Venus Xtravaganza
Encyclopedia
Venus Xtravaganza was a transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
American saving up money for sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...
while earning a living as a prostitute in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Venus Xtravaganza came to national attention appearing in Jennie Livingston
Jennie Livingston
Jennie Livingston is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.Livingston was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Los Angeles where she attended Beverly HIlls High School. She graduated from Yale University in 1983, where she studied photography, drawing, and...
's Paris is Burning
Paris is Burning (film)
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it...
, a 1990
1990s in film
The decade of the 1990s in film involved many significant films.-Events:* Thousands of full-length films were produced during the 1990s....
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about New York City ball culture
Ball culture
Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground LGBT subculture in the United States in which people "walk" for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while others compete in various genres of drag...
. The story of her life as a transgender person living in New York city and subsequent murder form a story arc within the film. Venus was featured on the original 1990 theatrical release poster in for the film.
Born to an Italian American family, she took the female name Venus in her early teens. As is the tradition of the gay ball culture, she took name Xtravaganza upon becoming a member of the House of Xtravaganza in 1983. The house, like similar houses, is named in the style of European fashion houses (e.g. House of Chanel) and is an affiliation of young drag queens, transgender and gay youth who have come together around the underground Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
drag ball
Drag Ball
Drag Ball St. Louis was created by Khrystal Leight, a zaftig Bette Midler impersonator from St. Louis, to entertain and raise awareness of the art form of female impersonation in local and regional college campuses throughout the Midwest. Drag Ball was first held in the fall of 1992 at Washington...
scene.
In Paris is Burning
Paris is Burning (film)
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it...
, she says she wanted to be "a spoiled, rich, white girl living in the suburbs." She shares a story of her time as a prostitute where one of her clients became enraged upon the discovery that Venus was not a cissexual
Cissexual
Cissexual is an adjective used in the context of gender issues to describe "people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their mental and physical sexes as being aligned"...
woman. Venus fled through a window and, fearing for her life, claims to have left the prostitution business as a result, opting instead to work as an escort. On her life as a prostitute, she claims "If you're a married woman living in the suburbs, a regular woman, married to her husband...and she wants him to buy her a washer and dryer set, in order for him to buy that I'm sure she'd have to go to bed with him anyway - for him to get what he wants, for her to get what she wants. So in the long run, it all ends up the same way".
According to her transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
adopted House mother Angie Xtravaganza as told in the film, Venus Xtravaganza was found strangled and stuffed under a bed in a New York hotel room in 1988. Her body was discovered by a stranger four days after her death.