How An Out-of-Work Theater Kid Conned Us All
The Adventures of Dylan Mulvaney, The Grown Man Who Became a Little Girl
Dylan Mulvaney was a very effeminate, exuberant, and highly ambitious gay man when he arrived in New York and nabbed a role on the hit show The Book of Mormon. Born in San Diego and raised by a conservative Catholic family, Mulvaney described himself as a “theater kid” who studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His role as Elder White in the Broadway musical was a major break for the young actor. In order to nab that role, Mulvaney had to compete successfully against hundreds of other talented individuals. He toured with the musical and had other theatrical roles. Career momentum—that ethereal thing that creative artists chase—seemed to be building for Mulvaney. He might have been a breakout star…
Then along came COVID.
The pandemic abruptly turned off the lights on Broadway, and the theaters stayed dark for years. Mulvaney found himself suddenly and completely unemployed with no way to make a living. During his desperate jobless weeks, Mulvaney played around with social media and discovered TikTok, which he initially dismissed as a kids’ app. But he soon found himself hooked on the videos and liked the fact that TikTok had an amateurish edge to it. TikTok stories were not perfect, edited masterpieces, they were often just overly emotional people sitting in their car ranting into their smart phone.
Dylan’s theatrical background told him: he could do better than that.
The one thing people do not realize about Dylan Mulvaney is that he is business-smart. He is an unusual character and he has a very specific set of skills, but he’s as ambitious as Donald Trump, just in an effeminate gay-man kind of way.
In March 2022, Dylan re-invented himself in a TikTok series called “Days of Girlhood.” In an era where people were getting bored of trans-women and the nonstop vitriol of the pro and phobic sides of the trans debate, the brilliance of Mulvaney was that he—a grown man—was going to transition into a female child. He was doing something different. And he set it up as a year-long series of installments about a skinny young male actor trying to be a little girl.
Now I want to reveal a few things about Dylan Mulvaney that I learned in research. I do not know Dylan personally, nor do I expect to ever meet him. These are just facts that emerged in research and my conjectures. The first thing is that while Dylan has had extensive facial surgery to make his face look more feminine, he has not had “bottom surgery.” In fact, in one of his TikToks, he talks about how we need to “normalize the bulge” that girls have in their tight shorts.
I do not think that Mulvaney takes hormones. (I do not know for sure, of course.) I have seen him in a post-girlhood shot with a five o’clock shadow, something that estrogen shots would prevent. (If you want to see more of the manly side of Dylan Mulvaney, Google search for images of “Dylan Mulvaney five o’clock shadow.” There are several of these.)
Of course, the rules for the trans community are vague, in flux, and subject to individual interpretation. That is, a man can declare he’s a girl, not have sexual surgery, not take hormones, and still claim to be a girl. Tomorrow, he can claim to be a boy and next week he can be a cat. The world has gone mad, but that’s another discussion for another day.
As a Broadway-caliber actor, it is no surprise that Dylan took TikTok by storm. It’s claimed that he has had over 1B views on his various posts and he has millions of followers. In October 2022, President Joseph Biden invited Dylan Mulvaney to the White House to discuss so-called “gender-affirming care.” Vice President Kamala Harris has written Dylan a letter congratulating him on the completion of his first year of girlhood.
For a while, the whole world was just crazy about Dylan. That may be why his net worth is now around $2M, although he has no business, no merchandise, runs no companies and has no inventions. The man just made some videos.
Now what if this was all an act? What if Dylan Mulvaney is quite comfortable with all his man parts and his gay-man lifestyle, and just needed to make a whole bunch of money? He is a small and very skinny man, so he can easily imitate those gaunt and angular iconic movie stars like Audrey Hepburn. He has that hungry super-model look. More importantly, he has that big, over-the-top theatrical personality, so he can parlay a bunch of exuberant video takes on TikTok into a major following. His genius is that he is mostly in sync with the Zeitgeist, that is, he tapped into the current thing, namely, that trans people are interesting.
Dylan has hit some snags, too, but most major personalities do. The Bud Light fiasco was one. The release of his song “Days of Girlhood” should be another. Last year, his role as a Nike spokesperson sparked backlash. Not everyone is as crazy about him as they once were. But Dylan is still standing and that suggests he has staying power.
What if this was a grift?
What if Dylan Mulvaney actually wants to continue to live as an intact male homosexual—but a rich one? Wouldn’t this be a great gambit? Dylan is the kind of guy who has always been savvy about how he marketed his talents. And there is no indication that he plans to go much further into girlhood than costumes, make-up, and facial surgery.
For those who think I’m being transphobic by suggesting that Mulvaney’s Days of Girlhood series is phony, let me point out that Mulvaney has consistently attacked women.
On his first day of girlhood, he talked about having cried three times for no reason—obviously the key hallmark of being a woman. All women have irrational mood swings.
He also talked about retail therapy as if women have to buy things to feel comfortable—women are that materialist. Our entire life is just one shopping spree after another, interspersed with emotional outbursts.
And he pays more attention to his hair and makeup than doing meaningful work, because women are all about clothes and contribute nothing of substance to society.
Remember when Caitlyn Jenner said the hardest thing about being a woman was “figuring out what to wear”! What an insult. Imagine if I said the hardest thing about being a man is figuring out what cologne to wear. Or how about this: the hardest thing about being a man is figuring out which sporting event to watch on TV.
It seems to me that if you truly wanted to go from being a man to being a woman, you would value women, appreciate them, and not caricature them and demean them as emotionally fragile consumers.
Trans-women in general do not tend children, nurture families, or care for others in a sacrificial way. They are self-indulgent and vacuous as Barbie dolls. Being a woman sometimes means figuring out how to stretch the paycheck to feed four kids; it’s about getting child care by day and protecting your children after school in a world of social media predators. It’s about loving and guarding your family and monitoring what is going on in our schools and government. Being a woman means trying to contribute positively to society and not just worry about what shade of lipstick to wear. Real women have substance. Trans-women have clothes.
Dylan is a con man, accent on the man.