls began to attract spectators, first by the dozens and then by the hundreds, gay and straight alike. People brought liquor with them, sandwiches, buckets of chicken. As the audiences grew, the queens gave them more and more for their money. Cleopatra on her barge, all in gold lamé, with a half dozen attendants waving white, glittering palm fronds. Faux fashion models in feathered coats lined with mylar, so that when the coat was thrown open and a two-thousand-watt incandescent lamp suddenly lit, the people in the first few rows were blinded for minutes afterward.

Eventually the participants in these balls split into factions centered around influential and charismatic leaders:

In 1977 an imperious, elegant queen named Crystal LaBeija announced that a ball she’d helped put together was being given by the House of LaBeija, as in House of Chanel or House of Dior. It was a p.r. gimmick, something to add a little more panache and, not incidentally, to increase the luster of Crystal LaBeija. The concept caught on, and suddenly every ball was being given by a house. Some queens named their house after themselves, like Avis Pendavis’ House of Pendavis or Dorian Corey’s House of Corey. Others took the names of established designers like Chanel or St. Laurent. [...] By the early eighties younger, less experienced drag queens were declaring themselves members of this house or that house, and competing in balls under the house name. Some went to court and had their last names legally changed, to Pendavis or Corey or Chanel or St. Laurent. [...] Houses came to be ruled by their biggest stars, who were known as mothers and who exhorted their members—their children—to accumulate as many prizes as possible for the greater glory of the house.

Washington, DC

This account from the metropolitan Washington, DC area describes how ball culture and drag houses developed there around 1960:

Some regular house parties became institutionalized as drag ‘houses’ and ‘families’. The leader, or ‘mother’, often provided not only the opportunity for parties but also instruction and mentoring in the arts of make-up, selecting clothes, lip-synching, portraying a personality, walking, and related skills. Those taught became ‘drag daughters’, who in turn mentored others, creating entire ‘drag families’. Drag houses became the first social support groups in the city’s gay and lesbian community. House names often came from addresses of the house ‘mother’, such as Mother Billy Bonhill’s Belmont House at 15th and Belmont NW, or associations with the ‘mother’s’ chosen personality, as Mame Dennis’s Beekman Place.

At this early date the styles of dance which came to characterize drag houses had not been developed and competitions between drag houses involved more usual drag performance in which entertainers lip synced or, more rarely, sang.

It contrast to the NYC houses shown in Paris is Burning, some of the Washington, DC house mothers were white. Still, African-American drag queens were a prominent part of this community:

Venues for drag shows and competitions were a constant challenge in the 1960s. The Uptown Lounge sponsored monthly drag contests, an event later duplicated at Johnnie’s on Capitol Hill. Chunga’s drag shows at the Golden Key Club in North Beach, MD were a popular Sunday event. The major hotels’ resistance to drag events was not broken until February 1968 when African-American drag impresario Black Pearl staged the gala Black Pearl International Awards at the Washington Hilton. It was the drag event of the year.

More General Useage

Today the terms associated with ball culture such as "drag-mother" and "house" can be used more loosely, especially in locations which to not have strongly established houses or balls, to refer to groups of cross-dressers who compete together for prizes but do not live together or groups of performers and friends at a particular venue or in a particular area. Drag-mother can even be used merely as a title of affection for an older, more experienced drag-queen, who dispenses advice and is revered by the younger, less experienced queens in the club/venue/area, or even more simply the person who introduced you to the scene and culture or provided you with contacts, etc.

Influence

While still an underground phenomenon unknown to the world at large, ball culture has had a wide influence on notable individuals and on society in general that is not limited to the following:

• Dance: The most recognized influence that drag house culture has had on mainstream society was in the creation of "vogueing", the above-mentioned dance style originating in Harlem ballrooms in the first half of the 20th century and popularized worldwide by the video for "Vogue", a song released by Madonna the same year as Paris Is Burning. One source attests that "Many people only know of underground ballroom culture from Blah-donna's 'Vogue' or the film 'Paris Is Burning'.
• Language: Terms like "fierce" and "fierceness", "work it" and "working it", "fabulous" and "fabulousness" and so forth are all part of the argot heard in Paris Is Burning and were central to the lyrics of "Supermodel (You Better Work)", a hit released in 1992 by Black drag queen Ru Paul. These terms quickly entered gay slang, fashion industry jargon and the mainstream colloquial vernacular.
• Music: Ball culture has long been a fertile ground for new forms of house music and electronic dance music which has then, through famous DJs like Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia and their successors, been introduced to the world.
• Fashion: Arguably, the fashions and manner of depicting masculinity in ball culture has influenced "the über-puffed-up peacock sexuality" of contemporary, mainstream hip hop." Regarding this interchange been gay black culture and the mainstream, a professor at New York University said "Today’s queer mania for ghetto fabulousness and bling masks its elemental but silent relationship to even more queer impulses toward fabulousness in the 1960s and 1970s.
• Personality: Kevin Aviance, whose appearances include Flawless, The Tyra Banks Show and America's Next Top Model, is a member of the House of Aviance founded 1989 in Washington, DC.

External links

• House of Aviance
• House of Beigen
• House of Diabolique
• House of Enigma
• House of Parangon

This article is based on a GNU FDL LGBT Wikia article: culture Ball culture

LGBT