But first, she’ll spend the next few weeks promoting Paper Doll, an unorthodox memoir made up of journal entries, essays, lists, and Eloise at the Plaza–style illustrations. In 2025, that’s no easy feat.
“I think it’s insane how life has sort of dropped me into this moment where this book is coming out at Peak Transphobic Media and anti-trans legislation,” she says. “And I do hope that it will only help and not hurt the community, in the same ways that I hope it helps and not hurts me personally.”
“But it does feel really good to have something physical that’s not just a representation of myself onscreen,” she says. “An app could be deleted at any point, but these books would have to probably be burned in order to rid this world of them.”
Keep reading for our full conversation, and order Paper Doll: Notes From a Late Bloomer, here.
Glamour: How are you?
Dylan Mulvaney: I’m good, I’m at seven and a half on the happy scale. What’s your happy scale?
It’s 55 degrees in New York today, and I was smiling walking into the office, so maybe an eight, an eight and a half.
Okay. Not a bad thing.
Let’s talk about your new book. Can you tell me how you came up with the title, Paper Doll?
It was tricky. Really early on, when I was making my [TikTok] series, I thought the book was going to be called Days of Girlhood, because it felt like an extension of my brand. And then, once Beergate happened and my life became something a lot more than just that series, I realized that it wasn’t encompassing quite enough.
I love throwing a thousand words—any word that pops into my brain—on to a page. So I was like, words that I think of as trans, one was doll because we trans women often refer to each other as the dolls. Then I put down words that reminded me of books, like paper and writing, that kind of thing. And what a paper doll really is, is a two-dimensional depiction of something that in reality is three-dimensional. The way people have interpreted me often is very two-dimensional. So I wanted to kind of question that, and show readers there’s a lot more than just the dimension they’re seeing.
When I first saw the title, Paper Doll, I thought of other people projecting their ideas on to you. Do you see that interpretation as well?
Honey, I want to use that.
Take it.
I think the projections have been endless. I think that there are a lot of people that have wanted to interject, or put things on to me that I haven’t put on to myself. Which is also kind of a paper-doll sort of situation too. So yes, there’s been plenty of projections from outside sources.
Paper Doll isn’t your typical memoir. How did you come up with this structure that includes journal entries, illustrations, and essays?
