Sissy That Walk

'Sissy that walk' is an exhortation to move down a runway with confident, exaggerated femininity, grace, and presence. Its roots are in ballroom culture, the Black and Latino LGBTQ+ underground scene where performers 'walk' in competitive categories. The phrase reached a wide audience through RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's 2014 song of the same name. To 'sissy that walk' is to own one's femininity, queerness, and command of a space without apology, turning a word once used to wound into a call to perform with full force. Like much of drag's mainstream vocabulary, it brings ballroom history into pop culture.