“And then when someone asked me how I was, I said, ‘I’m fine,’ when I wasn’t fine.” Then after applying a few swipes of lip gloss, she asked: “How’d I do, ladies?”

“Day one of being a girl and I have already cried three times,” she said in the video posted on March 12, 2022. For Mulvaney, her public start can be neatly encompassed in a single sentence: It was day one of being a girl. A transition might involve a change of clothes or pronouns - or neither. The process of transition looks different to every trans individual, as one begins to introduce their truest inner self to the outside world.

They, too, were utterly delighted, but perhaps for slightly more corporate reasons. Half of those with whom I spoke were fans utterly delighted by the night’s performance and the other half worked on Mulvaney’s team, including publicists and assistants, a life coach and a lawyer, and a phalanx of agents across media, from books to theater to public speaking. The crowd skewed queer, white, and young.

“This” also refers to her show, which ended with a standing ovation - the fourth one that night - before spilling out into a cocktail reception. It refers to money - like, treat-yourself-to-a-Chanel-bag money - in exchange for turning your life into a self-produced one-woman show, via a portal that connects you to every single member of your audience. It refers to suddenly being flown to places like Copenhagen for activities like touring a skin-care lab. “People are like, ‘I can't believe it's already Day 365.’ I'm like, ‘This feels like it's been 10 years.’' “This” refers to 10 million and counting TikTok followers, plus an extra 1.8 million on Instagram. “I think it's just crazy that all this happened within one year,” Mulvaney tells me days later. There were four costume changes over roughly an hour of showtime each time, Mulvaney simply walked to a closet and vanity set up down stage left and mirrorless so she could face the audience while primping. Jubilance was everywhere, even when it was layered under artistic anguish such as a cover of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” or threatened by camp in a sequence called “The TampOpera.” There was an interview segment with Delaware Senator Sarah McBride and a dating show hosted by Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness. In its atmosphere, “Day 365 Live!” functioned like a Met Gala for the corner of TikTok where Mulvaney reigns as queen.

Im Bann des Sees by Kate Dylan