Dylan Mulvaney Is Allowed To Express Her Girlhood However She Wants To
If you’re a cisgender woman, you should know that better than anybody else
Popular transgender woman Dylan Mulvaney’s new pop song, “Days of Girlhood,” has pissed off both conservative and liberal cisgender women.
The consensus is that it makes a mockery of biological women by playing into negative female stereotypes, bordering on misogyny.
As a progressive, cisgender woman, I believe the controversy surrounding this song comes down to one thing — Dylan’s transgenderism.
That’s unfortunate because if you’re a cisgender woman, you should know more than anyone else what it’s like to be discriminated against based on your gender.
But that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Why the big fuss?
This is one part of the song that has people riled up:
“Monday, I can’t get out of bed / Tuesday morning, I pick up meds / Wednesday, I go to retail therapy / ‘Cash or credit?’ I say yes / Thursday, I had a walk of shame / I didn’t even know his name / Weekends are for kissing friends / Friday night, I’ll overspend / Saturday, we flirt for drinks”
On TikTok, one woman said, “I couldn’t even get through the whole video. Jesus Christ…that’s what she thinks women are? Does not have a clue.”
Another woman commented, “He [sic] literally makes a living by mocking women. It’s disgusting.”
Here’s another one:
“This has nothing to do with transphobia and whether Dylan is a woman or not…you’re upholding this person who is putting on a facade and generalizing women in the most misogynistic way. But making a mockery out of women for likes and views is just never going to sit right with me.”
As you can see, many biological women think the song makes us look like lazy, shopaholic bimbos who pop pills, have one-night stands, and flirt for drinks.
Dylan has responded to the backlash that she doesn’t “think that womanhood or girlhood is chalked up to be these silly, frivolous things.”
In the music video, Dylan is seen in pink lingerie, lying on a pink, rotating bed, sipping champagne in a bathtub, wearing nail polish, and kissing a black-and-white photo of a man.
She and her friends are dancing in seductive poses and shaking their tushy. Gigi Gorgeous, a popular transgender woman and socialite, is splashing her foot in the pool while getting a massage from a hot guy.
Dylan mentioned on TikTok that she wanted the song to “feel like the opening of an early 2000 romcom” because she never saw herself “existing in that world when she [I] was growing up.”
She said the comps for the song were Rebecca Black’s Friday and Perfect Day from Legally Blonde — two songs that capture cliches after cliches of stereotypes about girls (watch below to see it for yourself).
Here’s the rub. There are so many songs by cisgender women that reduce women to bimbos, yet they don’t get the same kind of backlash that Dylan has.
Take, for example, the 2010 hit song California Gurls by Katy Perry. Here’s the lyrics:
California girls / We’re unforgettable / Daisy dukes / Bikinis on top / Sun-kissed skin / So hot / We’ll melt your popsicle
Sex on the beach / We don’t mind sand in our stilettos / We freak / In my jeep / Snoop doggy-dog on the stereo
In the music video, she’s lying naked on a pink cloud. She dances with girls wearing a bikini top that looks like a cupcake with nipples. She grabs two whipped cream cans, places them on her nipples, and basts white foam.
I get that Perry’s California Gurls is not meant to represent me, even though I’m from California.
I could go on and on about songs by cisgender women that are similar to Dylan’s.
How about Paris Hilton’s 2018 song, ‘I Need You?' In it, Paris is wearing sheer pink lingerie on a pink, heart-shaped bed while talking on a pink LAN phone.
In another few seconds, her side boobs are visible through her apron while she mixes pink cake batter.
She powders her face in front of a mirror and comes out of a gigantic wedding cake, holding a champagne bottle with a seductive glance.
This song was considered “tacky, cheesy, and forgettable,” but it wasn’t criticized for making women look like submissive housewives who wait on their men with sexy lingerie.
‘Days of Girlhood’ is a fun, silly pop song celebrating Dylan’s transition. It’s about her girlhood — that’s the bottom line.
Besides, she catapulted into fame on TikTok two years ago with a daily series by the same name showcasing her transition. So you could say this song is a continuation of that.
It’s not meant to win a Grammy by any means. Dylan has said she wasn’t trying to make a “substantial music career” and admits the song has “dumb, dumb lyrics.”
She further elaborated:
“I could have probably written a song about my pain or my trauma but I didnt’ want to. I wanted to write a fun song, like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun…”
So now, at 27, she’s finally able to do what most of us probably experienced in our youth, and this song celebrates that.
This TikToker explains it so well:
“…She’s [Dylans’s] feeling proud about being able to speak out on having these very basic woman experiences…She’s excited about going out on the weekend and dancing with her girls on the dance floor…In other words, she’s describing her experience of where she’s at right now. She’s not trying to describe every woman’s experience…
Exactly. Dylan is in no way saying she’s a representation of a biological woman. She’s honoring the women who made her who she is today.
Like this part of the lyric here:
Mom brought me into the world / Sister taught me how to girl / Best friend coached me how to text / The boy toy that I’m dating next / Girls who helped show me the way / They’re why I’m an It girl today
Isn’t that beautiful? She’s becoming who she always wanted to be, helped by women before her.
Isn’t that what sisterhood is about?
Dawn of a new age
We’re at an age where we’re defining new cultural rules and norms. We’re trying to figure out what is an okay behavior and what is not for transgender women.
Is it okay for transgender women to call herself a “girl” instead of a “woman?” Is it okay for her to play into negative stereotypes of women like how some cisgender women singers do? Is a transgender woman a woman?
Yes, transgender women are women. That’s why I’m not offended by Dylan’s music. It’s like any other music video by cisgender women musicians.
But if you believe transgender women are not women, of course you’ll find Dylan’s caricature of women offensive. Of course you’ll lash out and accuse her of mocking women.
Of course you’ll call her “gross,” “cringy,” and “perverted.”
As women, we know what it’s like to contend with stereotypes. Taylor Swift said in a CBS interview in 2019:
“There’s a different vocabulary for men and women in the music industry. A man does something, it’s strategic. A woman does the same thing, it’s calculated. A man is allowed to react. A woman can only overreact.”
Aren’t we doing the same to Dylan?
Stereotypes are harmful. When women are bunched up into one category, it diminishes us as all the same when, in reality, we’re all different.
My experience of being a girl is different from yours.
Logically, I know that in the movie, Barbie — where everyone is dancing to Dance the Night Away by Dua Lipa — it’s their reality, not mine.
I don’t wear sparkles and glitter. Or wear short skirts and fake eyelashes.
I don’t relate to Barbie dancing and proclaiming, “…it’s the best day ever and so was yesterday and so is tomorrow, day after tomorrow and even Wednesdays, and everyday from now until forever!”
In this scene, Barbie is made to look like a stereotypical ditzy blonde who has no idea what the real world is like. At that moment, that’s her world.
Do we lash out at her and tell her how dare she reduce women to all fun, dance, and glitter?
No, as women — regardless of whether you’re a transgender or cisgender woman— we’re on our own unique individual journeys.
As this writer says in The Spectrum:
“‘Days of Girlhood’ is not misogynistic, tone-deaf, or oppressive. It’s a fun, witty song about the experience of one specific girl, written in the hopes that it’s the unspoken experiences of other women, too.
I’ve done the walk of shame. I’ve drank too much. I’ve gone out with the girls to the club to dance and meet the boys. Maybe you haven’t, or maybe you have.
It doesn’t matter.
Look, you don’t have to like the song. I don’t like it, either. I think there’s way too much auto-tune, and I’ve never been a big fan of pop music. But I admire Dylan Mulvaney.
She dares to be unapologetically her authentic self, even in the midst of death threats and backlash. Isn’t that what we women struggle with? To be ourselves in a world that tells us we need to fit into a box?
Dylan is our ally, not our enemy. She’s teaching us about compassion and tolerance. She’s giving every woman permission to express her girlhood or womanhood the way she wants to.
Isn’t that what feminism is about — celebrating equality for all humans regardless of gender?
I’ll end with a poignant summary by prominent cisgender woman influencer Allyn Aston:
“If you consider yourself a feminist, stop hating Dylan Mulvaney's view of what it means to be a woman because she’s allowed to have her own views of it, just as I am, just as you are, and all of it counts.”
June Kirri is a writing coach and magazine editor. She’s a former journalist who has worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southeast Asia. She writes about feminism, women, and motherhood.
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