A professor at New York University said about gay black culture that "today's queer mania for ghetto fabulousness and bling masks its elemental but silent relationship to even more queer impulses toward fabulousness in the 1980s."
A NYU professor noted that contemporary expressions of gay black culture, characterized by a fondness for flashy fashion and wealth, actually reflect a deeper, unacknowledged affinity for extravagant style that existed among queer individuals in the 1980s.