Venus Xtravaganza

A still from Paris is Burning, recorded in Venus Xtravaganza's bedroom.

**Venus Xtravaganza** was an American drag queen and sex worker known for her appearance in the documentary *Paris is Burning*.

## Personal life

Xtravaganza was born to Italian and Puerto Rican parents. The surname "Xtravaganza" was given to her after joining the House of Xtravaganza; drag participants traditionally take the name of the house as a surname. She chose the name Venus in her teenage years, and had planned on receiving sex reassignment surgery, with aspirations of becoming a wife and model afterwards. "I don't feel that there's anything mannish about me, except maybe what I might have between me down there. Which is my little personal thing. So, I guess that's why I want my sex change."She started cross-dressing and performing drag when she was at age "13 or 14"; her parents eventually discovered this, and she moved out as she didn't "want to embarrass them".

She joined the House of Xtravaganza in 1983, after being invited by founder Hector Xtravaganza. According to Venus, Hector was the first gay man she had ever met, and for her fifteenth birthday, he had taken her to the Village, bought her a cake and thrown her a party.

## Death

She went missing briefly, and was found under a mattress in a hotel on Christmas Day, 1988; it was determined that she had been deceased for three or four days, a victim of homicide by strangulation. Her house mother, Angie Xtravaganza, identified her body, theorizing Venus was killed by a client after discovering she was transgender. She was 23 years old at the time of her death. She was buried under her birth name in the Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington, New Jersey. As of 2019, her murderer has still not been identified.

## Legacy

References to *Paris is Burning* are often made on *RuPaul's Drag Race*; an example is in the season four episode "WTF! Wrestling's Trashiest Fighters": A participant tells other participants to "Touch this skin! Touch all this skin!", then calls them "a bunch of overgrown orangutans"; these quotes were taken from Venus on 'reading', a drag term for trash-talking another participant.

An interactive murder mystery play based on her death, *The Murder of Venus Xtravaganza 1988*, was made by Live IN Theatre in 2013. The premise was to "solve the mystery" of her death, in a "blend of drag ball memorial service, murder mystery, and fun all in one". The House of Xtravaganza, which was neither consulted nor involved, found it to be an "inappropriate, opportunistic and disrespectful to Venus' legacy," giving refusal of support or endorsement of the play.

Footage of her from the documentary was used in the 2016 film *Free CeCe!*, a documentary on CeCe McDonald, who was incarcerated in a men's prison for the manslaughter of a man who physically attacked her.

## Sources

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Livingston, Jennie. 1990. Paris is Burning*.* Motion picture. NY, USA: Off White Productions, Inc.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/?ref\_=nm\_flmg\_slf\_1
3. ↑ http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1445&context=facultypub
4. ↑ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWRJAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false
5. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html
6. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101094281/venus-xtravaganza#source
7. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/style/hector-xtravaganza-memorial.html
8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140626160817/http://www.liveintheater.com/show.php?id=4
9. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/HouseOfXtravaganza/posts/580853058643340
10. ↑ http://persephonemagazine.com/2013/12/free-cece/
11. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4948088/?ref\_=nm\_flmg\_arf\_2
12. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3678476/?ref\_=nm\_flmg\_arf\_1