Miguel Peña

AGE 20 HOMETOWN Sarasota, Florida TOTAL FOLLOWERS* 3.1 million GENRE Honest Trans Journey

Miguel Peña was already gaining a following when he posted a TikTok last summer. In it, he didn’t exactly come out as trans, but signaled a change was coming. “I never posted a video like, ‘Hey, guys, so I’m coming out,’” he says. “It was more like, ‘Hey, does anybody ever feel like you’re not a girl?’” A week later, he cut his hair, and in November, he told followers he was changing his name and his pronouns. Since then, his feed has become a forum to document his transition.

When Peña started posting these clips, he got DMs asking for more information. So, like the queer YouTubers who “raised” him, he started making more educational content. “I have videos on bottom growth. I have videos about the process to get top surgery,” he says. “I might not be able to get to every person, but at least I know that the videos are out there.”

Before last summer, Peña — who grew up between Florida and Venezuela — was going through a “hyper-feminization” phase. “I wanted to be like the spicy Latina,” he says. He still sometimes stitches these videos, reacting to his former “girly-girl” self. “I do get dysphoric [watching them],” he says. “[But] I don’t want to ever feel like I have to erase or hide who I was before. Her posting those videos is what got me to where I am now.” —