Long before the likes of RuPaul's Drag race, and the
was brewing beneath the surface of Harlem’s black
modern empire that is drag culture, was a
identity was an identity both entirely different and
community of queer individuals unparalleled by any
similar to the issues going on in the mainstream world,
group of performers around the entire world. In
a microcosm for black expression translated through
history class, we learn of the Harlem Renaissance, the
an extravagant and dazzling subculture. Like a small
action of Malcolm X Boulevard, and the stories and
organism on the floor of the rainforest, the queer
of the famous men and woman who breathed life
community of this time operated by its own special
into the Harlem we know today as the mecca for
accord, thriving and pushing the boundaries of not
black culture, power, beauty, and history. What
only what it meant to be gay during this period of
history happened to leave out from this famous back
time, but also a person of color. Without the
narrative was the story of those who radiated on a
influence of mainstream Harlem culture, the LGBT
frequency below the mainstream, and filled in the
community created its own pillar of performance
gaps of a story of black individuals not being told at
and art called drag, on which the foundation for the
that time, the LGBT community. Different from today,
queer art of drag and performance we see today
LGBT influence in the 1920’s was never seen, nor
has constructed a modern empire. Without Harlem
heard by popular culture, entirely overshadowed by
as its garden, the seeds of LGBT art, specifically the
the overwhelming effects of the Harlem Renaissance
LGBT art we see most prominently in modern day,
and Civil Rights Movements. What is lost to most
may never have flourished from the seeds of
historians and those who study this period in time for
underground expression to the massive jungle of
black culture, and Harlem specifically, is that what
gender and sexual freedom that it is in 2018.
Theredlist.com
It was in the grand year of 1869, when within the 4 walls of Harlem's Hamilton Lodge, drag balls began. Balls, as they were called, were competitions of fashion, dancing, music, modeling, and all elements of beauty and theater combined. Exclusively created by gay individual’s, this was an art form for the queer community, by the queer community, and the landmark of queer American history.
americanhistory.si.edu
As the secret of the balls spread within the gay community, they became a safe place for gay men to congregate. The events would evolve from grand costume parties to outright gay beauty pageants with participants competing in a variety of categories, many of which are still referenced today as popular fashion statements or dance and performance techniques, such as “giving face”. Something most people will find ironic, as well as quite contradictory to the social climate of the Harlem Renaissance era, is that it was straight, as opposed to gay or queer men who were responsible for the ball scenes transition into the public spotlight as a form of art (Steppe). Mesmerized by its perverse spectacle, straight author’s Charles Nero Ford and Parker Tyler wrote about their extraordinary experience when visiting the balls, illustrating through their work what it was like to witness or even be a part of these secret underground drag pageants.
harlemworldmag.com performers as “female mimics’, and shed a glamorous, and intriguing yet positive light on the carnivalesque celebrations just out of sight of the Harlem public (Roberts). Stepping into the shadows of the nightlife scene, these two men crafted one of the only published and historic illustrations of what the drag scene was like during the Harlem Renaissance time period.
Something most people will find ironic, as well as quite contradictory to the social climate of the Harlem Renaissance era, is that it was straight, as opposed to gay or queer men who were responsible for the ball scenes transition into the public spotlight as a form of art (Steppe). Mesmerized by its perverse spectacle, straight author’s Charles Nero Ford and Parker Tyler wrote about their extraordinary experience when visiting the balls, illustrating through their work what it was like to witness or even be a part of these secret underground drag pageants. In their work, the two men described the shows as "a scene whose celestial flavor and cerulean coloring no angelic painter or nectarish poet has ever conceived . . . lit up like high mass." Ford and Tyler’s illustrative representations of the balls referred to the
Despite the positive connotation of their depictions, Ford and Tyler’s work were both heavily biased towards how white, and white performers only, contributed to the drag ball Harlem society. On top of this, their work failed at persuading the popular Harlem community at accepting drag into its society, as most people, both black and white, still refused to accept this landmark of queer culture dubbing what was once referred to as “masquerade” balls a the more degrading term, “Faggot Balls” (Steppe). After it became well known that these spectacles were frequented by gay, lesbian, and transgender people, there was less of a chance of the work of Ford and Tyler’s work, specifically their piece
“The Young and Evil”, to be accepted into the public. A moral reform organization known as the Committee of Fourteen periodically investigated the balls, looking to tear down whatever “perverse” and “shameful” behavior did not belong in Harlem society. In 1916, the committee released a report detailing the scandalous behavior they witnessed. The report described a scene filled with "phenomenal" "male perverts" inexpensive frocks and wigs, looking like women” (Steppe). Eventually, a total of 130 reports we released detailing the committee’s visits, demanding that this “perversion must desist” (Steppe). www.queermusicheritage.com
Leaping from the era of the Harlem Renaissance and into the mid-1900s, drag culture truly began to mold itself into the familiar picture of drag that we see today during about the decades of the 1960’s and 1970s. It was during these decades that drag established itself as both a black and queer art form, having moved on from its white influences of the past and being completely dominated by areas such as a Harlem in which we see a majority of POC communities. Ball culture in the 1960s contained very few different styles, primarily showcasing styles parallel to that of “Las Vegas showgirls”, and traditional burlesque costumes. However, New York’s Stonewall Riots of the late 1960s, when queer people of color stood up to police, “changed self-perceptions within the subculture: from feeling guilty and apologetic to feelings of self-acceptance and pride” (Carsten). It was in the 1960s that we experienced the introduction of the famous “house” system.
Not to be confused with the general “ball scene”, the drag house system was an entirely different entity altogether, carried on through the implementation of balls, but still not the same idea (Roberts). Emerged from the socioeconomic conditions of the time, houses acted as a second kinship for queer people to join in which a “mother” and/or “father” ( in most case, just a mother) would be appointed as leaders of a clan of “children” who performed under the name of their “house”. Roberts explains, “Just as hiphop -- with its emphasis on street crews and other forms of black male fraternal bonding -- emerged in roughly the same era as an artistic response to some of the political and economic conditions plaguing black men in New York, the houses became underground social networks by and for urban black gay people”. One of the most famous houses to serve in the clubs of New York City was the legendary house of LaBeija, an African American/Latinx drag clan mothered by drag icon
Chrystal LaBeija, and house of her just as iconic drag daughter, Pepper La Beija. The House of LaBeija dominated the club scene of New York drag life, setting into motion of what “redefend drag”, as some of the house members chose to identify with more masculine aesthetics as opposed to full-on feminine illusion and traditional drag. In doing so, the drag community had extended itself beyond just female impersonation to include all different types of drag styles, whether it be dressing as a man and being man, dressing as a men and being a woman, “genderbending”, club kid art, or just exaggerated fashion, looks, and costumes in general (Lawrence) . Centered around the idea that houses would compete for titles, crowns, and legacies, the drag culture inspired more than just drag queens, but attracted thousands of queer people from around the world to express themselves in their own, normally very fabulous, and expressive way.
zagria.blogspot.com
Other than the bringing about a new inclusive era of performance and drag to drag culture, the house system also sparked the beginning of the revolution against the intersection of racism and homophobia within the gay and drag communities. Chrystal, being in the forefront of the drag ball circuit, is credited with helping to redefine the drag ball culture of the 1960s with her infamous opposition to losing the “Miss All America Camp”, on which she left the stage in fury after being announced as third runner-up. All recounted in the famous drag documentary “The Queen” (1968), Chrystal reaction was an iconic moment in queer pop culture at the time, and is argued by some queer historian to act as a catalyst for the fight against racial bias in the drag pageant industry.
Despite drag serious evolution from the early 1920s to the 1960s, one idea that remained constant in the thread of drags gradual expansion towards pop culture was its disparity in racial representation, In the “Miss All America Camp” competition of 1968, Chrystal loses the win to two famous queens of the era, first runner-up Flawless Sabrina and champion Rachel Harlow, both white queens not from New York. For years before and after, Crystal had felt drag pageants favored white queens, and was fed up with the discrimination her black and latinx sisters faced (Goodman). This feeling was what inspired Chrystal to found the house of LaBeija, and transition the drag scene from a series of balls hosted and run by queens who were not from Harlem, as well as not people of color, and into a more diverse and fairly represented drag scene. Before Chrystal’s time, balls for black queens were incredibly rare. As mentioned before, white queer individuals dominated the drag scene during the 1920’s and 30s, often excluding black beauty from being represented in the queer community. In 1962 Marcel Christian organized the first ball for exclusively black queens (Lawrence) “A quite distinct phenomenon from the clusters of individuals and circles of friends who would head to the balls, houses began to operate as de facto orphanages for displaced kids” (Lawrence).
howstuffworks.com
The 1970’s become the first era of fullblown expansion in ball participation, as the numbers of categories for queens to compete in, ranging from “butch queen” to “fishyfemme realness” continued to grow and inspire drag scenes all around the country (Sargent). Having come right off of the Civil Rights Movement of the1960’s, drag had officially become more of a political art than it had anything else, contributing to the intersectional fight agent homophobic ideology and racial prejudice that governed society at this time. Working against the drag community, however, were mint civil rights leaders who condemned and scrutinized black queer leaders for their work, arguing
that it deviated too far from the mainstream that it worked against black people earning rights in society as a whole (Subcultures and Sociology). If dominant white culture did not accept something, there was no way, in the eyes of civil rights leaders, that it was worth fighting for amongst the already massive civil right movements taking place throughout New York and the rest of the country. Russel argues that “Black homosexuals came to represent all the elements of African American workingclass culture that Civil Rights leaders identified as obstacles to the attainment of citizenship. At the height of the movement for integration, black queerness was replaced in public discourse and popular culture by black heteronormativity.
As we moved later into the 20th century, drag took a small turn from being practiced exclusively within the limits of the Harlem neighborhood and found a new home downtown, creating the new drag scene of the 1980’s. One of the greatest documentations of drag in the 1980’s is the famous documentary entitled Paris is Burning (1990), directed by Jennie Livingston, in which the lives of queer drag performers in the mid to late 1980’s are documented, chronicling the evolution of ball culture into what most people consider the pre-modern era for drag (Stabbe). The term “Paris” stems from a popular term used to describe the drag scene culture
that emerged around the West Village of Manhattan during this time period. “By stylizing survival, N.Y.C.’s black and Latinx queer community in the late ‘70s and ‘80s were forced to create safe spaces on the Christopher Street Pier and in clubs around Manhattan — ports of peace and belonging that were given the title “Paris” (Sargent). Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Angie Xtravaganza, and Willi Ninja, all icons of Paris, to name a few, would hold balls inspired by old themes of the 1920s. Their new “drag identities” would be fashioned as the entered “Paris”, a world filled with vogueing, new music, and the lived-out desires of a legacy of queer people that came before them. From West Village to East, the subculture of drag and art culture continued to brew all across Manhattan, gay people the expeditioners of a new and attractive sought out form that was finally getting its first real taste of glorified mainstream attention.
www.thegaurdian.com
www.thegaurdian.com
Although the film “Paris is Burning” depicts previously discussed ideas such how balls became a safe space for queer youth of color, it is also recognized as the most iconic drag documentary to date and is praised for giving the most accurate voice to the drag community on a mainstream platform in the 20th century. The candid lovability of the film and it many quotes, such as “The library is officially open”, have inspired shows such as today’s RuPaul’s Drag Race, illustrating just how far the reach of a film can stretch throughout generations.
officially
Ball and drag culture today is also most commonly associated with the now household name RuPaul Charles. Having begun his drag career as a club kid parading through New York’s underground scene, Ru now dominates network television channels such as VH1 with his previously mentioned drag competition television series “RuPaul's Drag Race”. Ru’s turning point into fame was the release of his music video for “Supermodel of the World” in 1993. Having captured the public’s eye, Ru lead the charge of international hype for drag queens, launching himself into stardom for being the first of any dag performer to work on network television and have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Subcultures and Cultures). What is most important to understand form RuPaul’s
journey of success is the ladder he used to climb to the top of his prominence, and how each rung represents the back of a drag artist who fought, performed and celebrated before him. With the continuation of his drag series competition, combined with his positive reception from mainstream culture, the trajectory for mainstream success of drag art seems high and long, meaning that drag doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. With the escalation of Ru’s success will be the escalation of success of those drag performers who come after him, creating more rungs in the ladder for an entire generation of queens to climb and contribute to drag cultures mainstream popularity, a culture founded and started in none other than Harlem, New York City nearly 110 years before. theodysseyonline.com
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gettyimages.com
Birth for the queer foundation laid long ago by movies such as 1990’s “Paris is Burning”, have been followed by similar pieces of work such as “KiKi”, a story that captures the modern day elements of drag culture as translated throughput the turn of a millennium. This story is one of drag that has transfused down from Harlem and into the lower West Side, as young people, being of the queer and trans communities, train, rehearse, and battle in what they call Kiki balls, a more contemporary and millennial stem off of the famous drag ball scene we saw begin in Harlem. These modern-day queens are fresh off the boat, cruising their way into downtown Chelsea’s fabulous gay community, bringing with them the influences of iconic drag icons Pepper LaBeija and Willy Ninja (Sargent). Movies like Kiki, and the kiki ball scene, are perfect representations of how drag culture has evolved into the modern day, and how by people born after or at the turn of the decade are having their cut a carrying on the fabulous LGBT culture of ball competitions. Kiki balls and the movie “Kiki” also represent how drag exists
today not just on the tv screen of “RuPaul's Drag Race” and has retained some of its genuine and traditional drag features. Kiki balls are the modern-day version of the drag ball scene, meaning that less than how RuPaul's Drag Race show drag as a sugarcoated, easy way to perform, laugh, have fun and become famous, Kiki is a realistic view of the struggles of drag performers today and how in the real world, drag is black art, a New York art, and art that has been around for longer than the premiere of RuPaul's television show, and even RuPaul himself.
americanhistory.si.edu
Drag has never just been the art of one group of people, but the art of many. Throughout all of its colorful history, drag has metamorphosed itself through different styles, venues, cultures, and most importantly, races. “Since the inception of drag, queens of color have been excluded from the white narrative and whitewashed beauty standards presented throughout the drag scene” (Buffmyer). Often in drag, we witness the key elements of performances such as “vogueing”, popularized by black queens during the 1960s such as the House of LaBeija, get stolen and discredited as an object of white drag queens history or mainstream creation. This small discrepancy, along with any other small racial disparities that have plagued the queer subculture since its earliest days of activeness in the 1920s, contributing to an overall issue of racial bias and discrimination of people of color. Despite the fact that the
argument of people of color playing no part in the inception of drag culture in the United States is completely untrue, there are some people who wish to argue that drag itself was no more a black art than it was the art of any other race. What people fail to see is that drag’s roots lay tenderly in the spot that has been named both the “black mecca” and homosexual mecca” of the 1920s by historians, that being, of course, the neighborhood of Harlem\ (Subcultures and Sociology). It is said by Oliver Stabbe that“Harlem "enhanced the solidarity of the gay world and symbolized the continuing centrality of gender inversion to gay culture.
thequietus.com
Like the harvesting process to a precious coffee bean, Harlem tenderly groomed the gay community of the early 20th century into the wide-scale empire of drag, music, performance, and social presence that it is today. Without the roots of drag history laying in Harlem, the epicenter of black existence in our country, we would not have the influences of artists such as Chrystal LaBeija, or the creation of the legendary house system on which the enterprise of RuPaul Charles and other mainstream drag queens sit comfortably and very successfully today. In the fight for the end to racial disparity in the queer community, we were met with resistance from those who should be our ally’s, as those fighting for civil rights refused to support others without the same rights if it meant supporting the LGBT agenda. Without Harlem, and without its spirit of tenacious beginnings, the beginnings of black artists submissively assimilating to the white stereotype and then fighting back, and the long hours spent in jail for challenging the social committees of the Harlem Renaissance, we would not have a root from with our subculture could grow. At its core, the queer performance community could not exist if not for the gifts granted to us by the city of Harlem in the form it's hosting of our lifestyles, the exhibition of our passions, and the celebration of our differences.
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Roberts, Monica. “There's No Place Like Home: A History of House Ball Culture.” TransGriot, 1 Jan. 1970, transgriot.blogspot.com/2008/02/theres-no-place-like-homehistory-of.html. Russell, Thaddeus. “The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality.” American Quarterly, Johns Hopkins University Press, 17 Mar. 2008, muse.jhu.edu/article/233119. Sargent, Antwaun. “What It's Really Like Inside N.Y.C.'s Vibrant Young Vogue Scene.” The FADER, www.thefader.com/2017/03/06/kiki-filmscene Stabbe, Oliver. “Queens and Queers: The Rise of Drag Ball Culture in the 1920s.” National Museum of American History, 11 Apr. 2016, americanhistory.si.edu/blog/queens-and-queers-rise-drag-ball-11 culture192======0s. “Subcultures and Sociology.” Grinnell College, haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultures-and-scenes/undergroundball-culture/#ffs-tabbed11.http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2008/02/theres-no-place-likehome-hisory-of.html