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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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Just simple, you know, joy and satisfaction.
you know, I don't really ask much.
And then, from time to time, later on I can wear the outfit.
Yeah!
Work!
Emcee:
♪ ...
Waiting in the wings
♪ you know you have to make room for Pepper Labeija ♪
♪ Pepper Labeija
♪ Pepper Labeija
Corey:
Liz Taylor is famous...
Emcee:
♪ Pepper Labeija
Corey:
So is Pepper Labeija.
Emcee:
♪ Labeija
Corey:
In a sense, so am I.
But a very much different quantity.
No magazine's gonna run up to cover me if I go to a premier.
But it's still a fame.
It's a small fame.
But you absorb, and you take it.
And you like it.
You like the adulation, the applause...
The people cheering you on...
The winning.
It's like, uh, a physical high.
It's... you know, it's a good high.
It's an addictive high, like all highs... in the long run...
turn out to be.
But it's a high that won't hurt you.
If everybody went to balls and did less drugs, it'd be a fun world, wouldn't it?
I'm dressing, of course, to go do a show.
Because I've always done this professionally.
And I was a dancer.
And I'm trying to remember when the first time I went to a ball.
That was the early-type ball, when everybody just walked, and they gave away, like, four or five prizes in a very limited category.
And the children now...
most of them... 75% of the children you see at the ball wouldn't know what a ball was if it knocked them in the head.
Labeija:
When I first started going to balls, it was all about drag queens, and they were interested in looking like
Las Vegas show girls... backpieces, tailpieces, feathers, beads, and all that.
But as the '70s rolled around, the thing started changing.
It started coming down to just wanting to look like a gorgeous movie star, like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor.
And now they've went from that to trying to look like models like Iman and Christie Brinkley and maud Adams and all those children.
Corey:
Everyone couldn't be a Las Vegas show girl.
Everyone couldn't put on a stack of feathers and a big headpiece.
So they made the categories where everybody... that's what really made the balls change.
So there was more involvement.
Everyone that goes to one of these affairs now damn near participates.
Eventually, over the course of a year's balls, they've all walked the runway in some category or another.
Either you've got a nice body or you are very fashionable or you're very pretty or you're very real-looking.
But there's always something there for everyone.
And it's like...
it's like in nature...
I'm such a nature fan... the young ones are always bucking to move the... the old bulls out of the way.
go through all these mad categories that I never can stay awake for.
Emcee:
Upcoming pretty girl... 1986.
Take it to the floor.
They're showing off for the press.
Audience, please back up and give them air!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Next category... high fashion winter sportswear, the poconos versus the catskills.
♪ Sexy body is there anyone walking?
Some children were asking me what I meant by "miss cheesecake."
That means you must not only have a body, but you must be sexy.
Going to school.
School.
Elementary.
College.
Not here.
School.
[ Crowd cheers ]
Looking like a girl going to school.
Do she look like a girl going to school?
Town and country.
Exclusively done.
Dupree!
Dupree!
Dupree!
...get into their suits.
I said, the well-dressed men of the '80s, get into the suits and get into the pumps.
Corey:
In real life, you can't get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity.
Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life.
That is just pure thing.
Black people have a hard time getting anywhere.
And those that do are usually straight.
In a ballroom, you can be anything you want.
but you're looking like an executive.
And therefore you're showing the straight world that
"I can be an executive.
"If I had the opportunity, I could be one, because I can look like one."
And that is like a fulfillment.