Dylan Mulvaney has revealed she has difficulty sleeping following the intense backlash she received for partnering with Bud Light.
As previously reported, the beer brand has been the focal point of a deeply divided debate after sending the 26-year-old transgender activist a personalized can of its product.
Mulvaney took her Instagram on April 1 to share a promotional video of her dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and drinking the beverage. The ad was also to promote its March Madness competition, which happened to fall around the same time as Mulvaney celebrating her first year of being a woman since transitioning.
The influencer - who has garnered 10.8 million followers on TikTok - had taken photos of commemorative cans the company sent to her with her face on them as a way to celebrate the "365 Days of Girlhood" milestone she reached.
Numerous conservative celebrities - including Kid Rock and Bri Teresi - took to social media to denounce the campaign, with the latter even shooting cans of the beer as an act of defiance.
Now, Mulvaney has spoken out about how the campaign negatively affected her during a recent podcast episode.
The influencer told fellow transgender activist Schuyler Bailar on his podcast that severe backlash over her paid sponsorship with the alcohol brand may have been hurtful, but that it was also a "blessing". "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," she said.
"Because I can't, there's no way that I can win those people over," she added.
Sadly, Mulvaney added that her social media accounts have become hotbeds of drama, with different users arguing with each other in the comments section like some sort of "cultural war". She did also add that, had she known about the backlash she would receive, she probably wouldn't have taken the paid sponsorship.
"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,'" she told Bailar.
Bailar ended up giving Mulvaney some advice, saying that it can take a while for "baby trans" people - i.e. those who have recently transitioned or are in the midst of transitioning - to understand that they could face backlash for just existing in a public sphere.
