It’s the 1980s. You're sitting inside the Savoy Manor Ballroom on a corner in New York city. The music is doing something magical, and a friend seated next to you shouts in approval at the queen taking center stage. The 1980s film Paris is Burning has been championed as an exploratory and outstanding piece of work receiving several awards ranging from the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize to the Best Documentary award from the National Society of Film Critics. Paris is Burning provides a peek into New York city ball culture where queens can compete in categories such as fem realness, butch queen, high fashion, and executive realness. Fabulous drag queens take to the floor as they walk in categories shimmering in glamor, or sassiness, or stealth attempting to mesmerize not only the audience but most importantly the judges who will decide just how “real” they are.
This mecca of ballroom culture displayed in Paris is Burning provides ample tools to challenge and reimagine gender construction while also humanizing drag and the lived experiences of those who participate in it. Ultimately Paris is Burning provides a glimpse into the way in which ball culture serves as a space where gender, hierarchy, and performativity can continually be interrogated and critiqued. While ball culture does provide a space of gender critique, I also argue that ball culture is imperfect and can often perpetuate ideas of “realness” that are rooted in white western notions of beauty and success. Through analyzing ball culture and the opportunities it presents to critique gender while also recognizing its imperfections, individuals can begin to grapple with current imperfect socially constructed conceptions of gender therefore transforming the way in which gender is understood and performed in the present.
I. Gender & Hierarchy Critique: Social Construction
Gender is a category that has existed in society for ages, and much of what is known about gender is often conflated with understandings around biological sex. Scientifically sex is assigned based on the appearance of external genitalia in addition to chromosomal makeup: XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes. From these sex-based categories gender is assigned: XY chromosomes usually male and XX chromosome usually female[1]. Gender, although derived from the way in which gender is assigned based on sex characteristics, is also informed by the performance of gender itself – everything from how to walk, how to sit, general body language, and even how to dress. Therefore, gender as opposed to sex is indeed socially constructed – something not rooted in fact but rather a series of continued performance.
In the article, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory Judith Butler provides an in-depth analysis on the social construction of gender and its relation to performativity. Butler argues that gender is created through, “the stylization of the body”[2] whether that be bodily gestures, movements, or enactments. Butler states that gender is indeed socially constructed and contingent on this stylized repetition of acts through time. Pulling on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, Butler places an emphasis on how our bodies do not exist without a historical context which bears cultural meaning of what constitutes a man or a woman. Therefore, gender as opposed to sex informs the lens through which the body can be understood: “gender appears to the popular imagination as a psychological correlate of biological sex … if gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal.”[3]
This analysis provided by Butler and its implications are embedded in every aspect of the ball scene in Paris is Burning. Take for example Pepper LaBeija a gay Black man dazzling the ballroom, covered in jewels, sashaying his way towards the judges all to receive nothing but the highest score of a ten. The crowd of onlookers erupts, applauding at LaBeija’s achievement of successfully passing as a “real” woman. In this moment fundamental conceptions around gender are challenged. It is in this place, in this small but glamorous ballroom on some corner in New York city, that the question: what makes a woman a “woman” becomes apparent. Here gender is revealed as a way of being. It is a performance that individuals choose to put on each day – from what to wear, to how to sit, to how to laugh. Butler’s work articulates how gender performance molds the way sex is understood. The ball scene in Paris is Burning forces viewers to reckon with the fact that gender is indeed socially constructed and an act which everyone performs, drag queen or not.
A research study from Steven P. Schacht demonstrates not only that drag allows for the critique of gender, but it can also provide the tools to challenge hierarchical conceptions of social power. Schacht writes, “If men can be women…the poor can be rich, and gays or lesbians can be straight…then the necessity and inevitability of these boundaries become suspect. For if one actually could be any of these things if afforded the opportunity, hierarchical borders that previously demarcated superiority and insubordination would lose their omnipotent meaning” [4]
In the film Pepper LaBeija describes white America as clips of queens walking in categories such as executive and military realness grace the floor. LaBeija states, “This is white America…when they showing you a commercial from Honey Grahams to Crest, or Lestoil or Pine-sol - everybody's in their own home”[5]. Here the film pans to a queen walking with pearls around her neck and a fur scarf draped elegantly over her shoulder as she picks up a small pooch who also happens to be wearing pearls. The clip quickly switches over to a blonde white woman walking through the streets of New York with similar pearls draped around her neck and her hair elegantly placed in an up-do that gives an era of wealth and power. LaBeija continues, “The little kids for Fisher Price toys; they're not in no concrete playground… they're riding around the lawn…the pool is in the back…this is white America”[6]. The camera pans to a young white boy eating a popsicle holding his father’s hand and then switches to a white man walking in a dapper blue suit smoking a cigar – perhaps on his way to the investment bank where he works. The camera flashes back to the ballroom where two queens sit at a fancy table with a white linen cloth as they sip champagne and wear fancy military uniforms as an onlooker shouts, “you own everything, everything is yours.”[7]
Similar to how gender as opposed to sex is socially constructed, the racial categories associated with superiority and inferiority are also socially constructed. As queens take to the floor draped in pearls, emulating superiority through their walk and dress, the idea of superiority and therefore hierarchy fall into question. If a Black queen can embody superiority through dress and performance, is the category of superiority that has been generationally tied to white people really about inherent internal superiority or is it about access and opportunity? As Black queens sip champagne and walk as if they had been generationally socially assigned the category of superiority, it becomes apparent that current racial categories associated with superiority are not rooted in what is biologically inherent. Rather, who has access to superiority is assigned based on socially constructed ideas around race.
In the film not only do the queens challenge the social construction of gender as articulated by Butler, but they also play with the rigid nature of hierarchy through categories such as executive realness, schoolboy realness, and military realness as outlined by Schacht.
II. Gender Critique: Challenging Performance vs Reality
The lived experiences highlighted by trans protagonists within the ball scene further allows for gender critique by implicitly challenging the distinction between performance and reality. Butler mentions the contrast in the way in which the sight of a transvestite on a stage can compel pleasure and applause, whereas that same transvestite seated next to someone on a bus may compel rage or violence. Butler writes, “on the street or in the bus, the act [or performance] becomes dangerous… on the street or in the bus, there is no presumption that the act is distinct from reality.”[8] In drawing this comparison Butler touches on an important aspect of mainstream societies perception of trans folks and how that perception changes in performance-like settings vs in reality. Butler writes, “if the ‘reality” of gender is constituted by the performance itself, then there is no recourse to an essential and unrealized ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ which gender performance ostensibly express.”[9] This is to say that popular understanding of gender is rooted in the performance of gender itself which inherently challenges popular thinking about the relationship between gender and sex.
Dorian Corey, one of the older queens in the film states, “when they’re undetectable when they can walk out into the sunlight onto the subways and get home and still have no blood running off their body, those are the femme realness queens.”[10] Dorian highlights how by simply existing, not on stage or at a ball but in the confines of the “real world”, trans folks and people who cross dress or transcend rigid gender categories face routine violence. A key trans protagonist in the film, Venus Xtravaganza, provides insight into her experience existing in the “real” world outside of the ballroom. She speaks of her desire to not have to struggle with finances and how she used to “hustle” to make money but stopped as the practice got more dangerous. Towards the end of the film, it is revealed that Venus has been murdered, found dead strangled under a bed in New York City. Through this aspect of the film the tangible financial and social implications of being trans, not on a stage but in the “real” world, are extremely apparent.
Since there are only small clips of Venus Xtravaganza and other trans protagonists in the film, I seek to provide an additional narrative from a study by Julian Glover on Black transgender women in Chicago’s ball scene. Glover interviewed Mel, “a five-foot five-inch, twenty-three year old Black trans woman with dark skin and a full figure.”[11] In the ball scene Mel walks realness and she has attributed her success to “both her complexion and her body, which help her be more “real” since her ‘ass is fat as fuck and shape on point’ (Mel’s words).”[12] Mel holds a full-time job at an HIV-nonprofit which has allowed her to expand her income sources beyond sex work. Mel turned to sex work after being denied employment from a national retailer. She prepared vigorously for the interview only to be treated dismissively by the interviewer and denied from the role. Mel described being Black and trans affecting her financial wellbeing in the sense that her blackness and transness prevented her from getting a retail job, while simultaneously her embodiment as a Black trans woman keeps her employed doing sex work. Glover writes, “here…Black transwomen [are presented] with an opportunity to leverage a client’s sexual fascination with their embodiment for material gain and a threat as job prospects beyond sex work remain elusive.”[13]
Here the real-life financial implications imposed on Mel because of her identity as a Black trans woman are particularly evident. Mel is positively compensated for what her clients might see as a “performance” as a sex worker, but routinely denied compensation in applying for “non-performative” work at retail stores where her existence cannot be distinct from reality. A similar dichotomy exists in the film for Venus Xtravaganza. Venus is applauded and uplifted when she is performing in the ballroom, but out in the real world her life is brutally ended as a result of extreme violence. Through both women it is evident that a form of violence occurs, financially and socially, when a clear line between performance and reality can no longer be drawn.
Butler writes, “the transvestite, however, can do more than simply express the distinction between sex and gender, but challenges, at least implicitly, the distinction between appearance and reality that structures a good deal of popular thinking about gender identity.”[14] Venus and Mel’s existence as trans women highlighted both within the ball scene and out in the real world inherently challenge our fundamental understanding of how gender is derived. The financial and social costs that trans people face because of their existence is a direct reflection of our society's limited perspective when it comes to understanding gender. Mainstream society has failed to grapple with the reality that the gender identity of trans people is just as real as anyone whose gender performance aligns with the social categories they have been taught. Through the lived experiences of trans protagonists central to the film the distinction between performance and reality can be challenged, further distorting popular constructions of gender.
III. Realness: Notions of Beauty and Success
While Paris is Burning does provide an in-depth view into ball culture where the system of gender can be contested, the film perpetuates white western notions of beauty and success. Throughout the film white western standards of beauty and success are depicted to be synonymous with this sought-after idea of “realness”. Certain queens, for example Octavia St. Laurent, provide examples of sought-after embodiments of womanhood, femininity, and therefore realness. In one of the scenes the camera pans to Octavia’s bedroom where she stands in her satin blue nightgown discussing a range of famous models she admires. Many of the images plastered against her bedroom wall are of white women, one of whom she deeply admires, Paulina Porizkova. Octavia proclaims as she points to a picture of Paulina, “this is my idle…if that could be me I think I would be the happiest person in the world just knowing that I could compare to Paulina to stand next to her.”[15] Many other queens in the film go on to describe the seductive nature of wealthy white cis culture – all of which is used as a benchmark for realness in the ball scene. LaBeija states “it is everyone’s dream and ambition as a minority to live and look as well as a white person as pictured as being in America.''[16]
Although the above reference points to white standards of living that are sought after for the resources and financial access whiteness represents, I'd like to focus on beauty norms and its relation to realness in the film. Octavia’s idealized perception of realness demonstrates how the visual representation and embodiment of femininity referred to in 1980s ball culture was largely associated with white beauty norms.
In the chapter “Is Paris Burning '' in Black Looks: Race and Representation bell hooks provides a critique of the way in which the film depicts femininity as embodied primarily by white womanhood. Hooks calls specific attention to a central protagonist in the film, Dorian Carey. Carey serves almost as a historical and cultural critic as an older queen who has bore witness to the evolution of sought-after ideals of femininity most dominant in the ball scene over time. Carey explains during his time, “no Black drag queens of his day wanted to look like Lena Horne.”[17] In other words, Carey calls attention to how currently the femininity that is most sought after in ball culture is the kind that can exclusively be embodied by white women. Hooks writes, “the film was a… portrait of the way in which colonized black people… worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in pursuit.”[18] Hooks seems to question for example, Octavia and many other queens in the film deep longing for aspects of whiteness that if attained would in some way allow for ultimate happiness and wellbeing. Namely, Octavia and many other queens describe doing whatever it takes to embody white beauty norms under the premise that it will grant them access to capital, resources, and satisfaction with themselves among other things.
As an older queen who has witnessed the evolution of the ball scene, Carey describes the limiting nature of utilizing the ball scene as a space to escape reality and attain the unattainable. Instead, Carey describes drag being a redemptive space where unique imaginative costumes and conceptions of gender can be reimagined outside the confines of whiteness. Carey reminisces in the film describing how “drag balls were traditionally a place where the aesthetics of the image in relation to Black gay life could be explored with complexity and grace.”[19]
Ultimately hooks argues that this dynamic of chasing white beauty norms, in predominantly Black spaces, inadvertently limits ballroom to the use of fantasy as a means of escape as opposed to fantasy in ritualized play and true self-love. It is in this way that hooks describes ball culture’s politics of race, gender, and class played out in the film as, “both progressive and reactionary.”[20]Although ball culture does in many ways allow for the constant challenging of gender and performance it also can be limiting in the way in which it places white western notions of beauty and success on a pedestal. Bell hooks and queens like Dorian Carey add a critical perspective to ball culture. They demand that queens use true imagination and creativity to confront and love themselves as they are, as opposed to longing for an illusory white western star identity that has become synonymous with the idea of realness.
IV. The Power of the Ball
Through this analysis of Paris is Burning I have attempted to reveal the many ways in which ball culture and drag provide a space for continual critique of gender, hierarchy, and performativity. Ball culture has the power to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of gender through its performance and push back on the validity of racial categories associated with superiority and inferiority. Furthermore, the presence of trans folks within ball culture can also implicitly challenge the distinction between performance and reality therefore further placing into question popular constructions of gender. While ball culture provides the tools through which gender can be critiqued it also is imperfect and requires continued efforts to uplift and reimagine non-white western ideals of beauty and realness. In recognizing the unique power ball culture has to challenge gender, hierarchy, and performativity while also grappling with its limitations; popular understanding around gender can actively begin to transform and foster more flexible and autonomous relationships to gender identity.
Sources
[1] Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “The Five Sexes.” The Sciences 33, no. 2 (1993): 22–24. [2] Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.’ Feminist Theory Reader, 2016, 519. [3] Butler, 528. [4] Schacht, Steven. “Paris Is Burning: How Society's Stratification Systems Make Drag Queens of Us All.” JSTOR. Race, Gender & Class Journal, 2000, 150. [5] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [6] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [7]Paris Is Burning, 1990. [8] Butler, 527 [9] Butler, 527 [10] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [11] Glover, Julian Kevon. “Customer Service Representatives: Sex Work among Black Transgender Women in Chicago's Ballroom Scene.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120, no. 3 (2021): 556. [12] Glover, 556. [13] Glover, 557. [14] Butler, 527. [15] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [16] Paris Is Burning, 1990. [17] Hooks, Bell. “Is Paris Burning.” Essay. In Black Looks: Race and Representation. New York: Routledge, 1992, 148. [18] Hooks, 149. [19] Hooks, 155 [20] Hooks, 149.
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