Hawkeswood, 1991Īs drag culture-and particularly black drag culture-gained prominence, so too did this dual meaning use of tea. "Nate" quoted in One of the Children: An Ethnography of Identity and Gay Black Men, William G. It could refer to a hidden truth, as Chablis uses it, and it could also refer to someone else's hidden truth-that is, gossip: It appears that T, also spelled tea, had a double-edged meaning in black drag culture. (It's worth noting that Chablis herself uses the letter T instead of the word tea in her 1997 autobiography, and glosses it as " my Truth.") T here is short for truth, and her truth is that she's transgender. Lady Chablis quoted in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, 1994Ĭhablis' interviews in Berendt's book gave the world a peek into the vocabulary of black drag culture. My thing, my business, what's goin' on in my life." In it, he is interviewing The Lady Chablis, a prominent drag performer in Savannah, about her dating life, and she notes that she avoids certain men because they're prone to violence when they "find out her T":
One of our early print uses of T comes from John Berendt's nonfiction best seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. When it was first popularized in general print, it could be spelled T or tea and it didn't refer to the drink. Like shade before it, tea originated in drag culture, and specifically black drag culture. But it does share an origin point with many other common terms being passed around social media. Wayne Slater September 19, 2017Īll well and good: but what's it all about?Īs we see with many slang words that take off on the Internet, tea didn't originate online. Manafort’s lawyer say the real problem is not that prosecutors have a potential crook’s data - it’s that we know about it. Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid ? September 20, 2017 A more personal Clinton than we've seen - frank and ready to spill all the tea. More than halfway through it, and it's quite good. *quietly sips tea while WSJ reads Facebook aaaalllll the receipts* /bWLirLXxI7- MJ Franklin September 6, 2017 Plenty of skeptical people on Twitter sip tea: But that's none of my business.- Kermit the Frog April 6, 2017īut Kermit isn't the only one with a cup. In fact, it's so popular that it has its own category on the GIF repository, and the famed frog himself has commented on it: If you're on the Internet at all, you've likely seen the meme of Kermit the Frog sipping a cup of tea.