Advertisers’ new favorite spokeswoman is transgender — and critics are not happy about it.
Dylan Mulvaney 26, who transitioned from male to female during beginning in March 2021, has reportedly earned more than a million dollars from endorsements including fashion and beauty brands Kate Spade, Ulta Beauty, Haus Labs and CeraVe, as well as Crest and InstaCart. She’s also gained 10 million followers on TikTok.
In March, she appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” where the star famously knelt before Mulvaney and embraced her, and Mulvaney met with President Biden at the White House last fall.
“Mr. President, this is my 221st day of publicly transitioning,” Mulvaney told Biden as she spoke to him during what was billed as a “presidential forum.”
“God love you,” Biden responded.
Mulvaney has capitalized on the popularity of TikTok as well as companies wanting to broadcast diversity. She comes from a privileged background, and uses a high-powered Hollywood team to push her brand.
But along with Mulvaney’s rise, there’s been a backlash.
When NIke announced Mulvaney was going to model women’s sports apparel, critics called it a “slap in the face.”
Earlier this week, Mulvaney’s partnership with Bud Light — with her face on cans of the beer — prompted boycotts from country artist Travis Tritt and Kid Rock, among others.
“Let me say something to all of you and be as clear and concise as possible,” Rock said in a video posted to Twitter late Monday. He’s then seen picking up a semi-automatic rifle and firing at several cases of the American beer.
Dylan declined to comment and referred The Post to her publicist, who did not return calls.
Dylan comes from a well-connected family in San Diego.
Her grandfather, James Mulvaney Sr., who died at age 87 in 2010, was a lawyer, investment banker and president of the old San Diego Padres baseball team. He later was vice-president and general counsel of the Padres when they entered the National League.
Mulvaney Sr. also worked as a banker and businessman for the controversial financier and industrialist C. Arnholt Smith at Westgate Corporation, who was one of Richard Nixon’s earliest supporters as well as friend to mobsters like Moe Dalitz.
Smith’s empire collapsed in 1973 when his bank, the US National Bank, where James Mulvaney Sr. was president for awhile collapsed.
At the time, the Wall Street Journal called the bank collapse “the largest in the nation’s history.”
Dylan’s father James Jr., one of Mulvaney Sr.’s seven children with his wife, Ruth, is a San Diego-area philanthropist known for baking and handing out cookies all the time — for free.
In 2020, James Jr. said that that he’d had issues with drug and alcohol and gave them up for good when Dylan was a baby so he could be a better father.
Baking cookies became a fun hobby.
“He makes 500 of them a week, and he’s never sold any of them,” Dylan explained in a 2021 TikTok video. “He just gives them out to random strangers on the street or the beach.”
“They call me the Cookie Man, and I branded myself that way,” James Mulvaney said in 2017. He often bakes about 500 cookies a week.
Dylan’s uncle, Brian Mulvaney, told The Post Tuesday that the family “loves her.”
“We always knew she was gay,” he said. “She comes from a good family who loves and supports her. She really loved her grandmother who completely supported her.”
Dylan, who graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and had an ensemble role in the “Book of Mormon” tour after college, got her start young in San Diego-area theater.
She won Best Child Broadway Singer in Hollywood’s Best New Talent Awards in 2009.
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“When the pandemic hit, I was doing the Broadway musical ‘Book of Mormon,'” Mulvaney said.
“I found myself jobless and without the creative means to do what I loved. I downloaded TikTok, assuming it was a kids’ app. Once I came out as a woman, I made this ‘day one of being a girl’ comedic video. And it blew up. I really don’t know another place online like TikTok that can make a creator grow at the rate that it does.”
She appeared, pre-transition, on “The Price is Right” game show with Drew Carey in 2020 and has featured a clip of the show on her TikTok feed.
Her uncle Brian said he sometimes worries about Dylan being “demonized” but added that he hopes her naturally bubbly personality will win out.
Her pre-transition appearance on “The Price is Right” was criticized in some corners for being overly enthusiastic.
“That’s just her,” Brian said. “She’s always been theatrical.”
The influencer began her “Day one of being a girl” on TikTok and Instagram in March 2022.
She celebrated her year of transitioning by hosting an elaborate livestreamed cabaret show, “Dylan Mulvaney’s Day 365 Live!,” earlier this month at the Rainbow Room in New York.
Dylan has a powerful team behind her that helps draw attention her way: She is repped by Creative Artists Agency and sometimes works with the Trevor Project, the well-funded and influential non-profit set up in 2016 for young LGBTQ+ people.
Companies like Anheuser-Busch, which owns Bud Light, are among many firms — from Pfizer to Coca-Cola — who endorse influencers from so-called marginalized communities in order to score well on something called the CEI, or Corporate Equality Index.
The CEI is overseen by the controversial and influential Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for the LBGTQ+ community, particularly transgender people.
Erik Huberman, an LA-based social media marketing expert and CEO Hawke Media, said that Dylan is an example of how quickly an influencer can go viral and become famous on TikTok.
“I had 100 followers once and posted a video that got 69.4 million views,” he said. “I had 200,000 followers the next day. Dylan is obviously very talented but she got interest from CAA right away and they clearly had a hand in getting her all this attention and endorsements. Like Trump, she is a very polarizing figure — which translates in this political environment to a lot of publicity and success.”
Dylan told People earlier this month that is she eagerly awaiting her first kiss as a woman — and doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long.
“I’m getting a little impatient because, especially when you’re feeling yourself and even looking at that Grammys picture, I’m like, that’s somebody who should not be single,” she said. “But then you’re like, wait, why is no one in the DMs?”
She was very specific about her ideal partner.
“I really want somebody to make me laugh because so much of starting to succeed and have these great things come has been a little serious at times … ” she said. “But I think once I do meet that person that can add some levity, add some lightness back to my life and I know that I can make them laugh in the same way, that is going to be chef’s kiss.”
Dylan, who identifies as queer, is vocal about wanting to find a relationship and wants to forget some bad experiences in her past.
“I very much feel like I get a do-over as far as some of those negative experiences that I have had romantically,” she says. “And I want to do it right this time.”
Her personal website sells branded merchandise including a “Days of Girlhood” crewneck sweatshirt ($54), a” T-shirt adorned with an image of her ($28), a “Love Ya” coffee mug ($18) and other items — all of which have sold out.
She even got into a social media feud with Caitlyn Jenner in Oct. 2022 when she made a video of herself wearing what she called “shopping shorts” after a trip to the mall and complained that people were staring at her “bulge.”
“Mine doesn’t look like a little Barbie pocket,” she said, suggesting that “we just normalize women having bulges sometime because we are coming up on bikini season.”
Jenner, who said she underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2017, wasn’t impressed.
“There is a difference between acceptance and tolerance, and normalizing exposing your genitals in a public way and a public place,” Jenner tweeted. “I do not support that at all, in the slightest. Dylan … congrats your trans with a penis.”
Dylan has stirred up controversy with LGBTQ+ people online as well, with some members dragging her for what they call her outsized privilege.
“She is annoying af to me,” wrote a poster on Reddit. “I’m not doubting her identity, but the way she made a show of her transition really rubs me the wrong way. Like her trans identity was a new car she just brought home from the dealership. And why did she get to represent trans people at the White House? There were enough rich white girls at the White House under Trump.”
