Dylan Mulvaney
By 2023, Mulvaney had more than 10 million followers on TikTok, while her video series, Days of Girlhood, had received over one billion views. In 2023, Mulvaney received a Queerties Groundbreaker Award, a Streamy Award, and Attitude's Woman of the Year Award. She was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in November 2023. In 2024, Mulvaney released her debut single "Days of Girlhood" through the independent record label DistroKid.
Early life and education
Mulvaney was born on December 29, 1996, in San Diego, and grew up in Del Mar Heights and Carmel Valley. She was raised in a devout Catholic family. Mulvaney's father, James F. Mulvaney Jr., is an insurance executive and philanthropist. She is the granddaughter of James F. Mulvaney Sr., an investment banker and attorney who was the president of the United States National Bank of San Diego and the president of the San Diego Padres.
Mulvaney attended Cathedral Catholic High School, where she was a member of the glee club. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theater.
Career
2015–2022: Acting roles and social media fame
Following her graduation from college, Mulvaney acted in the role of Elder White in the musical The Book of Mormon; the role led her to tour the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Other acting roles included How The Grinch Stole Christmas! at the Old Globe Theatre; 8 at the Birch North Park Theatre; Next to Normal at Arts Off Broadway; Legally Blonde; Spring Awakening; Bye Bye Birdie; and High School Musical at ACT San Diego.
Around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, Mulvaney began posting videos to TikTok, which usually garnered a few hundred thousand views. She came out as a trans woman during the pandemic, while living with her "very conservative family" at her childhood home in San Diego, and she began to document her gender transition in a daily series of videos published on TikTok titled "Days of Girlhood" in March 2022, which began to gain in popularity. She said in an interview:
When the pandemic hit, I was doing the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. I found myself jobless and without the creative means to do what I loved. I downloaded TikTok, assuming it was a kids' app. Once I came out as a woman, I made this "day one of being a girl" comedic video. And it blew up. I really don't know another place online like TikTok that can make a creator grow at the rate that it does. Some of these other apps really celebrate perfection and over-editing and flawlessness. I think with TikTok specifically, people love the rawness. They love people just talking to the camera. I try to approach every video like a FaceTime with a friend.
In October 2022, Mulvaney appeared with genderfluid hairstylist David Lopez in a podcast for the cosmetics brand Ulta Beauty, during which she spoke about her childhood, her coming out as transgender, and her transition. The video led to the appearance of the hashtag #BoycottUlta in Twitter's trending topics section, and Mulvaney was targeted with transphobic comments. She also became a spokesperson for Kate Spade New York that year.
2022–2023: Joe Biden interview and greater prominence
Mulvaney met with U.S. president Joe Biden in October 2022 for a presidential forum organized by the online news outlet NowThis News. When asked by Mulvaney about recent legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth by Republican-led legislatures, Biden called it "outrageous" and "immoral".
According to NBC News, the meeting with Biden led Mulvaney to become the target of a "vitriol campaign" by right-wing activists. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn shared a tweet in which she attached a TikTok video created by Mulvaney and said "Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal". Conservative media personality Caitlyn Jenner, who is also a transgender woman, wrote on Twitter that she agreed with Blackburn's remarks and called Mulvaney's video an absurdity. In a TikTok video, Mulvaney directly addressed being misgendered by Jenner and Jenner's comments about her body, as well as what she had learned from the experience, and left a written message: "To my followers, please do not send her any hate."
In December 2022, Mulvaney confirmed on Instagram that she had undertaken facial feminization surgery. She posted an image of her face on Instagram on January 27, and made her debut on the red carpet at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards on February 5, 2023. In late February, she accepted a Queerties Groundbreaker Award in Hollywood.
Mulvaney hosted a livestreamed variety show at the Rainbow Room in Midtown Manhattan on March 13, 2023, to celebrate the first anniversary of her video series Days of Girlhood, entitled Dylan Mulvaney's Day 365 Live!, with L Morgan Lee and Reneé Rapp as guest stars. An appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show that day in which Mulvaney spoke with Barrymore about "dealing with online hate" resulted in an "onslaught of online hate" directed at Barrymore, according to the Los Angeles Times. On Instagram, Mulvaney shared a letter from U.S. vice president Kamala Harris congratulating her for the first anniversary of her transition.
2023: Bud Light advertisement and boycott
On April 1, 2023, Mulvaney promoted the beer brand Bud Light in an Instagram video commemorating March Madness, a college basketball tournament held by the NCAA. According to The Washington Post, the advertisement led figures in right-wing media, such as Fox News, to refer to Mulvaney in "disparaging and often in transphobic terms nearly a dozen times over the next three days". Calls for a boycott of Bud Light from conservatives in response to the advertisement also followed. Several Budweiser factories also received bomb threats. On social media, singer Kid Rock published a video of himself shooting several cases of Bud Light with a submachine gun.
Mulvaney also promoted a Nike sports bra in a sponsored post on Instagram in April 2023, and in response, Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies called for a Nike boycott. This was shortly thereafter followed by backlash and calls for a boycott against makeup company Maybelline after Mulvaney posted a short video of herself applying the company's products.
In response to the events, Mulvaney stated: "What I'm struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel. I just don't think that's right. Dehumanization has never fixed anything in history ever." She explicitly discussed the events for the first time in a video posted in late June, speaking about the stalking and personal attacks she experienced and the lack of contact from the maker of Bud Light in view of the events. She stated, "I'm not telling you this because I want your pity. I'm telling you this because if this is my experience from a very privileged perspective, know that it is much, much worse for other trans people."
In August 2023, Mulvaney won her first Streamy Award for breakout creator. In October 2023, she won the Woman of the Year award from the LGBTQ magazine Attitude. In November 2023, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
In December 2023, Mulvaney released a cover and music video, co-starring Kristofer Thomas, for the song "Blue Christmas".
2024–present: Music
On March 11, 2024, Mulvaney released her debut single, "Days of Girlhood". The song, produced by Nick Monson and distributed by independent label DistroKid, reached #1 on the Genius lyrics chart within a week of its release. On March 13, 2024, Mulvaney released an official music video for "Days of Girlhood", featuring other transgender influencers such as Gigi Gorgeous Getty and Ve'ondre Mitchell. Mulvaney promised to donate profits from the song to The Trevor Project.
Personal life
According to her social media profiles, Mulvaney uses both she/her and they/them pronouns.
Mulvaney publicly expressed on her social media platforms that she is still trying maintain her Catholic faith despite facing discrimination within the Catholic Church.
