Summary
The camera follows Octavia Saint Laurent as she goes shopping for designer clothes.
Dorian Corey explains that "any shoplifter can get a label," a practice called "mopping," or stealing.
Dorian Corey says of the performers, "a lot of them have little jobs now... don't think they're lazy," noting that some performers will work during the day in order to buy clothing for the balls in the evening.
A bystander says that the balls usually happen late at night because they're waiting for the "working girls" to get there, a euphemism for sex workers.
Venus Xtravaganza says that being so petite and feminine has helped her make her money as a "hustler." She also says that most times, she gets money from men without having to be sexually involved. She compares her work to a suburban housewife who has sex with her husband because she wants a new washer and dryer.
In an interview with Pepper LaBeija, she explains that she never wanted gender reassignment surgery because women's lives are difficult and dangerous.
Two members of the House of Xtravaganza, while dancing on the beach, detail their various cosmetic surgeries, including gender reassignment surgery.
Analysis
In this section of the documentary, the film delves into the logistics of how performers prepare for balls, as well as how performers live outside of ball culture.
The interviewees suggest that shoplifting – "mopping" – is a normal part of this preparation for two reasons: first, the performers are usually from low-class backgrounds and do not have the money to spend on clothing for the balls. Second, as balls have transformed over the decades, performers are no longer making their own fashions but are instead expected to actually don designer clothing from major department stores.
When Dorian Corey explains how elements of the balls have changed since she was a younger participant, she suggests that the line between the "fantasy" and "reality" of living like the rich, white, upper class has become even more blurred, as ball competitors are not only emulating these fashions but actually wearing the real thing (that they have, more than likely, stolen). "Realness," therefore, becomes even more difficult to attain, and all the more impressive when a participant can achieve it.
Along with stealing, many of the queens who participate in balls have actual day jobs that help them fund their outfits. Others, like Venus Xtravaganza, are sex workers. Venus speaks matter-of-factly about her work as a "hustler," and even compares it to the relationship between a suburban husband and wife. At the time the documentary was made, these traditional gender roles (in which a husband is in charge of the money and the wife is in charge of the house) were still quite prevalent in American society.
Thus, Venus's analogy encourages viewers to see, if not the merit in sex work, then the complicity of the heteronormative paradigm. Her comparison provides a new perspective on what sex work means to the sex worker: neither shameful nor a "last resort," she sees her "hustling" as a means to an end and even suggests that married women are sex workers within their own relationships. Venus's perspective also helps underscore her identity as a trans woman, as it appears in stark contrast to Pepper LaBeija's assertions that she never wanted to actually be a woman because women are often considered second-class citizens.
