My feelings about Dylan Mulvaney have fluctuated throughout her time in the public eye - is she "doing enough" with her platform? is she being authentic? should she be doing more to uplift trans women of color?

After listening to her memoir, I've decided I'm a Dylan girl. I had never realized how new her trans-ness was when she started sharing every bit of her life with a difficult world. Along her journey, she's celebrated women of all kinds while earnestly trying to do what is right at every turn. This memoir reminded me of how misleading parasocial relationships can be and deepened my respect for Dylan in a huge way.

I really loved that this book felt like a longer, more intimate version of Dylan's Days of Girlhood videos! This was such a sweet and thoughtful narrative about trans identity in the era of the internet that is much needed. Her experience is obviously so different from that of other trans women -- which is already something that is far from monolithic -- but it's an incredibly important one. Listening to this in audio form was especially a treat! Dylan is so talented and she really put everything into the narration. It was so entertaining and really added to the experience. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the inclusion of the ayahuasca retreat. This was something that was particularly grating to me as an Indigenous person, since its so widely appropriated by white spiritualists. I respect her for going to Peru and supporting actual Indigenous practitioners, but it seemed like she did so through a white foreigner who facilitated the whole thing. I understand the inclusion of this in the story, as it was an eye opening and liberating experience for her -- but man.... as someone who comes from a tribe whose spirituality revolves around similar ceremony, it just extra hurts to see affluent white people easily accessing this as a resource and knowing that actual Indigenous people aren't able to access it themselves because of the myriad of barriers there.