Vogue dance presents gender as a performance. Drag queens pretend to apply makeup ("beat face"), style hair and don extravagant clothing through the dance moves. Depending on the competition category, participants may perform the traditional behaviors of their biological sex to demonstrate "realness," or passing as straight.
Although there are varying gender and sexuality classifications and categories, each fits into either Female Figure (FF) or Male Figure (MF). Female Figure includes trans women, cisgender women and drag queens, while Male Figure includes butch queens, butch women and cisgender men. No matter the category, performances and competitions are camp (style), which embodies the spirit of extravagance and is exaggerated and artificial. The precise origins of voguing are disputed. Although many cite the story in which Paris Dupree takes out a Vogue magazine and mimics the poses to the beat of the music (and other queens subsequently followed), there are other accounts that note voguing may have originated from black gay prison inmates at Rikers Island, performed for the attention of other men as well as throwing shade.
Voguing is continually being developed further as an established dance form that is practiced in the Black and Latino gay ballroom scene, and clubs in major cities throughout the United States, centered in New York City. There are currently three distinct styles of vogue: Old Way (pre-1990) New Way (post-1990) and Vogue Fem (circa 1995). Old way is characterized by the formation of lines, symmetry, and precision in the execution of formations with graceful, fluid-like action.