The Category Is…Sustainability: “Making it Work” in Ballroom Culture Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This thesis discusses how sustainability affects and enables costuming methods within Ballroom Culture’s performative practices, a culture composed primarily of queer Black and Latinx individuals. Ballroom supports two main functions: (1) chosen family kinship systems to encourage support and belonging, and (2) ball participation. Many ball categories emphasize opulence and luxury, identifiers that many Ballroom participants can rarely claim monetarily. In examining this important culture, I explain how sustainability, framed in the sense of resourcefulness, has allowed Ballroom participants to participate in a subculture that necessitates luxurious and extravagant costumes despite participants’ lack of affluence. Data were collected through archives, journals, film, participant observation, and interviews. For information about Ballroom specifically, I rely on key thinkers such as Marlon M. Bailey, a Black queer theorist and performance ethnographer, and Ricky Tucker, a writer, educator, and culture critic. I also refer to scholars such as José Esteban Muñoz for performance-based scholarship, and Dick Hebdige for subcultural-based scholarship. This thesis heavily focuses on the category of “realness,” a Ballroom category that challenges participants to adhere to heteronormativity and capture the essence of a given gender. I discuss the paradox between frequent portrayals of wealth and upper-class heteronormative society, and the racial and class identities of Ballroom participants being the opposite of such. I discuss, however, how Ballroom categories deconstruct, and subsequently reconstruct how people racialize and define certain societal environments and institutions. Therefore, this thesis argues that sustainable costuming is ultimately a method to find community and deconstruct racialization among particularly white, upper-class societal structures. 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1

Ballroom Structure ..................................................................................................................................................... 5

Research Question & Goals ..................................................................................................................................... 10

Literature Review .................................................................................................................................................... 12

Wealth & Sustainability in Ballroom ....................................................................................................................... 18

Methodology ............................................................................................................................................................ 19

Ballroom Portrayals ................................................................................................................................................. 22

Chapter Breakdown ................................................................................................................................................. 24

Chapter 1: From the Margins to the Mainstream: The History and Evolution of Ballroom

Culture ......................................................................................................................................... 26

Early History ............................................................................................................................................................ 26

Gender and Sex Systems in Ballroom ..................................................................................................................... 32

Social Structures: Chosen Family & Kinship .......................................................................................................... 34

Values & Beliefs ...................................................................................................................................................... 41

Chapter 2: Methods of Effect Acquisition .................................................................................... 44

Importance of Effects in Ballroom .......................................................................................................................... 44

Buying ...................................................................................................................................................................... 45

Commissions & Self-Made ...................................................................................................................................... 48

Sharing ..................................................................................................................................................................... 55

Reusing & Upcycling ............................................................................................................................................... 58

Crafting & Reflections ............................................................................................................................................. 59

Chapter 3: Sustainability in Ballroom ........................................................................................ 62

Sustainable Framework ............................................................................................................................................ 62

Sustaining Culture through Commercialization ...................................................................................................... 65

Economic Sustainability .......................................................................................................................................... 73

Reflections on Sustainability ................................................................................................................................... 79

Chapter 4: Breaking Boundaries with Ballgowns ...................................................................... 82

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 92

Appendix 1: Chronological List of Interviews .............................................................................. 97

Appendix 2: Interview Guidelines ................................................................................................ 98

List of Figures & Table

Figure 1: The Apocalypse Ball Flyer……………………………………………………………..4

Figure 2: Cycle of Increased Financial Emphasis in Ballroom………………………………….69

Table 1: Gender System in Ballroom as defined by Bailey ……………………………………..34

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	African American Studies Women's Studies Sustainability
Palavra-chave	Fashion Sexuality Ballroom Sustainability Costume Gender
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dr. Julia Tulke, Emory University
Committee Members	Dr. Rose Deighton-Mohammed, Emory University Dr. Michael Peletz, Emory University

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