Dylan Mulvaney is demeaning women with a parody of what we are

JANET STREET-PORTER: Dylan Mulvaney is demeaning women with a parody of what we are. But it’s Bud and Nike that are cynically using her to tick this year’s trendy ‘trans box’. If the point is to flog beers and bras… it isn’t going to work

Isn’t the point of advertising to get us to buy something?

So you might wonder why sportwear company Nike chose a painfully thin trans female with no breasts and no muscles to promote a sports bra? Especially as they recently launched a campaign called ‘year of the woman’.

The model, Dylan Mulvaney, identified as female a year ago but has not yet transitioned physically. She certainly doesn’t look very athletic.

It must seem confusing to many women, but – as far as advertisers are concerned – the trendy box that must be ticked this year is called ‘trans’.

In recent years, leading brands have fallen over themselves to make sure that black and brown and every skin colour in between is represented in ads.

Dylan Mulvaney’s Instagram beer promotion saw the influencer knocking back Bud Light in the tub 

In 2023, no family can be 100% white in a television commercial. There’s been a determined effort to better represent modern society – which is to be applauded.

However, as debates rage about whether trans females should be allowed to use the same changing rooms as biological women, what prisons they should be housed in and whether they should be allowed to compete in sporting events alongside women born female, so advertisers have cannily seen a way to use these controversies to get their brands into the headlines and grab our attention.

Dylan (with 10 million followers on Tik Tok) appeals to advertisers because she’s certainly a talking point. Just choosing her to flog your product means she will attract likes and loathes in equal measure and your brand will be in the news for weeks.

Women (and real athletes) who have been female since birth are just not flavour of the month in the whacky world of advertising where shock value is a key component if you want to get noticed.

Twenty-six-year old Dylan achieved her success by posting a series of toe-curling mini-dramas on TikTok, charting her ‘journey’ from boy to girl.

In the films she goes for a dip in the sea in Sweden. She goes ‘hiking’ in high heels exclaiming ‘trees, I love you’ and ‘bridges I love you’, before falling over and running off.

Bud Light’s parent company has lost more than $6billion in market capitalization since announcing its partnership with Mulvaney

Trans activist Dylan Mulvaney is seen arriving at a studio in Hollywood on Tuesday

Dylan seems gauche, fearful, prone to whispering ‘Love you’ at the camera every few seconds, as if she’s embarking on a trip to the North Pole, and not a stroll around New York. It’s not my kind of humour, but I can see that her ditsy little stories might appeal to young people wondering about their sexuality and how they will be received in the world.

It’s the cynical way companies are using Dylan that should concern everyone, straight, gay or trans.

Now the macho world of beer has been targeted by marketeers keen to add a touch of ‘trans’ controversy to flog their wares.

Bud Light was a dreary beer, selling to blue collar workers, beloved by country music stars and ordinary blokes in the US. Sales were steady but nothing special.

Then, the Vice President in charge of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, decided to reposition the product and make it ‘more inclusive’, and paid Dylan Mulvaney to pose on TikTok with a personalised can in her bath.

In another spot, she’s dressed as a tacky version of Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffanys, with tacky makeup, black gloves and cheap jewellery, posing with a can of Bud – once the beverage of a chunky bloke.

The outrage that ensued was completely predictable.

Kid Rock was filmed machine gunning several cases in his garden.

Country star Travis Tritt said he was boycotting the brand and all other drinks made by the company. Customers were confused.

Country singers Travis Tritt (left) and John Rich (right) vowed to cut ties with Anheuser-Busch over the polarizing partnership with Mulvaney

Would being inclusive and celebrating the trans community transfer into sales? It appears not. Over the Easter weekend the parent company Anheuser-Busch saw $3 billion wiped off their shares.

Nike faced the same backlash the other week when Dylan posted her silly sports bra exercise routine.

Megyn Kelly said: ‘Dylan doesn’t need any sort of a bra- never mind a sports bra’.

‘If there were a woman who looked like that she wouldn’t get an endorsement because they say she (DYLAN) is clearly unwell’ and adding ‘did they run out of biological women to sell bras?’

Olympic medalists Caitlyn Jenner and Sharron Davies both complained loudly about Nike’s decision. Davies retorted ‘it feels like a parody of what women are’ adding that the expression ‘run like a woman’ has been used as an insult in the past.

Caitlyn Jenner- who underwent gender reassignment in 2017, described the choice of Dylan as ‘an outrage’ and took issue with Mulvaney’s opinion that women wearing shorts ‘with a bulge’ was normal. Jenner said ‘there’s a difference between acceptance and tolerance and normalising exposing your genitals in public’.

The more she is attacked, the more Dylan will tell her followers she is being brave. She be be seen as a role model by some and a self-obsessed egotist by others.

She’s certainly using her status to enrich her bank balance.

Apart from Nike and Budweiser beer, Dylan has been supported by fashion house Kate Spade, Crest, Instacart and CeraVe skin products.

I have two main complaints about Dylan’s TikTok persona.

Dylan Mulvaney wearing the sports bra for the new partnership with sports clothes firm Nike

Firstly, she constantly whimpers on about being ‘brave’ – as if everything in the world might attack or demean her. She is not encouraging her followers to have strength, inner resolve or self-confidence.

She seems to be playing a role – one of idiot girl – which brings me to my main reservation about her intentions. She’s demeaning all women with this parody of what we are.

Women come in all shapes and sizes and yet an increasing number of big brands are choosing to use Dylan to sell their products, in the mistaken belief that by choosing someone who is transgender, the brand will be ‘inclusive’ – and flog more products. In fact she is an appalling role model for all women.

Choosing Dylan to flog sports bras was a disastrous move by Nike.

The best (free) ad for their bras happened during the EUFA Euro finals in 2022, when Chloe Kelly scored the winning goal, whipped off her team shirt and ran around the pitch showing off her Nike bra.

That moment of pure pure and exhilaration would have flogged more sports bras than a seriously underweight stick insect throwing her arms around and announcing ‘alert the media – I’m entering my workout era’.

In the sick world of advertising, real women are no longer considered important- even though we make up the majority of people who buy bras by quite a considerable margin.

Back in the 1980’s Scottish brewers Tennent’s flogged their lager in tins with ‘Lager Lovelies’ printed on them, local beauty queens were photographed posing on sunny beaches. These days, they are collectors items, available on eBay at inflated prices.

Will a tin of Budweiser emblazoned with Dylan Mulvaney achieve similar cult status?

I think not.

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