Who Gets To Be A Doll?

What Fire Island's Doll Invasion Showed Me About the Future of Trans Solidarity

All photos by Victor Jeffreys II

Upon arriving at Reflections, the Fire Island Pines property that hosted Doll Invasion, I was ushered to the green room through a door marked “DOLLS ONLY.” Yet once inside, I immediately thought, “I’m not supposed to be here.” Yes, I was considered a doll—I was on the line-up as a DJ. But I wasn’t that kind of doll, the ones expertly primping in mirrors all around me, who represented a cross-section of New York City’s trans elite: drag performers, actresses, activists, models. They were the real dolls.

I’d long heard girls spar over who counts as “one of the dolls.” Some said the term only applied to surged-up, hyper-feminine trannies (“made of plastic,” just like Barbie). Others were protective of the term’s roots in ballroom culture and rightfully wary of its co-optation. “Black, queer cultural identifiers are never gatekept, but tossed over the masses like confetti,” writes Zora Jade Khiry in an excerpt from her forthcoming book. “Each definition we come up with”—including doll, cunt, and trade—is “expanded to include the white usurper.”

As a white trans girl who lives in hoodies and Vans, with only a subtle facial feminization surgery under my belt, I was always reluctant to call myself a “doll.” But in recent years, the word’s use broadened and proliferated, a shift reflected in the name and ethos of Doll Invasion. Cultural force Fran Tirado founded the event in 2023 to help trans people get to Fire Island, historically a haven for affluent cis gay men.

This year’s Doll Invasion brought hundreds of trans people to the island with free travel and stipends, while raising $22,000 for queer/trans organizations. Even more impressively, it seeded a new, urgently needed trans solidarity under the banner of “doll.” Fishy models danced shoulder-to-shoulder with butch transbians, bearded enbies, and all manner of trans-mascs—a rare display of integration for folks who, despite our shared peril, are often so divided as to hardly be considered a “community.”

Seeking a historical perspective on the “doll” of it all, I called Ceyenne Doroshow, founder of G.L.I.T.S and foremother of New York’s trans scene. “Back in the day, a doll was a fem queen or drag queen who stepped above the norm of what femininity is,” Ceyenne told me, citing Octavia St. Laurent, Candis Cayne, and Victoria Lace as examples. But “the word has evolved,” said Ceyenne. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at in your transition—all trans girls are dolls.”

Ceyenne Doroshow