Who Is Transgender TikTok Influencer Dylan Mulvaney?

It all started with seven words: “Here it goes: I am a girl.”

That was what Dylan Mulvaney said in the March 2022 TikTok video when she announced to the world that she is a transgender woman, kicking off a daily series of videos detailing her gender transition journey.

Her fan base and viewership numbers have only continued to grow since then, reaching 10.8 million followers as of April 2023. Mulvaney has also been helping change the perception of transgender people in the United States, even capturing the attention of President Joe Biden.

The actor and social media influencer’s Days of Girlhood series has received more than 1 billion views on TikTok, and Mulvaney said she has received messages from transgender viewers who feel closer to their genuine selves after having watched her videos.

“My content is for everyone,” Mulvaney said. “It’s not just for women or trans people or queer people. I want to be the person who brings these stories to the mainstream, because there is still so far to go with mainstream trans visibility. I knew I needed to share my story.”

Early Life and Finding Herself

Raised in San Diego by a very conservative family, Mulvaney realized she was a girl at age 4, but when she first told her family, she mother responded, “God does not make mistakes.” Growing up watching transgender actors like Laverne Cox and E. R. Fightmaster helped Mulvaney come to terms with her gender identity.

A self-described “theater kid,” Mulvaney earned a musical theater degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. After her graduation in 2019, she appeared in several stage productions but found the theater industry very gendered when it came to roles, as she got cast in male parts with few opportunities for more feminine roles.

“I struggled for so long, in having the entertainment industry accept me and have a place for me,” she told Los Angeles Magazine. “I put so much of my own identity away just so that I could have opportunities in my industry.”

Mulvaney was performing in the Broadway show The Book of Morman in 2020 when the theater district was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving her jobless. She started posting TikTok videos, mostly of herself singing or with animals, attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

“[The pandemic] was the first moment since I was a child that I really got to ask myself like ‘Dylan, like, who are you without acting and without playing a boy part?’” Mulvaney said. “I started asking myself those tough questions that I don’t think I would even have found the answers to today had the pandemic not happened.”

Chronicling Her Days of Girlhood

Mulvaney released a “full coming out video” in March 2022 identifying herself as a transgender woman. She had already been on hormones and identifying as non-binary to family and friends before that time. When the video generated millions of views, Mulvaney realized the potential of TikTok to showcase her true self.

“I really don’t know another place online like TikTok that can make a creator grow at the rate that it does,” she told The New York Observer. “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.”

After coming out, Mulvaney began a daily video series called Days of Girlhood, documenting each day during the early stages of her gender transition. The videos cover a wide range of topics, including her experiences with hormone replacement therapy and the time an Uber driver made her feel uncomfortable.

“I had never seen a trans person start from day one,” she told the Observer. “I was seeing all these incredible trans women, and I was very intimidated because I wanted to be like them but didn’t know how to. I decided to [make the series] for every future trans person and current trans people that need answers.”

Growth in Popularity and Audience

As Mulvaney’s popularity and viewership continued to grow, she struck sponsorship deals with companies like CeraVe, MAC Cosmetics, and Neutrogena. Some of these partnerships sparked right-wing criticism, with Kate Spade criticized as “woke” for its commercials featuring Duvaney and Ulta Beauty receiving boycott calls for featuring her in a video.

The money Mulvaney received from her advertising opportunities helped fund her transition surgeries, according to the Observer. Late last year, Mulvaney revealed she had undergone facial feminization surgery, showing photos and videos of her face and explaining how it made “the outside match the inside.”

As her popularity has grown, Mulvaney has increasingly become a symbol in support of transgender rights. She even interviewed President Joe Biden for NowThis News, during which they discussed issues such as the rise in anti-trans legislation and bans on gender-affirming healthcare. “The idea that what’s going on in some states [with anti-trans legislation], it’s just outrageous, and I think it’s immoral,” Biden said in response to Mulvaney’s questions.

Mulvaney continues to draw praise and criticism alike. She appeared on the red carpet at the 2023 Grammys, won this year’s Groundbreaker Award at the Queerties Awards, and was among TikTok’s “Trailblazers” slate of LGBTQ creators in 2022. She has also received backlash from people like Caitlyn Jenner and Kid Rock, who shot Bud Light cases with a rifle after the beer brand made Mulvaney one of its spokespeople.

But Mulvaney said she is just happy to be a positive example for other transgender people: “I didn’t have that open and vulnerable creator or role model growing up, [but] I want to be that for my younger self. I just hope that people can find confidence and joy through my videos and can begin to adapt some of the things that I’m doing that make me happy, and maybe, it might make them happy, too.”