The Glittery Rocket Of Stardom That Is Dylan Mulvaney

In her 200 or so days of "being a girl", Dylan Mulvaney has been everywhere. All over our Twitter feeds with wacky videos to the White House for an interview with President Biden. Off to the South Pacific for vacation. And representing Ulta Beauty, Tampax, and EOS Skincare as a spokesmodel.

Although not all of this has been a sparkling success. Many Ulta Beauty shoppers weren't happy to see a performer who refers to a vagina as a "Barbie pocket" wax rhapsodic about "being a mommy” someday in her interview. Tampax users question why biological male influencers are sent free tampons. Wouldn't women who actually use the products (aka "people who bleed" according to Tampax Twitter posts) like to get a surprise menstrual care package once in a while?

The companies have done as much damage control as they can, by addressing the controversy and hoping it translates to sales. They’ve been rallying their social media troops to call any complaints transphobia or hate. But why are there so many haters?

Now Mulvaney has made her own damage control video about how she carries tampons in case someone needs one. It's purely out of goodness, and those giving her or the Tampax corporation a hard time are simply trans-haters.

But I don’t think trans anything is the issue here.

Let's start with Ulta. Women are fine with men playing in the makeup and beauty space. And those men can be cisgender men, drag queens, or creative outcasts of any kind. Just walk up to a MAC counter and have a look. But there is a difference between a boy who loves makeup so much it's his job and a boy who wants to make fun of girls. Women can tell. With Mulvaney, our spidey sense is activated. Somehow, being mocked by a performer acting out the most dimwitted female stereotypes is just not our thing.

Then there is the Tampax weirdness. Why is Mulvaney making a video defending Tampax when she is not getting "a penny” from them? I can't answer for her, but the effect is probably not what she wanted. Watching the Tampax defense video, the first thing I sense is anger and condescension. "We have a lot of ground to cover", she begins. Yes, Dylan. Yes, we do.

There is her assertion that she carries tampons for anyone who might need them, and her worry for the Tampax corporation, that innocent corporate entity caught between the gloriously benevolent tampon fairy and the dinosaur TERFs of America. She further asserts that she is only doing it for pure good and that anyone hating on her for it is awful and transphobic.

To a woke ear, that may sound right. But there is a dark side to this, as most women can tell. Our gloriously benevolent tampon fairy is not all good. We can sense the anger, the condescension, the fury that she has to explain herself to us. She went to the White House! She is good! How can you not see that?!

Wokeness would decree that a trans person is oppressed and automatically qualified to opine on anything they want. Any of us who are cisgender should sit. We should listen. And if we disagree with anything, we are “phobic”, which makes for good controversy. For a corporation, that controversy is attention - any publicity is good publicity, right?

Well, maybe not. Way back during the paper magazine days, cosmetic and corporate spokespeople had to be vetted as "likable". Relatable. Girl or boy next door. NICE. Influencers have circumvented this process, speeding it up. Getting lots of hearts and comments on posts translates to "popular". But it also backfires.

Women can see through the transplaining. Dylan Mulvaney may be the gloriously benevolent tampon fairy of her own dreams, but we can tell she is not a nice person. Neither transsexualism nor wokeness will fix this.

For the dinosaur TERFs who don't believe she is a woman, then "she" is a man who mocks women for fun and profit. Which can be amusing in a comedy club setting, but is NOT affirming for women. If one is woke enough to believe she is a woman (without a vagina) then she shows herself to be a fake mean girl - one who’s all airy and light until someone disagrees with her. Then the daggers come out. We can both see and feel them as she’s scolding us for “misunderstanding" how selfless she is. Any woman who’s been emotionally abused or manipulated - which is just about all of us - feels the echoes of some awful person from our history.

So whether individual women believe Dylan Mulvaney is a “real” woman or not, we can all pretty much tell she’s a c#nt. And that's the real problem here. Mulvaney’s sponsors see her "popularity" on social media and think she'll sell lots of products. But underneath the makeup, she's just not likable. That characteristic should have been sussed out before they gave her sponsorship deals.

If these giant corporations that sell to women can't tell their talent isn’t likable, or nice, (which does matter when you’re selling lip balms and tampons to the masses on social media) that’s on them, not us. And if they decide to call their customers transphobic in response to the mess they created, they will deserve any loss they get.