Stage Names to Screen Names: Vanilla Mace

PHOTOS COURTESY of VANILLA MACE and HAN SOLKOI

INTERVIEW by BRIDGETT MAGYAR

Before Vanilla Mace was streaming, going viral, and making the internet feel like a cozy slumber party, she was learning how to perform, set boundaries, and flirt with the camera at the strip club. 

Vanilla Mace brings something to content creation that so many influencers try—and fail—to manufacture: presence. She’s unfiltered without being messy, sweet without being hollow, and radically sincere in a way that disarms the algorithm. You can feel the club in her cadence, confidence, and total refusal to shrink herself online or off. She’s not trying to make herself palatable—she’s just being real. And that’s what makes her so powerful.

PETIT MORT (BRIDGETT) 

I first found you through the SKULLPANDA Christmas tree unboxing—which I know you’ve probably heard a million times by now. But when I discovered your work, I was immediately disappointed I hadn’t found you sooner. I know your podcast is currently on pause, but you’ve been vlogging for a while now, and your content is such a joy to watch. And then I discovered you were a dancer!

VANILLA MACE

Thank you! Yes!

There’s a real gap in content that feels fresh and creative from sex workers and dancers. So finding you was exciting. If you don’t mind, I’d love to introduce you the way I’d describe you to a friend over drinks at a rooftop bar:

You were a dancer once, a siren in glittered motion under red neon and dry ice. Now you stream, you post, you share. Performance nonetheless, a softer stage with different lighting. But calling you a content creator is like calling a disco ball a light fixture. Your world is a kaleidoscope made pocket sized. Your TikToks are like little hits of serotonin as you unbox wide eyed jellybean colored oddities in corduroy overalls. There's something sacred in the unseriousness of it all. Watching you feels like microdosing joy, like taking the edge off a bad day. Your radical sincerity is infectious, earnest, unfiltered, devastatingly sweet, like you've somehow stayed soft in a world that worships irony and algorithms. You feel like proof that goodness still exists, not the sanctimonious kind, but the kind that still knows how to flirt.

To watch you is to remember something, a specific kind of comfort. It's the mall at golden hour, sticky with orange Julius and the lies we used to tell our parents so we could stay out longer. The soft clatter of bracelets against slushy cups and lo mein in a shared styrofoam box with your best friend. It's the deli that remembers your name. It's the summer solstice. It's the slow dizzy ache of a new crush before anything has a chance to go wrong.

That was amazing. I fucking love that. Literally I want to cry. That’s so good. I love it.

I’m so glad. You've been such a recent inspiration for me—and clearly for many others. The way you move through the internet is so sincere. You really radiate a palpable goodness and necessary light in these strange and dark times.

Anyway, I was thinking about your name recently—Vanilla Mace. The combination of something sweet and threatening. How did you come up with it?

It’s funny because there’s no deep story behind it. When I started dancing, my Instagram was just my government, actual name. But if I had good customers who wanted to follow me, I didn’t feel comfortable giving out my full name, obviously. So I decided I needed an alias. I genuinely just made it up and thought, “I like that.” And I stuck with it. That was probably six or seven years ago, and I’ve been using it ever since.

I assumed it was your dancer name.

Want to read more?

Subscribe to petitmort.com to keep reading this exclusive post.

Subscribe Now