To compete against each other, Houses "walk" in "balls" judged on vogue skills, costumes, appearance, and attitude. Participants dress according to the category in which they are competing, and are expected to display appropriate "realness". Balls are influenced by hip hop fashion and music. The largest balls last as long as ten hours, with dozens of categories in a single evening. With fewer spectators, nearly everyone comes to compete; some trophies are 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, and a grand-prize winner can earn $1,000 or more. Although some competitive walks involve crossdressing, in other cases the goal is to accentuate a male participant's masculinity or a female participant's femininity as a parody of heterosexuality. Voguing consists of five elements: duckwalk, catwalk, hands, floorwork, and spins and dips.
Some categories include:
- Butch Queen Vogue Fem/Female Figure Performance – Use the vogue elements of hands, catwalk, duckwalk, floor performance, spins and dips.
- Butch Queen (BQ) Realness – Judged on participants' ability to blend in with male heterosexuals.
- Femme Queen (FQ) Realness – Judged on participants' ability to blend in with cisgender women.
- Realness With a Twist (Twister/RWT) – Judged on participants' ability to blend in with heterosexuals, then returning to vogue like a femme queen.
- Runway – Judged on participants' ability to walk like a supermodel. Broken up into different categories: All-American, Women, Butch Queen in Drags (BQID), European and FQ. All -American runway is usually Male Figures (MF) walking as men. BQID, FQ, and Ero are MF's walking as women.
- Bizarre – Judged on participants' creativity to design a costume based on a requested category.