Vaginal Davis

Growing up, Davis lived with her mother, originally from Louisiana, and four older sisters. Her mother was Black Creole, her father was of Mexican and Jewish descent,[6] and her grandfather was of German descent, with Davis stating that she was born in Wannsee and the "black sheep" of the von Hohenzollern dynasty.[2] Davis' mother was a revolutionary feminist and community activist in the South Central area, and planted food gardens in vacant lots to help feed the homeless, impoverished, and marginalized peoples of the area. As a young child in the Los Angeles public education system, Davis was accepted into a program for gifted students, where she was first exposed to and developed a love of theater and opera.[2][3] At age 7, Davis saw Mozart's The Magic Flute on a school trip to the opera, and credits this experience as a catalyst for her development as a drag queen.[7]

Davis' name pays homage to activist Angela Davis, and considers Davis' involvement with the Black Panther Party and activism as a whole to be one of her biggest inspirations, explaining, "They came into the schools, they had guns, and they took over. They were teaching us all these revolutionary songs and chants and what not. At that time, when Angela Davis was the most wanted woman in America, I was just fixated with that image of her. By the late '70s I had decided I sort of wanted to sexualize her name and become her, more or less. So I started in the late '70s calling myself Vaginal Davis. I started to perform– or tried to perform– at these gay clubs in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. The people in these clubs, they would look at me and say, 'Vaginal Davis? Well who are you supposed to be?' And I said, 'Well, Angela Davis– it's a homage to that.' And they'd say, 'Well who's that?' They didn't know who Angela Davis was."[3]

Vaginal Davis is one of the founders of the homo-core punk movement. She chooses to exploit herself to engage in rude provocations and "gender-fucking." As a self-labeled "sexual repulsive", she is an icon of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag.[4]

Davis has been accepted as an artist in the queer community more recently, but "the gay world [only] became more open to what [she] did after [she] established [her]self outside of the gay world."[31] For many years, Davis felt as though she was "too gay for the punk scene and too punk for the gay."[31]

José Esteban Muñoz has identified Davis as a progenitor of "terrorist drag,"[4][32] for Davis was neither "glamour" like New York performers Candis Cayne and Girlina, nor "clown" (camp) like drag queens Varla Jean Merman and Lady Bunny. According to Davis, "I wasn't really trying to alter myself to look like a real woman. I didn't wear false eyelashes or fake breasts. It wasn't about the real-ness of traditional drag – the perfect flawless makeup. I just put on a little lipstick, a little eyeshadow and a wig and went there."[33] Davis has several drag personas, including Princess Sellica the Sensual Psychic, R&B legend Lestar Vartan and Lieutenant Vaginal Davis of the Sexualese Liberation Front.[7] Dominic Johnson of Frieze said, "Ms Davis consistently refuses to ease conservative tactics within gay and black politics, employing punk music, invented biography, insults, self-mockery, and repeated incitements to group sexual revolt." Davis has been critical of the co-optation of African, Hispanic, and LGBT culture by the mainstream.[4]

Davis' performances are also, according to journalist Ali Fitzgerald, "giddy, satirical stabs at the old-world order, leveling criticism at white privilege and the patriarchy with nuanced wit and game-show-style camp. The Vaginal Davis persona is a complex mixture of queercore punk antics and MGM studio glamour, reflecting Davis' socially engaged and aesthetically consistent interests."[13] She was also a muse to German choreographer Pina Bausch, as well as fashion designer Rick Owens and photographer Catherine Opie.[4] Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu also stated that "I am bi and found artists that were androgynous hit me hard – Peter Murphy, David Bowie, Morrissey. But there was a drag queen named Vaginal Davis that changed my life. I had no idea you could be punk and a drag queen and ultra intense and insane and hot and brilliant all at the same time."[34]

Davis also claims, in a 2015 interview with Bedford and Brooklyn's Nicole Disser, that much of her artwork and performances are inspired by her late mother's artistic ability, stating, "I'm so intertwined with my mother. My whole career as an artist, and all of my visual art, is basically co-opting my mother. My mother didn't consider herself an artist, she just made stuff. Looking back to the things that she did, they were installations, assemblages – things in the art world that have proper names to them – she was doing this way back then. If I get any notice for any of my artworks or any of my performances, it's because I just copied my mother."[3]

In 2018, Davis was awarded $10,000 U.S. Dollars for receiving the Sustained Achievement Award from the non-profit organization Queer|Art, which offers support and mentorship to LGBTQIA+ identifying artists.[35]

Davis has kept her exact birth year, as well as the name she was given at birth, private.

• Dowager (1972-1975)[12]
• Crude (1976-1980)
• Fertile La Toya Jackson (1982-1991)
• Shrimp (1993)
• Yes, Ms. Davis (1994)
• Sucker (1995-1997)
• Dragazine (1997)[12]

Davis’s name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic."[41]

• José Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999) ISBN 0-8166-3015-1
• Jennifer Doyle, Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). ISBN 0-8166-4526-4

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vaginal Davis.

• Official website
• Vaginal Davis at IMDb 
• The Zines of Vaginal Davis
• The Cholita! Page
• The Cholita! Family Tree, compiled by Ms. Davis
• Vaginal Davis in The Lollipop Generation
• Bruce LaBruce essay on Davis