Entry · catalog no. 4416
category is
/ /ˈkætəˌɡɔri ɪz/ /KAT-uh-gor-ee IZ
phrase (emcee call) · Harlem, New York City · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
Spoken by the master of ceremonies at a ball to open a round of competition, naming the category — realness, face, runway, performance, and their many refinements — that walkers are about to be judged in. The call is both procedure and theater: it sets the terms of the contest, and the emcee's delivery, commentary, and reads around it are part of the art form. By extension, used outside the ballroom as a framing device to announce a theme or aesthetic.
“The emcee took the mic: 'The category is… executive realness. Walk like the corner office is already yours.'”
Origin & Attribution
The call belongs to the Black and Latino LGBTQ ballroom scene of Harlem, where competitive balls organized around houses — chosen families led by mothers and fathers — were judging walkers in named categories by the 1970s and 1980s. The emcee ran the floor: announcing categories, keeping order, reading the crowd, and lifting or cutting walkers with running commentary. The most famous documentation is Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning (filmed 1986–1989, released 1990), where Junior LaBeija, longtime master of ceremonies of the Paris Is Burning ball and member of the House of LaBeija, delivers the call that became the film's signature — press coverage decades later still identifies him by the phrase 'The category is…'. The formula is older than the footage; it was working language on the ballroom floor, not a scripted line. FX's Pose (2018) built each episode around Billy Porter's version of the call, and internet caption culture turned 'category is:' into a general-purpose framing joke, but the phrase's grammar, function, and flavor were built by ballroom emcees in Black and Latino queer Harlem.
1970s
Harlem's house-and-ball circuit competes in named categories called by emcees
1990
Paris Is Burning releases; Junior LaBeija's 'The category is…' reaches audiences far beyond the balls
2018
FX's Pose stages the call weekly for a mass TV audience
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York City · 1980s
Spoken by
Ballroom emcees and the Black and Latino LGBTQ house scene of New York, later the national ballroom circuit
$CATEGOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring36 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
78/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1990
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Jennie Livingston (dir.), "Paris Is Burning" — documentary film · 1990
published
■
Brande Victorian, "'Paris Is Burning' Emcee Junior LaBeija on 'Pose,' RuPaul and Being Excluded From Hollywood's Ballroom Narratives," The Hollywood Reporter — article · 2021
published
■
+ Cite a sourceRolling Stone, "Striking a 'Pose': A Brief History of Ball Culture" — article · 2018
published
See also