The FEVER Issue: Mannequin Pussy

by elizabeth walsh

Photo by Amany Khreis

Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa Dabice walks the line between letting loose an unfiltered rage with the world and fiercely protecting her love for her craft and friends. She may look small, but Dabice has a power behind her that she will not yield for the comfort of anyone else. “I’m 5’2” with a god complex,” she jokes as she joins our Zoom call from her apartment in Philadelphia. 

While many consider Mannequin Pussy to be a punk band with lots of screaming and heavy instrumentals, to say that they make “angry music” is an unfair and surface level assessment. Dabice says she doesn’t write from a place of anger, rather “the anger comes more out of an exasperation or a desperateness to find catharsis.” Her lyrics are ultimately a manifestation of her acceptance for something that has happened in her life. 

Dabice recognizes the excessive vulnerability that comes with her profession and she continually chooses to embrace, not run from it. She feels safer when she is honest. This has not always been the case. 

When Dabice was 15, she was diagnosed with cancer. People were constantly telling her she was strong, but all she remembers is feeling like she was falling apart inside: “It took me many years to realize that I was just performing for other people's comfort to the detriment of my own well-being.”

These feelings are explored in the song “Drunk II,” which is as much inspired by a break up as it is by her experiences growing up. She sings, “And everyone says to me / ‘Missy, you're so strong’ / But what if I don't wanna be?”

“I was thinking about the ways in which breakups are really similar to disease,” she says. “where people want you to believe you are doing great because they can’t stand to see you as broken.”

Dabice now recognizes the emotional and verbal capacity she lacked as a 15-year-old that caused her to become “a really emotionally frozen person.” She refuses to go back to that place by continually being honest in her work and reminding us that there is no use “in pretending we are strong when we are clearly going through a hard time.”

One of her biggest struggles as an artist has been protecting herself and her body from her own emotions. “You need to make sure that your body and mind are in a really sound place so that, during a performance, when you need to access the emotions that naturally come with the songs you write, you need to be able to not let them weigh you down like they did when you originally wrote them.”  

While Dabice is the frontwoman and de facto leader of the group, Mannequin Pussy plays as a five piece. Most of the time in the studio the band is made up of Dabice on vocals and guitar, Kaleen Reeding on drums and Colins Regisford — more affectionately known as Bear — on bass. On the road, they are joined by Carolyn Haynes and Max Steen on keys and guitar.  

After spending just five minutes in the green room with Mannequin Pussy before their Terrace show at Memorial Union, it was clear (from all the giggles, inside jokes and loving looks being shared) that there is genuine friendship between the bandmates. The connection between them is something Dabice is well aware of. “I feel so lucky that there is so much genuine care, love and admiration between our group,” she says. “Really, at its core, that is what a band is supposed to be: a collective of creative people who are looking out for each other and are invested in each other's well being and creativity.” 

Though they share a pure love, it does not come without its challenges like with any other relationship. Right before the pandemic hit, Mannequin Pussy had just come off a grueling seven month tour and were experiencing growing pains. “We were losing our fucking minds.”

The band was constantly finding new ways to stay sane and look out for each other on the road. Their personalities would become what Dabice could only describe as scratchy. “You have to be very careful of who is in your orbit,” she says. “I sometimes feel like we are a solar system. We are all very much individuals, like individual planets, but we have learned how to orbit with each other in this really refined and beautiful way that just keeps going.”

When Mannequin Pussy takes the stage, the lighthearted smiles and giggles disappear and a powerful rage takes over. Dabice holds a reverence for the art of performing and views it as an emotional release for all the anger she accumulates day to day. 

“In a day, there are probably 100 different things we could read on the news or someone could tell us that's going to make it feel like there is a hand against our throat or someone stepping on our chest, so having a really safe outlet to literally scream with hundreds of people is very special and I feel very lucky to have that.”

There is a moment that has become a tradition at each Mannequin Pussy show. Dabice slows down, takes a deep breath and asks everyone in the audience to scream together. She knows that if there are 100 things in her life making her want to scream, there are other people feeling the same way, so why should she be the only one who gets to let it out? 

Over her years as a performer she has learned that the crowd wants to be told what to do, “they want to be dominated.” The scream is how she achieves this closeness. “You are not going to be shy in this moment. We are going to make you actually hear the sound that your body is capable of making and you are going to experience how good it feels to allow that release to come out of you.”

The experience Dabice attempts to create for her audience each night is fueled by her own cravings as a fan. “When I go to a concert, I want to fucking feel it in my body. I want to feel alive. I don't want to feel devastated.” 

For inspiration she often looks to her favorite band, Turnstile. “They created something that speaks to the soul of hardcore and punk music. It feels so alive when you listen to it. I think the very essence of music is to create something that makes someone feel something, makes someone excited to move their body and be excited to be alive. I think that's what a lot of us are chasing after.” 

One might think that after an hour of screaming and jumping and wailing, Dabice would be done, that she would be tired and depleted. This is not the case. She feels alive, as though a fever has lifted and she’s finally healed. 

“All of us feel these aches and pains in our bodies before we go to play a show and then after we play, it suddenly feels like all the pain is gone. The rage we feel day to day has stored up in our body and that's why it hurts and then as soon as we have this release it's like we have no pain.”

Mannequin Pussy serves as a reminder that there is strength in honesty and power in vulnerability. You can’t keep all your pain inside. Whether you’re talking to a friend, creating art or dancing in a crowded room with a hundred strangers, it’s always better to let it out. If you hold it in, the pain will continue to accumulate. So remember: slow down, take a deep breath and SCREAM.