Fashion, Dressing, and Identities in Ballroom Subculture

Abstract

The Ballroom scene is an underground subculture created by African Americans and Latinos and gives emphasize in issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation within the heterogeneous society. The members of this subculture live in an organized social structure based on the acceptance and the celebration of sexual and gender expression. Balls are competitions where transgender people are involved, performing different kinds of dances. Balls provide to the queer community a cozy place to build their sense of self in their hidden world without the limitations imposed by society on gender and sexual expression. Balls are a combination of fashion, competition, and dance. “Voguing” is the characteristic dance of Balls and it is an extremely stylized dance form. Vogue magazine’s model poses to inspire it, and it uses the arms and legs with dramatic, rapid and feminine edgy ways. “Voguing” includes catwalk, dance, spins and other risky styles of movement. The “Voguing” has the major role in Ballrooms that contain fashion catwalk and competitions, where African and Latinos gays and transgender participate in a competition, imitating fashion models in the catwalk with gestures and poses to win an award. The panel of the critics, in a Ball, judges them from the movements of their dance, attitudes, costumes and the ingenuity in all of these areas. Today there are three basic types of Voguing: a) the Old Way, b) The New Way and, c) The Vogue Femme.