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Your peers, your friends are telling you,
Emcee:
Is this the businessman of the '80s or what?
High-fashion Parisian.
Model's yvette.
Chanté, chante.
Chanté, chante, chanté, chanté, chante.
Model!
Thin!
Streamlined!
Trim!
Model!
The category is...
You know what I mean!
You know what Paris means.
Exactly!
Butch queen!
Butch queen.
Butch queen!
[ Crowd cheering ]
Butch queen.
Butch!
First time in drag at a ball...
that's what I wanted for me.
[ "The star-spangled banner playing ]
Man:
The military scene is a basic scene.
It doesn't call for a bunch of flamboyant Turkey boas and bugle beads, rhinestone.
It's a basic category.
The more natural you are, the more credit your outfit is given.
Emcee:
Come on, now, it is a known fact that a woman do carry an evening bag at dinnertime.
There's no getting around that.
between "all my children" and "jeopardy!"...
"Another world," "Dallas," and the whole bit.
A evening bag is a must.
You have to carry something.
No lady is sure at night.
With the current children...
the children that are young... they've gone to television, you know?
I've been to several balls, and they've actually had categories...
"dynasty"... you know, want you to look like Alexis or Krystle.
And I guess that's just, um, a statement of the times.
When I grew up, you wanted to look like Marlene Dietrich,
Betty grable.
Fortunately, I didn't know that I really wanted to look like Lena horne.
When I grew up, of course, you know...
Black stars were stigmatized.
Nobody wanted to look like Lena horne.
Everybody wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe.
[ Cheryl Lynn's "got to be real" plays ]
♪ What you find...
Man:
When you're a man and a woman, you can do anything.
You can... you can almost have sex on the streets if you want to.
The most somebody will say is, "hey, get a hump for me."
But when you're gay, you monitor everything you do.
You monitor how you look, how you dress, how you talk, how you act.
"Did they see me?
What did they think of me?"
♪ What you know, ah
♪ oh-ho ah
♪ to be real
Corey:
To be able to blend.
That's what realness is.
♪ ...for real now
♪ you know that your love is my love ♪
If you can pass the untrained eye... or even the trained eye... and not give away the fact that you're gay, that's when it's realness.
Fangie.
Looking like the boy that probably robbed you a few minutes before you came to Paris' ball.
Corey:
The idea of realness is to look as much as possible like your straight counterpart.
Shake the dice and steal the rice!
Right here.
Come on, baby.
[ Crowd cheers ]
Yes, daddy.
I got my food stamps and card waiting.
All right.
Dust, coke, base, soap, rolaids... he got it.
Corey:
The realer you look, it means you look like a real woman.
Or you look like a real man...
A straight man.
Emcee:
Sweetheart, with the cigarette, you're giving me a banji girl effect.
This is banji.
You know, the girls that be on the corner talking about your man.
One that can hang out with the roughest...
Corey:
It's not a takeoff or a satire.
Corey:
No, it's actually being able to be this.
Emcee:
Brenda Xtravaganza.
Looking like a banji girl.
Banji.
Banji girl realness.
You know, one that can take her little baby brother to school.