Trans Boleyn?: Girlhood on Broadway

For nearly 500 years, the worst thing that ever happened to Anne Boleyn was being beheaded.

That is no longer true.

Dylan Mulvaney, the trans influencer whose fame was manufactured through viral caricatures of “girlhood,” has now been cast as Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England, in Six, the pop-concert-style Broadway musical that reimagines Henry VIII’s six wives as a modern girl group. The show, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, has spent years marketing itself as a female-centered retelling of women’s history, framed as a reclamation of women’s voices through contemporary “girl power.” Dylan Mulvaney, a man who claims to be living a life of girlhood, is now occupying one of the most recognizable female roles in a production explicitly built around women telling women’s stories. He celebrated the casting on Instagram with the kind of breathless self-congratulation that has become his brand, writing “YAY BROADWAY” and announcing his debut as playing a “fellow polarizing woman.” The announcement was paired with the revival of his “Days of Girlhood” series. Of course.

The premise of Six was never subtle. Women’s stories. Women’s pain. Women’s voices. The entire hook depended on the female experience being real and distinct. By casting Mulvaney as Anne Boleyn, the production erases the obvious struggles that come along with being raised as a female, thus commodifying girlhood and treating the female experience as just another aesthetic that anyone with enough Instagram followers can wear.

Anne Boleyn was executed because she failed to produce a male heir – she could not give Henry VIII the son needed to secure the Tudor dynasty with a legitimate male successor. His first marriage to Catherine of Aragon produced only one surviving child, a daughter, which he considered insufficient. He broke with the Catholic Church, annulled that marriage, and married Anne Boleyn in 1533 precisely because he believed she would bear him sons. Anne suffered at least two miscarriages or stillbirths – the most devastating one was in 1536, with the loss of a male fetus (around 15 weeks of gestation). The 1536 miscarriage was a turning point: it shattered Henry’s hope that Anne would give him a son, and she was beheaded a few months later. Anne Boleyn is a woman whose life and death were directly tied to her reproductive capacity. Her biology mattered. That is why she was beheaded. To strip her of that reality and hand her role to a man performing his version of girlhood is not “stunning and brave.”

Mulvaney’s rise to prominence did not happen in a vacuum. In 2023, he became a household name after partnering with Bud Light for a trans activist campaign that triggered one of the most visible consumer revolts in recent years. The backlash was swift and measurable. The world’s largest brewer may have lost as much as $1.4 billion in sales and lost its status as America’s top-selling beer. The lesson should have been obvious, but now we see Broadway repeating the same mistake. If theatergoers respond the same way beer drinkers did, the industry will once again act shocked that people noticed.

Mulvaney’s celebrity is built on a very specific formula. Infantilized mannerisms. Exaggerated stereotypes. A reduction of girlhood to squeals, outfits, and consumer products. His “Days of Girlhood” series was never intended to empower youth. It was about flattening female experience into a marketable parody, then monetizing it through brand deals. He was rewarded for all of it. Attitude magazine crowned him “Woman of the Year.” Tampax enlisted him as a spokesperson. Corporations lined up to pay him handsomely to play dress-up with female biology.

Real women, meanwhile, were told to shut up. Moms and dads were sidelined. And anyone who pointed out the hypocrisy was called transphobic. Mulvaney’s brand has been inseparable from child-focused messaging, and that is where the concerns become impossible for parents to ignore. Mulvaney has repeatedly claimed, including in a Variety interview, that he “came out as trans” at age four, even though he did not start his “journey into girlhood” until he was a grown man. His messaging is designed to tell parents that their child’s curiosity about identity and pronouns is somehow evidence that they were born wrong and need to be fixed with puberty-disrupting drugs and plastic surgery. Mulvaney can claim that he was always a girl, but he did not publicly express any desire to change his gender until transgenderism became a lucrative social-media commodity, especially for influencers with child-focused audiences. The timing tells the truth and reveals the holes in the narrative that the talking points cannot simply explain away.

Dylan Mulvaney’s influence has been actively leveraged by political power. Mulvaney interviewed President Joe Biden in a forum focused on “trans rights.” During the exchange, Joe Biden condemned states that restrict so-called gender-affirming medical interventions for minors. This was not an accident. The White House chose a TikTok influencer whose brand revolves around performative girlhood to promote policies that involve puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible medical procedures for children. That is not advocacy. It is indoctrination and child abuse.

Dylan Mulvaney’s access to political power did not end there. Former Vice President Kamala Harris sent him a personal letter celebrating his “365th day of living authentically,” thanking him for his “dedication and courage.” No woman in history has received a congratulatory letter from a Vice President for being a woman. A fully grown adult male playing dress-up did.

Mulvaney’s corporate partnerships further reveal the safeguarding concerns. His collaboration with LUSH produced a bath bomb called “Late Bloomer,” explicitly referencing his so-called “second puberty” that he advertises online. The product was marketed as a celebration of transition and tied to his memoir.

At the same time, LUSH became embroiled in controversy after reports emerged that “trans kid” propaganda leaflets were placed into party bags for girls as young as seven at a children’s birthday event held in a LUSH store. The leaflet, produced with a trans advocacy group, promoted extreme ideological claims, dismissed legitimate medical reviews, and framed dissent as a coordinated attack.

LUSH defended the campaign.

Mulvaney benefited from it.

This is what queer subversion looks like in practice. Adult ideology gets smuggled into child-adjacent spaces. Puberty is reframed as a product. Identity confusion gets treated as a branding opportunity. Greedy corporations create chaos and profit off the destruction.

Mulvaney’s obsession with tampons and menstruation has followed the same pattern. A grown man injecting himself with hormones and presenting it as “I’m a girl going through puberty, I’m a late bloomer” sends a grotesque message to teenage girls who are actually navigating puberty. For girls experiencing discomfort with their changing bodies, the implication is corrosive. Womanhood should be viewed as something girls grow into. Instead, it is advertised as something to escape, rebrand, or medically override.

When Tampax became the subject of boycott calls after transgender messaging sparked public backlash, it was part of the same cultural shift. Female biology, once understood as real and sex-specific, has been reduced to a performance prop. Girls watching this in real time are not liberated. They are taught that their reality is negotiable and their bodies are political toys. When you create a culture where girlhood is presented as Dylan Mulvaney, many girls who do not relate to that shallow, sexualized, performative caricature will opt out. Increasingly, that opt-out is being sold as a customizable identity, complete with medical pathways and lifelong consequences.

Anne Boleyn was not a symbol. She was not a vibe. Her life was not a costume. She was a woman whose reproductive capacity and refusal to submit ultimately cost her life. To hand her role to a man skinwalking her on stage is not bold casting. It is an insult to women and an assault on their history. The trans agenda is not about freedom. It is about the degradation of motherhood, the commodification of female anatomy, and the queer subversion of boundaries that protect women and children. It demands that girls applaud their own erasure…or else.

Broadway can cast whoever it wants. But women are not required to pretend this is empowering, and parents are not required to ignore the warning signs. Anne Boleyn was beheaded once. Turning her legacy into a prop for a movement that sexualizes our daughters and targets childhood innocence is a second execution, performed in sequins and sold as progress. If Six wants to be a celebration of women again, it can start by actually prioritizing women and girls. 

References 

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https://x.com/i/status/1854645074828710292 

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