The first transgender winner of the Miss Netherlands beauty pageant wants the haters to leave Dylan Mulvaney alone and called their treatment of her "horrible."
Rikkie Valerie Kollé, 22, was crowned Miss Netherlands on Saturday, making her the first transgender woman to win the competition. In December, she will head to El Salvador to represent The Netherlands at the Miss Universe pageant. She will be the second transgender woman to compete for Miss Universe after Angela Ponce represented Spain in 2018.
Kollé's win was not without controversy and the model was inundated with negative comments and violent DMs from trolls who did not believe a transgender woman should have been allowed to compete, let alone win.
Kollé's experience of toxic feedback is reminiscent of the vitriol targeted at Mulvaney, a transgender influencer who gained millions of followers on TikTok as she documented her transition.
She became the target of online attacks after Bud Light hired her to do some sponsored posts and sent her a commemorative can with her face on it to celebrate the first year of her gender-affirming transition. Mulvaney has described being too afraid to leave her house amid the backlash.
For Kollé, the experience Mulvaney faced is "sad" and she said she couldn't understand why people would be so angry at someone just trying to get by in life.
"I think it's really to make the girl that low in confidence... and judging her for being herself," Kollé told Newsweek. "I think it's horrible."
Miss Netherlands herself has a unique way of perceiving the attention she gets from trolls online.
"They see us as monsters, and my daily DMs are full of people wishing me dead," she said. "Wishing me dead and telling me to suicide, those things are terrible to write, but at the same [time], it's only lifting me up because I get a bigger platform than I could ever dream of."
She said: "The only thing I want to say to the haters is 'thank you,' because you're giving me a bigger platform than I can ever imagine."
The backlash to Mulvaney's partnership with the beer brand led to a national boycott that saw Bud Light knocked from its perch as America's most popular beer.
Mulvaney spoke at length for the first time about the controversy in a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, June 29.
"I took a brand deal with a company I loved and I posted a sponsored video to my page and it must have been a slow news week because the way that this ad got blown up, you would have thought I was on a billboard or on a TV commercial, or something major. But no, it was just an Instagram video," Mulvaney said.
"I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me but they never did and for months now I've been scared to leave my house...for a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all," Mulvaney said.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
