yassify / yas
To yassify something is to apply beauty filters to a digital image in an over-the-top manner in order to create a humorous result, and often, in a callback to the term’s roots in 1980s Black and LatinX queer culture, to transform the image of man into that of a woman. It, and its forerunner the exclamation yas, are good examples of how a term can exist in a subculture for decades before exploding into general popularity and then fading from general use once the fad becomes passé.
Yassify appeared and went viral in 2021 with the launch of the Twitter account @YassifyBot (not really a bot, but an actual person) on 13 November that featured such transformed images. The viral sensation quickly caught the attention of the press. The following appeared in the student newspaper the Cornell Daily Sun on 22 November 2021:
We probably have all glowed ourselves up with some retouches on a photo editing app at some point. But have you also tried giving yourself a poreless face, a pair of smokey eyes, plumped-up lips, balayaged hair and well-defined cheekbones? In other words, have you “yassified” yourself? Or we should ask ourselves, why are we comfortable doing the former but not the latter?
The past two weeks have given birth to a sea of “yassify” (or “yassification”) memes. These memes first emerged from queer Twitter, where people began sharing heavily edited photos of public figures with the glamazon look.
The trend soon became an internet culture phenomenon when an edited scene from the A24 horror film Hereditary took off. In the clip, Toni Collette turned from screaming in terror to serving her look. After this meme went viral, no one was safe from “yassification.” From celebrities like Timothée Chalamet, politicians like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to historical figures like Mother Teresa, everyone was turned into exemplars of our beauty ideals.
It might already sound familiar to some of you, but yassification is a derivation of the term “yaaass queen.” Originated from 1980s ballroom culture in New York City, the queer slang-turned internet culture phenomenon went mainstream in 2013 thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race and a video of a Lady Gaga fan. “Yas queen” has now become part of the everyday lexicon in youth culture that people say in response to someone fabulous.
And the word was featured in the online New York Times on 24 November 2021 and in the Sunday print edition four days later:
“Girl With a Pearl Earring” in a full face of makeup. The first Queen Elizabeth contoured from her neck ruff up. Severus Snape with jet-black hair extensions. Sasquatch sporting a smoky eye.
These are just a few of the altered images that have been shared by YassifyBot, a Twitter account that started popping up in people’s feeds this month.
To “yassify” something, in the account’s parlance, is to apply several beauty filters to a picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its subject—be that a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional character or a work of fine art—becomes almost unrecognizably made up.
Since YassifyBot’s account was activated on Nov. 13, it has tweeted hundreds of photographs in which subjects’ lashes appear thick and spidery; their eyebrows look as though they’ve seen the business end of a pencil; their hair has been lengthened and, often, colored; and their cheekbones and nose are sharply contoured.
Yassify was voted Informal Word of the Year for 2021 by the American Dialect Society.
As stated in these sources, yassify has its roots in the use of yas, a variation on yes, by Black and Latino drag ballroom culture in the 1980s as an exclamation of recognition, encouragement, and support. Many examples of yas being used can be seen in the 1990 documentary on ball culture, Paris Is Burning. The word came to the attention of the general English-language discourse community in 2013 when a video of a Lady Gaga fan using the term went viral and again in 2015 when it was used on the TV show Broad City. Yas was added to the online Oxford Dictionaries in 2017.
An example of yas being used by a queer student is quoted in a 2015 University of Alabama master’s thesis:
To be honest with you, sometimes I am self-conscious about my voice. I know I have to get over that, because it’s just what I sound like… I’m working on that. I mean, it isn’t like I’m some stereotypical sassy queen who walks around saying, “Yas queen! Ya! Slay!” We all know that one gay who is always snapping and showing out. I don’t put on a show like that! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like a bitchy kiki at the Pride Parade as much as the next queen… I just wish I didn’t sound as squeaky while I dish!
Sources:
Amatulli, Jenna. “Here’s the Real Origin of the Word ‘Yas.’” Huffpost.com, 19 July 2017 (updated 4 September 2017).
Forst, Michael. Understanding Marginalized Queer Voices: An Ethnography of LGBTQ Spaces. University of Alabama (Master’s Thesis), 2015, 58. ProQuest Dissertations.
Levine, Jon. “Yaaass, You Have Black Drag Queens to Thank for the Internet’s Favorite Expression.” Mic.com, 7 October 2015.
O’Neill, Shane. “What Does It Mean to ‘Yassify’ Anything?” New York Times (online), 24 November 2021. ProQuest Blog, Podcast, or Website. Print version: 28 November 2021, Sunday Styles 2.
Oxford Dictionaries, 2017, s.v. yas, excl.
Yang, Stephen. “Yassification: Contestation of the Extremes and the Binaries.” Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, New York), 22 November 2021. ProQuest Wire Feed.
“Yas Gaga.” YouTube.com, 21 August 2013.
Zimmer, Benjamin, Kelly E. Wright, Brianne Hughes, and Charles E. Carson. “Among the New Words.” American Speech, 97.3, August 2022, DOI: 10.1215/00031283-10096035.
Image credit: @YassifyBot, X.com, 22 November 2021. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.