'Paper Doll' documents trans TikTok creator Dylan Mulvaney's journey through girlhood
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today's interview was a reminder to me, and maybe will be to you, that people who get caught in the middle of internet pylons are real human people. I remember when Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender social media personality, got all this hate for doing a bit of content featuring Bud Light a few years back.

And all of a sudden, she became a sort of proxy in the greater culture war around trans people. And I knew it must have been bad for her, but I didn't realize how bad. She writes about it in her new memoir, Paper Doll Notes from a Late Bloomer. And in this interview with Empires of Wanda Summers, they talk about what happened then, but also how she manages to hold on to a bit of earnestness in spite of it all. That's ahead.

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This message comes from Carvana. Carvana makes car selling easy. Just put in your license plate or VIN and get a real offer in seconds. Whether selling now or whenever feels right, sell with Carvana. When Dylan Mulvaney was four years old, she told her mother that she thought God might have made a mistake, that God had put a girl in a boy's body. Dylan's mother responded that God doesn't make mistakes.

It would be years before Dylan officially embraced her identity as a transgender woman when she was 25, after coming out as gay at 14 and non-binary at 24, which is why she didn't feel like going the route of the dramatic coming out video. I had done those before. This was my third time coming out and I felt like I was going to be a trans woman.

So Dylan took to TikTok to post her lighthearted take on the way she was figuring out what it meant to live as a girl. I really...

Didn't expect it to turn into a series until there was many supporters, but many hateful comments. And I wanted to show those people that I had many layers to me and that there were

other more, you know, nuanced versions for them to see. And then it became sort of this way to track not only my journey, but, you know, to share a little bit of trans joy, which I think now the book is an extension of that joy. That new book is Paper Doll, Notes from a Late Bloomer. It's a memoir of Mulvaney's explosive fame, documenting her transition and all the highs and lows that came with it. And a warning, this interview mentions suicide.

I think that...

I didn't know how to get to where like a Laverne Cox, you know, was these icons, Dominique Jackson, Our Lady J, who's now a dear mentor and friend. I wasn't sure how to get to where these icons were in their transitions. And so I really wanted to take people along that journey. And, you know, transness right now, it's being seen as this very villainous thing.

It almost feels like Godzilla taking over the world. And yet we're less than 1% of the population. And most of the community is really struggling to get the care that they deserve and that they need. And so my documentation of it and my experience of, you know, obtaining that care so easily and having these opportunities isn't quite as reflective as the general community is. But I really hope that

that one day it will be, that every trans person feels like they have the opportunity to thrive.

There's an incident that happened back in 2023 that you call Beergate, and I want to get into all of that. It's been covered a lot, but I want to briefly recap for folks. Back in April of 2023, you posted this sponsored video for the company Bud Light. This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it. And that led to this really big backlash. Conservatives boycotted the ban, some people denied.

may recall the musician Kid Rock posting this video of himself. He was online shooting Bud Light cases. You were also the subject of some ugly vitriol online, some violent threats. You've talked about this in the book. I know that you've spoken about this before, but I just want to know, what is it that you want people to understand about what that time in your life was like for you, how you experienced it?

I talk about it in the book like dark thoughts and I write them sometimes as little bubbles that look like black clouds, but they were very real and they were not just an illustration of my life. They were, you know, they showed up as suicidal ideation and dissociation. And I think...

So often when you're seen as such a classically happy person that people don't really account for that. But behind the scenes, I was hurting in a way that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You wrote about the fact that you wished that you'd stepped away to get mental health treatment in the immediate aftermath of what happened then. I wonder...

Having gone through that experience and now being at a very different point in your life, what did it teach you about yourself? What did you learn about yourself? Well, not only what I learned about myself, I think what I learned about the world is that

especially when it comes to women in the public eye, so often we are not allowed to create boundaries. We're not allowed to ask for what we need because of how we're treated. And I think I learned that in that moment, I needed to take my transition back for my own self and that this wasn't

up to anyone else, whether that's the government or my followers or, you know, branded companies. I needed to make sure that the decisions I was making on behalf of me and my body were my own. Shifting gears a bit, I know that you grew up in the church and going to Catholic school, and I also didn't. I know that for me in my adulthood, faith is a thing that I've just, I've struggled to figure out where I land, and that seems to be something that you and I share. Yes, yes.

You talk about in the book about how the religion and the church that you were brought up in doesn't really fit anymore. What's your relationship with your faith today? Oh, you know, I see so much beauty not only in transness but in so much of the world, even during this really, really dark, dark time.

And I think so often people are using religion against queer and trans people in a really ugly way. But I also see and honor why queer and trans folks are deeply triggered by some of these things. So, you know, I kind of tried to hide the peas in the mashed potatoes of the book of letting people know that I do, you know, believe in something bigger than me and that,

My transness is not something to be ashamed of in that there were no mistakes made when I was created and that this is just part of my story. And even though it looks a little different than most women's.

You write to the reader in the opening of this book that, I need you to believe that sweet earnestness still exists. And Dylan, that is just something that from everything I've seen and everything I've heard that you seem to embody. How is it that you managed to hold on to that? Whenever I've tried the pessimistic thing, it just doesn't feel as good. And I've arrived at this place of a thousand bad things can go down and they can try to make me into a pessimist. But

at the end of the day, a thousand and one great things are possible and have already happened. And that's, I'm just going to go chase a thousand and two because I don't think I'm,

interested in living this life for anything but constant discovery and seeing what a new day can bring. And that might sound so silly, but I would like to believe that we can live that way. Dylan, what do you hope comes next for you? What are you looking for in your next chapter? Oh, gosh, I would love to feel safe, you know, in my country. I would love to watch other trans people thriving and given the opportunities that I have and not

met with such ridicule. My next writing project I've given myself is a rom-com. I'd love to write something where a trans person is finding joy and isn't just a victim on law and order. I think we need to find us everywhere in all forms of media and not just the rage bait.

We've been speaking with Dylan Mulvaney. Her memoir, Paper Doll, Notes from a Late Bloomer, is out now. Dylan, thank you so much. Thank you. This was so lovely. If you or someone you love is experiencing a crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

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