Much More

Don't Let Me Be Normal!

Eloise is a very special little girl who lives at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. She may not be pretty yet, but she's definitely already a real person. She loves learning about people who aren't boring. ~Kay Thompson, Eloise

Miss Mulvaney as Eloise

There’s a classic American musical called The Fantasticks, which ran Off-Broadway for decades. It’s the little show that features the famous song, “Try to Remember.” There’s one female character in the piece, a naive ingénue named Luisa. When we first meet Luisa, she tells us about her dreams and her fantasies in an eccentric monologue that segues into the song, “Much More.”

I'm sixteen years old, and every day something happens to me. I don't know what to make of it. When I get up in the morning and get dressed, I can tell...something's different. I like to touch my eyelids, because they're never quite the same. Oh, oh, oh! I hug myself till my arms turn blue, then I close my eyes and cry and cry till the tears come down and I can taste them. I love to taste my tears. I am special. I am special! Please god, please, don't let me be normal! ~Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt, The Fantasticks

The late great Rita Gardner as Luisa, with Jerry Orbach as El Gallo

Now, I’ve said it before, and I’m happy to say it again, and again: I am not anti-Woke. I don’t think Woke is something you can be “against.” Woke is a pose. It’s a posture. An affectation. At its oddest, it seems to me a grab bag of strange fetishes and lingo. These are all things that one cannot be “against,” and it would be a waste of energy to try.

That doesn’t mean we can’t read the sh*t out of it.

Dylan Mulvaney is a prodigious nitwit. She’s clearly a compulsive exhibitionist who’s having her fifteen minutes and flouncing all the way to the bank. Oh relax, I’m not a big ol’ meanie. She doesn’t bother me at all. Except in one respect.

Miss Mulvaney: how dare you don Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly drag? Have you no shame, Miss? Let me tell you something: I knew Holly Golightly. Holly Golightly was a friend of mine. You, Miss, are no Holly Golightly.

That felt good.

But truly, I wish Dylan no harm; in fact, I feel for her. Some of her TikTok moments are gut wrenching. She seems a sweet kid who clearly has some mental health challenges. And if Twitter is the virtual town square, TikTok is virtual Bedlam. Surely, the Bud Light debacle has now demonstrated to corporate America the folly of investing in the wrong TikTok sensation. The mastermind behind the Bud Light Golightly campaign, Alissa Heinerscheid, is Exhibit A of the type of person whose Woke posturing can not only prove costly (to the tune of billions), but damaging to the very people they claim to want to include.

Dylan Mulvaney is not being taken seriously as a woman. If she’s being taken seriously at all, it’s as a girl. Twenty-six year old Dylan, skipping around sprinkling rainbows, dressed as Eloise (I guarantee you, Kay Thompson’s eyeballs are rolling in her grave) is today’s cute and cuddly trans person. She’s safe. She’s skinny, and white, and cute, and just a bit dim. She’s the perfect daughter. She’s the girl these white, suburban activist women have dreamed of: a girl to get makeovers with, and take to high tea at Bergdorf’s. She’s the little gay boy they dreamed of, too. The vulnerable, sensitive little misfit they can embrace and defend from the bullies and the cold, cruel world.

The great Kay Thompson, at The Plaza with her creation

Dylan overshared with all of us her transition from twink to tinkerbell. But, let’s face it—she was a pretty girl when she was a boy! And here’s part of my own personal eyeroll with the trans rights activist coven, who remind one of the privileged hausfraus of Big Little Lies. Dylan is fun to dress up, and fuss over, and kneel with on the floor and giggle with like girlfriends (oy vey Drew Barrymore!). And it’s because she can pass. She’s girl-ish. She wears the same sports bras and yoga tights, but gee whiz—Dylan doesn’t jiggle! Don’t ya just hate her for that, girls?

There’s no doubt about it. Dylan is a girl. But she’s not a normal girl. Dylan is “Much More.” She’s Girlhood Plus.

I spent fifteen years as a makeup artist in high end retail, working with and waiting on thousands of women. I’ve always been saddened by the way many women treat each other, and themselves. Why is it some women hate themselves so much? I’m talking cisgender women; you know—birthing people. And what about the girls? Girls in adolescence and young adulthood who struggle with their self esteem, their emotional lives, and their comfort with, and acceptance of, their bodies and their sexuality? I don’t begrudge Miss Mulvaney (or any person expressing themselves and living in their truth) the dignity and freedom to be who they are. I just find it curious, and often unsettling, that the most virulent and virtuosic voices in this cultural controversy are those of young (and young-adjacent) white, biological women of privilege—and those angry voices are being megaphoned at other women!

I have a young client whom I’ve coached for her auditions. She’s a very talented, twenty-two year old, white biological woman. Quite serious minded, intelligent, and like many of her generation, always a bit anxious and self conscious. This student had recently played a couple of traditionally male characters in plays, and it inspired her to identify as a “gender fluid actor,” and genderqueer in general. She’s a tall, slim, attractive young woman, a little awkward about her body, and not fond of makeup and other trappings of femininity. This, by her own admission, is less about gender and more about her personal feminism.

So, is she nonbinary?

No, more genderqueer.

But. Okay…that seems like wardrobe versatility to me.

Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me, I am definitely not cis.

I’ll take your word for it. But, pronouns?

Oh—she/her.

Huh. Interesting. As far as sexual preference goes…?

I’ve only dated cis men, but I’m open minded.

So… at least thus far…she’s straight…so, she’s a straight, young white woman from a good family, who has talent as an actor and a fondness for changing up her style (see, um: actor.) She doesn’t identify as nonbinary or trans, but she’s definitely not cis. I dunno. Methinks the lady doth protest.

We all know the pickle a young straight white woman from a good family is in if she owns all of those identity markers. It’s like Woke hara-kiri. Suddenly, she’s a white supremacist. She’s a future “Karen.” She might be taken for a TERF! So, no no no! I’m some other gender, definitely. I can’t be THE OPPRESSOR! I have to be other, somehow! Sounds like our friend from The Fantasticks.

Pass the pronouns, please.

There are trans, and nonbinary, and genderqueer people of all sorts in this world, and they’ve always been with us. I know a few of them and have the honor to call them friends of many years. These are people I admire, and look up to, and love. The thing that troubles me right now in our culture is that while trans people are increasingly free to walk out into the sunlight after millennia of persecution and marginalization, they are simultaneously being exploited by wealthy interests and misguided activists and—I’m just gonna say it—women who never got enough love from their mothers, and are desperate to be cool, and relevant, and progressive. To belong. But being trans is not “cute.” It’s not something to dress up in dirndls and have slumber parties with. Also, trans kids needs must grow into trans adults.

I admit it. I find Miss Mulvaney’s antics absurd. Grown people prancing about like children have always smacked of the grotesque to me. She’s a cartoon. Miss Mulvaney is like Carol Channing without the talent. But as a professional performer myself, I in no way begrudge her her career as a social media curiosity—to quote Mr. Sondheim: “You gotta have a gimmick!” Get it, girl. Bank those coins.

Miss Mulvaney

But, this girlish summer won’t last long. Even at twenty-six, Dylan doesn’t appear to have the inner fortitude needed for the transition—to adulthood. And a bunch of real Woke housewives clucking over her and encouraging her to stay a girl aren’t going to help her become a woman. We all have to grow up sometime. I worry for Dylan. She seems like the next Lindsay Lohan to me.

I feel concern for young cisgender girls, and their mothers, and the health and well being of women in general. It’s so unsettling to me that in a time when reproductive freedom is being completely stripped away from women, and hard-won rights are being obliterated, there’s an inordinately large army of women who are bringing their fighting energy and resources to defending a biologically male adult, pushing thirty, living their distant girlhood dreams of skipping around The Plaza dressed as Eloise.