In the film, Dorian Corey explained that in a ball, “you can be anything you want. You’re not really an executive, 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.”
Throughout Paris Is Burning (1990), the idea of complete replication, or “blending in,” is emphasized, with individuals receiving perfect scores when they completely embody the role they present in the ballroom. One of the main ideas in the film is how the ballroom community uses fashion and voguing to inhabit roles that society usually denies them. When participants walk in categories such as “Executive Realness” or “Town and Country”, they are not simply showing off clothing, they are performing access to power, wealth, and respectability. These performances revealed that fashion is never just about what someone wears, rather, it is about who has permission to appear legitimate while wearing it. Given this, at first, I believed drag was an act of imitation (a way to blend into a higher social class) with emphasis being placed on fashion’s power coming from the privilege of the wearer rather than creativity itself. However, throughout the film, my interpretation changed.
In the film, a participant can look like a Wall Street executive, yet outside the ballroom, society still views them as poor and queer. Their outer fashion appears convincing, yet it does not grant the privilege attached to that image. This highlights the “normalized” idea that the value of fashion depends on who wears it and the access that person holds.
What makes Paris Is Burning interesting is how this dynamic is transformed. Within the ballroom, fashion no longer depends on external validation. Fashion now becomes a language of self-definition and freedom. As Corey explains, “In the ballroom, you can be anything you want.” The act of performance turns fashion into something liberating rather than aspirational. Drag emerges as a form of expression that contradicts the belief that fashion requires social status to hold meaning. It demonstrates that confidence and creativity, not privilege, give style its significance.
I explored this idea/theme further through reading a piece by The Criterion Collection titled “Paris Is Burning: The Fire This Time” written by Michelle Parkerson. Parkerson writes that the ballroom is “a world in which style becomes survival,” and within this space, self-presentation operates as a “radical act”. The balls create an alternate reality where individuals excluded from the hierarchy can redefine beauty, gender, and success. Fashion, detached from wealth or whiteness, becomes a language of resilience, artistry, and self-identification.
The ballroom community and drag as an art show that fashion holds value when it becomes a tool of identity rather than a marker of privilege. Drag transforms clothing into language, movement into protest, and presentation into truth. Through performance, individuals claim visibility and power in a world that refuses to grant it. Fashion in this context no longer depends on wealth or position. It becomes an act of existence.
Leave a Reply