Gov Ball 2025, Day 1: Mannequin Pussy Pens Pussy Manifesto

Written by Brandi Martin

Photos by Ismael Quintanilla III

Marisa “Missy” Dabice, lead singer of Mannequin Pussy, strutted out onto the Kiehl’s stage during that first afternoon of Gov Ball 2025 with a lasso hand motion that signaled the rodeo had begun. There was nothing left for the audience to do but grab the bull by the horns. With her affected, excessively sweet movements, she pranced up to the front of the stage, yelled “What the fuck is up Gov Ball?!” and launched straight into the heavy metal vocal intro of “Everything.” Mannequin Pussy has never come to fuck around, and they certainly wouldn’t start now. The power and energy Missy put into her vocals was matched by her physicality, as she gyrated and power posed across the stage while baring teeth and tongue. Her vocal range was immediately established during this song, transferring seamlessly between harsh screeching and mellow, mumbling speak-singing. This carried on throughout the afternoon, her voice oscillating to match the sprawling genres that Mannequin Pussy has drawn from, particularly in their newest release, the 2024 album I Got Heaven. After their opening song concluded with a final, feral “I took it all,” Missy took the opportunity to introduce the band to the growing audience. 

In her breathy, low voice she lilted, “What’s up Gov Ball? What’s up you sick fucking freaks? You look so freaky, you look so beautiful.” She may as well have been speaking into a mirror; The band’s on-stage apparel adhered to a Goth Valentine’s theme that was at once freaky and beautiful. Missy was clad in a red latex minidress with pink flowers and bow straps that made 

her look like a sickly sweet dominatrix, bassist/vocalist Colins “Bear” Regisford bared his stomach in a stripped-back red suit, guitarist Maxine Steen sported faded pink hair and a sheer black maxi-dress, and drummer Kaleen Reading wore head-to-toe black. With their catalog full of songs about desire and angst, taking it all and losing it all, the look matched the sound.

Marisa “Missy” Dabice, captured by Ismael Quintanilla III. 

As Missy donned a guitar for the next song, she laid out the band’s intentions for their 45-minute set: “We’re gonna get real rowdy, do what we came here to do.” Even with the more indie-pop

tracks "Softly" and "Control," the band delivered their signature ferocity and viscerality, Missy crouching with her guitar between her spread legs like a phallic power symbol, Bear jumping and crashing onto the stage. "Control" wrapped up with a solo shred by Bear and a growling, whispered outro from Missy as the crowd banged their heads and devoted fans screamed the lyrics. With three riotous song performances complete, Missy declared that now those “little songs” were done “we can have some actual fucking fun.” Addressing the mixed crowd of curious onlookers and diehard fans, Missy explained, “to the uninitiated, we’re Mannequin Pussy. That’s pussy like P-U-S-S-Y baby!” In her perverted, sexed-up whisper, she entrusted the crowd with a confession: “The words Christian fascism have been weighing heavy on my mind.” The crowd clearly felt the same, signalling their fretful agreement with a communal booing. Missy seemed to allude to the recent attacks on trans identity, noting that a script was made before we were born and that failing to adhere to it meant those in power making “life a living hell.” Her response was clear and forceful: “Fuck anyone who has anything to say about the way that you live baby! Fuck ‘em.” 

As Missy continued to lay out Mannequin Pussy’s manifesto, the fire was stoked by Bear and Maxine, who played the throbbing bass and wistful guitar riff of "Loud Bark" on a loop. With the background music, like spoken word poetry, Missy continued, “And for some reason, there is still this apprehension, this fear of the word pussy. And it’s so strange to me that it’s usually the men who are the ones telling us that what we do is obscene, that our band name is obscene…Can you imagine being so desperate for something that you are so afraid of? So before we begin this next one, just curious, where are all the boys in the audience... Hi boys. I’m Missy. I know you’re sad that you don’t get all the attention you used to, so I’ll give you some.” Missy’s on-stage persona drips with sardonic irony, her sultry sauntering and moaning in sharp, pointed contrast with her grunting and animalistic squatting. Her persona exposes the absurdity of pornified archetypes of women while the music asserts her sexual agency with her raw, animalistic, (at times) melancholy (but always) horny yearning. 

Her persona is effective, as the Mannequin Pussy manifesto requires participation which the crowd was more than willing to offer. When Missy declared, “Boys, men, you’re going to pay for the sins of your brothers. I want you all to scream ‘pussy’ as loud as you possibly can,” the boys and men obliged with a trepidatious roar, not quite enough to satisfy the band or to make their point. Missy responded, “Boys, I could barely hear you. And I think it’s because everything is so much more powerful, everything is so much more alive when it’s all of our voices invited in on something, when we are all given a seat at the table to speak and scream.” When Missy demanded, “Girls, theys, let’s join the boys, show em how it’s done,” the call of “pussy!” rang out loud and clear, giving the band the necessary climactic power to finally launch into "Loud Bark" after Missy’s foreplay of a speech. She certainly has a loud bark and an even deeper bite, and she proved it with her deeply resonant, rumbling, frenzied vocals during this song.

The raw, bombastic vocals continued into "I Got Heaven," which brought us all to heaven as Missy earnestly and bitingly posed the question, “And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?” Throughout the performance, the fearless frontwoman managed to exert raw sexual energy outwardly and aggressively, an agent of her own messy, dirty, sticky, sexy perversions. She prowled like a leopard in her heels, beat her pink-frilled chest like an ape, and bared her lipstick-lined teeth like a rabid dog. Her provocations worked in service to the music as a reminder that we are animals, we are meat and heartstrings, genitals and desire. As distorted guitar feedback rang through the field in between songs, Missy leaned over and twerked for the crowd, the perfect off-kilter expression of the fact that she—much like the band in their performance—is entirely in control as she delights in the obscene and challenges standards of taste and class; In short, as she expresses her Certified Punk Attitude. As Bear’s bass distortions rang out and Maxine played frenetic riffs on her two-fanged, Flying V electric guitar, Missy thrusted on her knees and smacked an imaginary ass while singing "Of Her"s refrain, “I was in control.”

Missy snarling onstage, captured by Ismael Quintanilla III.

Bear took up the microphone with "Aching," his immense stage presence amplified by his heavy, gritty vocals, which rumbled underneath Missy’s during their shared moments and achieved the kind of sonic tension at which Mannequin Pussy are experts. Though this was his first turn at vocals of the afternoon, he had certainly caught eyes with his constant, frenetic motion, launching into the air and jumping across the stage. Yet the mesmerizing showmanship of Missy and Bear would be an electrifying flash in a pan without the steady support of the (mostly motionless) rest of the band: Kaleen, Maxine, and their live performance multi-instrumentalist Carolyn Haynes. Each of the band members contributed a precise, confident, and intense playing style that delivered an all-around exhilarating and unrelenting concert. But in another mesmerizing moment, Missy took the opportunity to punctuate the feminist commentary of the band’s oeuvre with her irreverent observation, “I’m not supposed to be angry…It’s too many things to remember!” Her state of seeming overwhelmedness devolved into animalistic grunts, which gave way to the short, savage, and punky "Perfect."

The show was a nonstop outpouring of blistering rage and bare vulnerability, with lyrics that dissect desire, unbecoming, aging, and impermanence. This culminated in inviting the audience into the outpouring, in an abridged version of what Mannequin Pussy does at every concert. Missy introduced this section of the show by insisting to audience members, “Do not let the powers that be…infantilize your anger, because when they tell you that you will grow less angry as you get older that is complete bullshit.” Yet this assertion came with the warning that “Undiagnosed rage, untapped rage is exactly how they control you…that is how they make racists and sexists and incels and transphobes and homophobes. Be careful with how you let that rage percolate inside of you, because you do not want to be exactly what they need you to be, which is full of hate.” Finally, Missy offered deliverance: “So when I count down to three…I want you to allow yourself to fucking scream…Take all of the rage that is inside of you and give it to me—I will help you hold it.” Earlier references to heaven transposed themselves as Missy martyred herself in the name of holding all our rage. Following the buildup of manifold visceral emotions, the concert immediately became a quasi-religious experience. As the camera scanned over the crowd, audience members nodded solemnly, their eyes overflowing with emotion, like the congregation of a megachurch. Missy was Jesus herself, making converts and disciples out of the entire crowd, who unleashed a cacophony of frustration and grief. 

As the set neared its end, Bear took up the microphone, this time addressing the crowd with a political message of his own. The crowd roared as Bear announced, “This song is about how the police are fucking bullshit. You know what, we can lump ICE with them motherfuckers too…So hopefully one day we can see a free Palestine, and then maybe one day we can free ourselves.” Bear paced from the back to the front of the stage, each of the band members poised to begin with Missy on bass, as audio played from The Midnight Miracle podcast in which Yasiin Bey said, “I have to love America, I live here. And it’s not that I don’t love America. I do love America. ‘Does America love me?’ is the question.” The band launched into motion, and Bear

stalked up and down the stage, thrashing his head and delivering his searing screams to the thunderous punk track "Pigs Is Pigs."

Mannequin Pussy ended their show with the contemplative, angsty, punk-meets-shoegaze "Romantic," the titular track off their 2016 sophomore album. The song begins with relatively gentle, grooving instrumentation to back the desperate pleading of Missy’s high-pitched, cracking whisper tones, until both suddenly crescendo into a forceful rock peak with the exasperated line “Stop taking that shit out on me.” With its towering summits and deep valleys, "Romantic" was the perfect song to captivate any lingering audience members who had not yet been won over, putting on full display the band’s emotional range, masterfully articulated vulnerability, and sonic push-pull. As the song came to a close, Missy imparted the final takeaway of the Mannequin Pussy Manifesto: “Have a beautiful weekend, take care of each other!”

Brandi Martin

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Ismael Quintanilla III

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