Female Trouble — John Waters Film T-Shirt (1974)
Released in 1974, Female Trouble is one of John Waters’ most outrageous and influential works — a gleefully offensive, razor-sharp satire of crime, celebrity, and bad behavior, starring the incomparable Divine at her most ferocious.
The film follows Dawn Davenport, a delinquent anti-heroine whose life of chaos, sex, violence, and narcissism becomes a twisted path to fame. Equal parts trash, art, and manifesto, Female Trouble cemented Waters’ reputation as the Pope of Trash and Divine as a once-in-a-generation screen presence — glamorous, grotesque, hilarious, and unstoppable.
For queer audiences, Female Trouble isn’t just a cult movie — it’s camp canon. It celebrates excess, rejects respectability, and turns society’s fears about gender, sexuality, and deviance into weapons of comedy and power. Its imagery, lines, and attitude still ripple through drag, fashion, and underground culture decades later.
