Queer Vernacular and Camp Aesthetics
Hold on to your wig because it’s time to spill the tea on American slang.
“Shade,” “realness,” “yas queen,” “kiki,” how many of these words have you heard or seen online? American slang appears all over pop culture, in conversation, and on the internet. Slang words such as these are used so often that their origin and meaning get lost. These words were invented by a marginalized subculture of LGBTQ+ Latin and Black Americans who participated in drag performances, not by teenagers on Tiktok.
Due to the popularity of TV shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, and celebrities adopting queer language and mannerisms in their performances, this vernacular has become mainstream. The spread of these words from a drag queen subculture to mainstream use is due to the radical spectacle of camp aesthetics in drag performance. The marginalization of this group based on race, sexuality, gender identity, and class created a subculture for expression and community, and thus created new linguistic forms.
Ballroom Language
Paris is Burning is a documentary about drag balls of the late 1980s in Harlem, New York. The film is said to have captured the end of the golden age of ball culture. This documentary features a group of LGBTQ+ people of color who experience urban poverty. Many non-gender conforming people participate in these balls including transgender women, gay men, and femme drag queens.
The drag balls consist of walking in “categories” or themes, much like a fashion show. The categories fall under dance, beauty, or “realness.” The director of the documentary, Jennie Livingston, intercuts the film with shots of bold text filling the screen with examples of ballroom language such as “realness” and “voguing,” followed by explanations and footage. Often, drag queen Dorian Corey is shown defining these words.
These balls created a safe space where people discriminated against in mainstream society could find joy, safety, self-worth, self-expression, and community. Words like “house” and “mother” were used to describe surrogate families that were created when their own biological families ostracized them because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The “houses” would perform in the balls to win trophies and build notoriety for their house name.
The support and community that this group of people created for each other is a testament to what Mikelle Street calls,
“an overall legacy of black people: to turn pain, refusal, and a dearth of opportunities into something completely new.”
These balls were a welcoming space for community and expression which birthed a new lexicon.
“Trickle-Up Linguistics”
When queer slang becomes a part of mainstream culture, it is a form of covert prestige, meaning that nonstandard vernacular becomes widely used and respected even if previously considered inferior or grammatically incorrect. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) often gains a similar type of covert prestige as queer ballroom vernacular. The popularity of queer speech patterns is evidence of the sophistication, originality, and vibrance present within these linguistic codes.
Natalie Wynn, also known as “ContraPoints,” is a transgender YouTuber who covers all kinds of trans-related topics while dressed in theatrical makeup with carefully designed sets as background. She uses her “Trickle-Up Linguistics” model to explain that queer black and Latinx people invent new words that queer white people and straight POC adopt, then eventually they make it into pop culture. The true meaning and context behind these words are forgotten as they trickle up into mainstream lingo.
The concept of “realness” is used by ContraPoints as an example of this phenomenon. “Realness” in the ballroom sense is not merely an impressive costume, it is about how well a person could blend in with the straight world. “Executive realness,” for example, is an artifice to create a fantasy of a lifestyle kept unjustly out of the grasp of many gay and trans people of color.
Chloe Davis writes in her article, The Language of Ballroom,
“In the ballroom lexicon, words, idioms, expressions, and tonalities are created to articulate the unique experiences of this culture. This language is needed for survival, protection, and affirmation.”
Understanding the background behind these words is vital to understanding the nuances of their meaning.
Cultural Appropriation
The expansion and evolution of language is inevitable; however, it is harmful when the history of using these words in the context of the ballroom is forgotten. Creating language was a way to build an inclusive culture when discriminated against by straight white culture and gay white culture alike. When white and/or straight and privileged people use these terms, it warps their meaning. This is harmful because it erases the legacy of an ignored and oppressed sub-culture and fails to bring light to the very real issues they face, such as violence, racial inequality, and lack of opportunity. In the Dazed article, Looking at Paris Is Burning 30 years after its release, Shon Faye states,
“The opulent aesthetics of the balls have been preserved and widely distributed in a now-commoditized gay culture where drag and its slang are popular but, so too has the film’s central chasm widened.”
“Gayspeak”
LGBTQ+ people inventing codes to speak to each other started long before the ballroom. This was especially necessary when it was illegal to be gay. Being gay or trans used to mean ostracization, loss of livelihood, imprisonment, and sometimes death. These codes were used to express common identity, for protection, and secrecy. Even today, it is dangerous to be “out” as a gender non-conforming person. In 2021 alone, there have been 15 reported transgender or gender non-conforming violent deaths. The most common LGBTQ+ people to be killed because of their identity are black and Latinx transgender women. Even in Paris Is Burning, Venus Xtravaganza, a transgender woman featured in the film was found murdered in a hotel room before the end of the documentary. It is important to acknowledge the bravery of simply coming out as a queer person, especially as a queer person of color.
Camp Linguistics
Polari is an example of a gay language that became a part of British slang in a similar way that ballroom words have become a part of American slang. Campy comedians introduced Polari words into British speech and it is possible that the word “camp” originated from Polari.
“Camp” is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing.” In Susan Sontag’s essay Notes on ‘Camp,’ she explores the concept of “camp” in detail, where she describes camp as “off,” exaggerated, kitschy, and failed seriousness. Essentially, “it’s good because it’s awful.” Drag is the perfect representation of a camp artform. Especially drag queens like Trixie Mattel and Juno Birch who categorize themselves as camp queens. As Sontag puts it, camp is not defined in terms of beauty, “but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.”
The “radical spectacle of camp” may be the reason that queer words and mannerisms get adopted into the mainstream. Leslie Cox and Richard Fay explain in their paper, Gayspeak, the linguistic fringe that,
“The process of framing Gay culture in camp theatrical terms is a form of minstrellisation (McIntosh 1973, p.8) that renders it acceptable to the dominant culture.”
Popular television shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, a drag queen competition show, and Pose, a dance musical about the New York ballroom scene, bring queer culture to the mainstream through camp aesthetics. Camp has become so popular that the theme for the 2019 Met Gala was “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Celebrities that use ballroom language and dance in their music bring it to the awareness of pop culture consumers. Madonna famously uses voguing, a style of dance invented in the ballroom, in her song Vogue. Beyoncé’s “hairography” is undoubtedly influenced by queer performers. In her Video Phone music video, she uses a hair flip that transgender choreographer Leiomy Maldonado created, a dance move termed the “Leiomy Lolly.” Many incorrectly attribute the slang, “Yas Queen” to an excited Lady Gaga fan and remember its popularity from the show Broad City.
The flamboyant aesthetics of camp had the power to bring queer mannerisms and language into pop culture. Drag queens pushed for visibility and the freedom to express themselves in the mainstream despite the risk of danger and ostracization.
Since the release of Paris Is Burning, there has been an emergence of Queer Theory and trans activism that has created specific discourse around the differences and similarities between LGBTQ+ people that was not previously there. This has expanded the nuanced discussion around queer culture.
Final Thoughts
We have queer black and Latinx people to thank for inventing colorful neologisms that become widely used and are considered cool in American pop culture. This way of speaking emerged from marginalization at an intersection of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and poverty. These words come from a subculture created to be new and inclusive to people whom American society rejected.
This vernacular is adopted into the mainstream because it is exposed to the public through “camp” performances and celebrities who take from the culture. Often when people use these words, they are not aware of their history. It is important to give credit where credit is due.
References:
Cox, L. and Fay, R. (1994). Gayspeak, the linguistic fringe: Bona Polari, Camp, Queerspeak and beyond. In S. Whittle (ed.), The Margins of the city. (pp.103–127). Aldershot: Arena / AshgatePublishing.
Davis, C. (2021, March 9). The Language of Ballroom. The Gay & Lesbian Review. https://glreview.org/the-language-of-ballroom/.
Faye, S. (2016, August 23). Looking at Paris Is Burning 30 years after its release. Dazed. https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/32530/1/looking-at-paris-is-burning-25-years-after-its-release.
Faye, S. (2016, August 23). Looking at Paris Is Burning 30 years after its release. Dazed. https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/32530/1/looking-at-paris-is-burning-25-years-after-its-release.
The Human Rights Campaign. (2021). The Human Rights Campaign. https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2021.
Jackson, L. M. (2018, April 30). On Beyoncé, Beychella, and Hairography. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/30/on-beyonce-beychella-and-hairography/.
Livingston, J. (1990). Paris Is Burning. Off White Productions Inc.
Luu, C. (2018). The Unspeakable Linguistics of Camp. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/unspeakable-linguistics-camp/.
Shorey, E. (2016, January 27). Leiomy Maldonado Is The Wonder Woman Of Vogue. Oxygen. https://www.oxygen.com/blogs/an-interviewer-with-legendary-vogue-dancer-leiomy-maldonado.
Sontag, S. (2018). Notes on Camp. Penguin Classics. http://www.theslideprojector.com/pdffiles/ah331/notesoncamp.pdf
Street, M. (2018, June 15). Do Not Erase Black Femmes In Your History of Gay Slang. Paper. https://www.papermag.com/gay-slang-history-black-femmes-2578325972.html?rebelltitem=19#rebelltitem19.
