Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney admitted on a recent podcast episode that the relentless backlash over her Bud Light partnership has kept her up at night.
The TikTok star told fellow transgender activist Schuyler Bailar that the intense, weeks-long uproar over her paid sponsorship with the beer company has gotten under her skin, but that the fiasco may have been a blessing in disguise.
“Now there are hundreds of thousands of people that do not like me, and I still sometimes can’t sleep but it in a weird way has been a blessing to sort of break that people-pleasing mentality,” Mulvaney said during a Monday episode of Bailar’s “Dear Schuyler” podcast. “Because I can’t, there’s no way that I can win those people over.”
Mulvaney — who has tried to remain poised in the face of overwhelming criticism and transphobia — said her social media pages have transformed into a “cultural war” since announcing her partnership with Bud Light last month.
The fallout has led to nationwide boycotts and caused Bud Light sales to plummet week after week, with the carnage spilling into parent company Anheuser-Busch’s other brands like Budweiser and Michelob Ultra.
The influencer implied that she might not have accepted the paid sponsorship because she wasn’t ready for the onslaught of opposition that it sparked.
Though she didn’t mention Bud Light by name, Mulvaney said she accepted numerous “opportunities” she was presented with this year since gaining social media fame.
“Now trying to be a little bit more diligent in what I’m accepting, because I kind of at the beginning, I took everything because I was in a scarcity mindset of like, ‘Oh my god, this might only last for so long,” Mulvaney said.
She added that she now recognizes that she, as an individual who has only been out as transgender for a short amount of time, may not have been the best representative for the community for many of the jobs she took.
Bailiar — who welcomed transgender swimming Lia Thomas last month as his first podcast guest — agreed that it takes a long while for “baby trans” people to come into their own and understand the backlash they face for simply existing in a public sphere.
In the weeks since the Bud Light controversy, Mulvaney announced she would no longer accept spokesperson positions for companies looking to “check a box” off by partnering with a transgender person.
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