It's the era of the trans it-girl

Trans girls own the internet. Meet six you should be following. vox.com/culture CULTURE   The Wednesday edition of the Vox Culture newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. The Wednesday edition of the Vox Culture newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. ⭐ Trans girls own the internet 🏳️‍⚧️ Dianne Brill [recently defined]( the “it-girl” as someone who, “all of a sudden, when you leave, the party’s down.” She was talking about her scene, in her era: 1980s New York City nightlife. If there’s a parallel to today’s pandemic hangover world, it would be the endless virtual party of the internet. And on the internet, a sizeable proportion of the it-girls are trans. “[Goblin mode](.” [Christian girl autumn](. [The BBL effect](. These iconic online phenomena were all shaped by trans women’s humor and creativity, memes millions of people quote and remix, often without ever knowing where they come from. But while trans people have never been more visible in culture, with that exposure has come a [coordinated, brutal backlash]( in both American politics and global culture war discourse. From [Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s book bans]( and orders that students cannot discuss anything related to sex or gender identity to J.K. Rowling’s [very public transphobia](, anti-trans sentiment has seeped into every corner of mainstream discourse, [including journalism](. I spoke to six of the funniest, most trendsetting trans women on social media right now about what it’s like to be at the forefront of culture while also being the targets of daily harassment online. “Trans people have such a beautiful wealth of life experience,” explains influencer Uniekue (pronounced “unique”). “We're so in tune with ourselves — you have to be as a trans person. There's so much beauty that comes from knowing oneself and loving oneself and choosing oneself in spite of the sea of voices telling you that you're not worthy or that you don't deserve to be here. The world only benefits from being privy to that beauty.” Welcome to the era of the trans it-girl. Antoni Bumba/[@antonibumba](, 25, New York City Content creator, entrepreneur, art collector, artist How did you first come up with the idea for [the BBL effect](? I moved to New York City after the pandemic cleared up a bit and I was living with my two roommates. I had no fucking money and I was super broke. We were sitting at the dining room table and we were going back and forth about these people who were running the internet at the time — the [Revolve girls](, for example — and then we started talking about lip filler and [BBLs]( [Brazilian butt lifts]. It was less about the surgery and more about the lifestyle, the attitude that they portrayed. Then I heard this sound on TikTok and I was like, “I can make a really funny video out of this.” And then I really ran with it. So many people think it's about getting the work done. But it's all about the energy — it was a way for me to display a certain type of femininity in a way that was powerful and brandable and strong. Blizzy McGuire/[@blizzy_mcguire](, 23, Brooklyn Vibe curator, internet magician, comedian You’ve been open about your struggles with money and your experience in shitty retail jobs. What’s it like having a big following but not the money that we tend to expect goes with that? I'm not like Dixie D’Amelio, I’m not doing the “Renegade.” I would like to be booked, I would like to have an income from all this stuff. I don’t want to be stuck in this cycle of bad retail job to bad retail job. I see these people who have fewer followers than me and they’re flying to Cancun so that they can do the “Renegade” on a beach. I'm like, “Girl, what's going on? Where’s my flight?” At the end of the day, I'm still just that little broke girl from Long Island. I could be in a room with a whole bunch of big-name people, and I go home and my card’s getting declined at Dunkin’ Donuts. Selyna Brillare/[@trapselyna](, 22, New York City Artist, content creator, part-time supermodel What’s something you want to see more of on the internet? I want to see more trans women who don't have to perform hyperfemininity, period. I think it's so funny how when we don't want to perform it anymore, we're scrutinized not only by our own community, but people outside of our community, which is another reason why I've kind of stopped performing hyperfemininity. I've literally thrown out everything in my wardrobe that’s hyper-femme. I'm going to wear baggy clothes and be a tomboy. I'm a girly girl in some aspects, but I'm a girl from New York, I want to wear my baggy jeans and my Jordans. I feel like I'm not allowed to do that because I quote-unquote “look too much like a boy” when I dress like that. I think that's very unfair, because trans women can be butch, too. It doesn't mean that we're men. I want to see more stud trans women. Being a trans woman just means that you're a woman, and your expression of your gender identity is something completely different. It's not about wearing makeup and getting a whole bunch of surgeries, and I feel like people only want to see that from trans women, and it's damaging for trans women. At the same time, [hyperfemininity] is our only defense mechanism in order to be able to pass and survive in the real world. June/[@junlper](, 27, Wisconsin Quality control technician, Twitter troll (the fun kind) What’s the key to a great right-wing troll? It's very easy because they get mad about literally anything. They got mad about like, [Dylan Mulvaney holding a Bud Light](. One way that I push back on hateful people is that they all have one insecurity that really gets to them. So I try to find their biggest insecurity and exploit it because that’s what they do to us. I realized, “Oh, these are some of the most insecure people on the planet if in their free time all they do is go online and be hateful.” It’s not going to fix anything, but if someone comes at you, try to find their insecurity. It works. In my mind I have a list of six big right wingers and which buttons to push to get them mad. Uniekue/[@uniekue](, prefers not to share her age, New York City Professional bad bitch, influencer, stylist, model, dancer, host You grew up all over the world — what kind of influence has that had on you? I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and around midway through my childhood, my family moved to Saudi Arabia. My parents work in medicine, and for this six-year span we lived in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Dubai, and then I moved back to the states for high school and college, and I've been here ever since. It’s interesting, because in societies where queer people are not visible, people don’t read femininity as queerness, they read it as eclecticism. I also didn’t have the language to communicate what it was that I was feeling, but I also think it was really great for me because I wasn’t so encumbered by the concepts of, “Who do I like? What gender am I presenting as?” It allowed me to focus on experiencing rather than my perception of who I was. The difficulty of being a queer child in the Western world is you have to confront the queer parts of yourself early on, even when you don’t have the language to understand what it is. I don’t envy the experience of young, queer, Black, and trans children because it’s so difficult to navigate the world while feeling as though eyes are watching you, or that you need to have eyes watching you to be worth any value when you’re literally 13. You should be playing with Legos, not worrying about how you get 20,000 followers. Kay Poyer/[@kay_wow,]( 22, Texas Content creator (with a desk job) Trans women have never been more visible, but with that visibility has come a huge backlash. How do you handle it? At first, we were making plans to pick up and get out of here. I am still going to leave Texas someday because there are states where I can go and get FFS [facial feminization surgery] covered by state insurance, and you can't do that in Texas. When everything was starting, it was really frightening, but as far as I can see, it really does seem like it's not a super popular voter issue, and it's not panning out in the way that I think a lot of these lawmakers were hoping that it would. I didn't even expect the protests. I thought they would be like, “No more trans people anywhere!” and most people would just be like, “Okay,” but it hasn't really worked out like that. So I'm honestly hopeful, even though right now, particularly for trans kids, it is still really dark. But it's not like we're gonna go anywhere. Trans women have existed just in America since the beginning, from the 1800s to the ’50s and the ’60s and through the AIDS crisis. The girls before us have been through so much shit, and you can still find some of those old ’70s girls on TikTok talking about, “Back in the day, we used to go to a motel and they would inject us with fucking wall sealant to get our butt bigger.” I will never have to face that. So if they can get through that time, I can get through this time. [Click here to read the full interviews ](  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Clickbait - A group of influencers [went on a sponsored trip to a Shein factory]( and portrayed the ultra-fast fashion giant as having “normal” working conditions, despite many reported labor violations and human rights abuses. 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