Paris is STILL Burning

Paris Is Burning is truly a legendary documentary about the ball-scene and gay&transgender scene in the mid and late 80's in New York City. This documentary is truly one of those which you have to watch.

This shall be one of my longer blogs, more in detail, as this documentary is pretty close to my heart.

Not only will you be getting an insight of what truly happens at a real ball, you'll learn about the houses, vouging, reading, throwing shade, and the everyday struggles gays and transgendered people go through. And of course the harsh reality of family members not accepting the person who you are.  Also during the recording of the documentary, one of the brilliant and gorgeous transexuals from the House of Xtravaganza was murdered. Which just yet again, shows the harsh reality of what kind of world we (still) live in.

Personally I think theres so many things you could learn, how to appriciate life, accepting yourself and what kind of a support you'll be recieving at a House and so on. Also, Dorian (Right photo, on the left) will share some Drag Queen wisdom.

There is a few things I have to address at this point; If you really thought Madonna invented Vouging, or vouging came from her music video, you really need to be extremely ashamed of yourself. There's some other popular pop-artist who has been inspired by the ball-scene, who I think you all know who it is. But anyway, that was just a brief side-note for the completely clueless people.

Quotes from the documentary are still being used, for instance, JuJubee from Rupaul's Drag Race season 2 used a very popular quote by Venus Xtravaganza. "You're going through some kind of psychological change in your life?". Even RuPaul himself uses them. 

At the time, the biggest house (and most popular) was the house of LaBeija. Mother of the house at the time was Pepper LaBeija (Right photo, on the right) Who is also the very first Queen You'll see who walks into the ball in the video. A few other Houses introduced in the video are; House of Ninja, (At the time, Mother of the house and the vogue legend Willi Ninja. The current Father of the House of Ninja is Benny Ninja) House of Pendavis, House of Saint Laurent, House of Balenciaga, (Founder of House of Balenciaga is the legendary Harold Balenciaga)

The ball scene has not died since those days, but I dare to say most of them aren't like they were back then. Of course there's a lot more Houses as well in the ball culture.  

This blog is dedicated to all the legendary people who passed away
who were featured in the documentary.

"You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot a arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you." - Dorian Corey