Stop praising Dylan Mulvaney for being a hero
It’s official: corporate America is trolling Americans.
The latest evidence is that Nike, a company that once celebrated athletic merit, has anointed transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a brand representative.
“Alert the media — I’m entering my workout era,” Mulvaney, showing off a Nike sports bra, wrote on Instagram.
With that, Nike joined brands such as Ulta Beauty, Kate Spade, Haus Labs, CeraVe, Crest and, most infamously, Bud Light, tapping the TikTok personality.
This deluge of corporate-sponsored support for Mulvaney is cynical and calculated: The brands all essentially deploying Mulvaney as a weapon in this bizarre gender culture war.
This whole push is, to tweak a phrase from the right, “owning the cons.”
To achieve this, these companies are turning Mulvaney into a religious figure — an infallible latter-day prophet demanding not acceptance but effusive praise and a daily parade to fete their new identity.
Mulvaney is to 2023 what the mask was to 2021: a symbol of virtue.
And so the 26-year-old social media star went to the White House and met with President Biden, who said, “God love you.”
On her eponymous daytime show, Drew Barrymore got down on the floor, knelt in front of Mulvaney and wept like some deeply Catholic villager in a remote part of Mexico witnessing the Virgin Mary’s face miraculously appear on a piece of toast.
I’m still unclear what the San Diego native has accomplished beyond transitioning a hot second ago, but it certainly helps to have a high powered Hollywood machine providing gale force winds at your back.
But as a woman, I can only say “que pasa?”
In all my decades on this earth, I’ve never met a female who acts, speaks or presents themselves like Mulvaney.
Prancing and screeching “Look at me!,” Mulvaney is like a hyperactive toddler who got into their Dad’s cocaine stash — and then wrapped themselves up in an Audrey Hepburn Halloween costume.
Mulvaney’s performance is annoying and regressive. There are bubble baths, Barbies and dressing up like Eloise, a fictional 6-year-old, on TikTok.
This isn’t a female identity, it’s a strange fetish with an annual conference at a Hilton in Peoria.
Even for Bud Light’s campaign pegged to March Madness, Mulvaney played into the lame stereotype of the dumb sports-allergic chick: “Just found out this had to do with sports and not just saying it’s a crazy month!”
Mulvaney should know that this year’s women’s NCAA final had historically high ratings.
Even more farcical, Mulvaney’s whole brand is not about being transgender, but rather “girlhood” — something Dylan didn’t have.
Us girls, we grow breasts. We bleed and distress at pool parties, school functions and soccer games. But those deeply uncomfortable, awkward experiences forge us into the strong female adults we become.
There’s a small percentage of the population who will benefit from transitioning, and I’m happy if someone is happy in their new skin. But it’s a whole other level to demand the masses contort objective reality through the lens of a few vocal folks.
I’m not sure the solution is to shoot Bud Light cans (never waste beer) or lead empty boycotts of Nike.
But I’ll be pining away for the good old days (read: maybe just a few years ago), when brands were nakedly trying to sell me their product — not a pseudo-religious movement.
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