You’ll know Dylan Mulvaney’s comforting voice. Like an old friend, the question softly asked at the start of her Tiktoks: “Is now a good time? Okay, good”.
Since her Tiktok transition series ‘ Days of Girlhood, ‘ she’s been on red carpets, podcasts, and fashion shows. From the outside, it’s a dream ascension to stardom. But in Mulvaney’s debut book, Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, she explores all the highs and lows of transitioning while being in the public eye.
Written over two timelines, the book is presented as journal entries, from her first 365 days of girlhood, and considered essays in the aftermath of the backlash of her brand collaboration with Bud Light – that she terms ‘ Beergate’. Written with her trademark light-approach and tenderness, this book will be a life-line to so many looking for hope, trans joy, and a sense of community.
Mulvaney grants the reader access to her most private thoughts, from her battles with depression to doing ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic, after Mikayla Nogueira’s influencer-packed wedding.
Her Tiktoks are often-comedic and light-hearted videos, while addressing the material issues that face the trans community. She writes candidly of her experience of facial feminisation surgery (which she abbreviates throughout to FFS), which many fans will remember from her iconic ‘ face reveal ‘ video.
Another tender moment is recounted as she is given guidance from a friend on underwear to help with tucking. She describes this woman as her ‘ fairy tuck mother. ‘
But the response has not always been positive, with trolls taking to her comment section to leave hateful messages. In terms of backlash, Mulvaney says it’s “funny how something with such pure intentions can be turned into something controversial so quickly”.
Trans memoirs are incredibly important, particularly in the political and medical landscape we live in, where lives are debated and discussed in an abstract way, removing all the humanity from the joy of trans lives.
As a book critic, I often spend time considering whether a book is important, serious, or even the bare minimum metric of whether it is actually any good. I ask myself, does a book need to be impenetrable to be a serious book?
The answer? No. Sometimes the books are dense to keep the reader out, and what’s the point of that? Mulvaney’s Paper Doll is the answer to that. In no way could the writing be described as stuffy or inaccessible, and it’s all the more joyous, beautiful, and heart-wrenching for it.
Reading Paper Dolls is like talking to an old friend, telling you all the gossip, all their heartaches and fears. It’s a lifeline too, to those in the early stages of transition, who are about to enter the lives they are meant to live.
One issue Mulvaney felt in the early stages of her transition was a desire for community, so if this is a topic resonating with you, I want to share other suggestions of memoirs that might bring you comfort, hope, inspiration:
- Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques
- A Trans Man Walks Into A Bar by Harry Nicholas
- Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis by Grace Lavery
While not a memoir, Shon Faye’s non-fiction manifesto The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice is worth exploring too. This book is a revolutionary examination of what it means to be trans in Britain.
Source: Mirror
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