My Womanly Story

Abstract

Ms. Vaginal “Crème” Davis has come to occupy a unique position in the parallel and intertwining histories of performance and live art, punk, and queer subcultures. As lead singer of the Afro Sisters, black fag, Pedro, Muriel & Esther (PME), and ¡Cholita! The Female Menudo, she developed a fearsome reputation and cult following on the alternative music scene of the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, emerging as a prime antagonist of the post-punk subgenre Queercore. Alongside this musical practice, she directs and stars in her own independent films and theatrical productions, and was a central figure in the burgeoning fanzine culture of the 1980s, producing both home-printed magazines and the influential video-zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson. Davis also ran and hosted several highly influential performance/club nights in Los Angeles throughout the 1990s and 2000s including Club Sucker, G.I.M.P., and Bricktops. Now living in Berlin, Davis continues to produce work as a performer, visual artist, sculptor, and writer, and as a musician with her most recent bands Tenderloin and Ruth Fisher. Davis produces work that blends a peculiarly Angeleno understanding of celebrity, glamor, and showbiz with the cultural politics of race, sexuality, privilege, and class, all made within a DIY ethos that stretches back to the earliest days of Californian punk. This interview was recorded in a cold Berlin on December 3, 2014, at Davis's home in Schöneberg.