Entry · catalog no. 1070
house
/ /
noun · Harlem, New York; ballroom ·
✓ Verified
1.
In ballroom, a chosen family — a named collective (House of LaBeija, House of Xtravaganza) that takes members in, raises them, trains them, and competes together at balls under a shared name.
“She got taken in by the house at sixteen and been walking for them ever since.”
Origin & Attribution
From the Black and Latino queer and trans ballroom scene in Harlem, where the House of LaBeija was founded by Crystal LaBeija in the early 1970s after she walked out of a white-run pageant. For people put out by the families they were born into, the house is the family that keeps them — kinship built on purpose, not on blood.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Harlem, New York; ballroom ·
Spoken by
$HOUSEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ 26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
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
■
Paris Is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingston — documentary film · 1990
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceMarlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit — book · 2013
submitted
See also