Evie MacDonald

MacDonald was born to parents Meagan Moss and Scott MacDonald, both from Melbourne.^[3] She is the middle child of five siblings.^[4]

She has said that "I think I'm just like your average teenager. I love hanging out with my friends, going shopping, and getting my nails done. I think it's the small things in life that are the most fulfilling."^[5]

MacDonald has said that:

Well, I was so young I didn't even realize that I was trans. I didn't know there was a word for it. I genuinely thought I was the only person in the world that was like this. The only way I could explain it to my parents was I felt like my body was a man, but my soul was a woman.^[6]

When she was eight years old, her mother threw jewellery MacDonald made at school out of their car window. MacDonald asked her "'Why can't you accept me for who I am?"^[3][7] Months later she typed the words 'I want to die' on her mother's phone screen. At age nine, MacDonald transitioned. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and referred to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, where she saw three psychiatrists.

After a 2017 landmark court case, which the family campaigned and traveled to Canberra to speak with MPs, minors no longer had to go to the Family court to obtain gender-affirming care.^[8] MacDonald says "Not going through male puberty is something I genuinely believe saved my life".^[7]

Her mother founded Parents of Gender Diverse Children along with a friend, Karyn Walker. The organization provides peer support and connection nationwide.^[3]

In 2019, MacDonald responded to a tweet by Scott Morrison saying "We do not need 'gender whisperers' in our schools. Let kids be kids," on TV with:

"There are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse and we don't deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our Prime Minister. I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of attitudes like this. I went to [a] Christian school where I had to pretend to be a boy and spend weeks in conversion therapy. We get one childhood and mine was stolen from me by attitudes like this."^[9]

MacDonald was one of ten trans children photographed by Emma Leslie in her Transcend portrait series.^[3]

At age eleven, she became the first transgender person to walk the runway in the International Kids Fashion Parade.

MacDonald started modeling at age six, and she started public speaking at age ten after coming out.^[10] MacDonald appeared on the series Quickfire Questions, a game show for Australian celebrities, in 2022.

After her mother saw a Facebook post about an audition, MacDonald sent in an audition tape and was cast as Hannah Bradford in the short film, and later the TV series, First Day.^[7] Director Julie Kalceff said:^[11]

"One of the most rewarding aspects of making First Day has been the response from the transgender community. I'm not transgender and I am very much aware that this is not my story to tell. I am, however, in a position of privilege and I have access to the means to tell this story. Once we cast Evie as Hannah, our job became to empower Evie and give her the tools she needed to tell her story. The warmth with which First Day was embraced by the community was one of the best aspects of making the film...It was a joy to work with Evie. First Day was her first acting role and she took to it with such wisdom and intelligence, it felt as though she'd been acting for years. We had a five-day shoot and Evie was in every scene. She never complained, she never got tired. She kept working and she loved every minute of it. "

The TV series received numerous accolades, and so did MacDonald for her starring performance. She cites Kalceff and the rest of the cast and crew as a support on set.^[5] On playing Bradford, she says that:^[10]

"It was different to how I went in with my first day. I'm very out-there and energetic and I'm an extrovert. I was supposed to play this shy little kid that doesn't really know what she's doing. She's scared, she doesn't know if she's passable yet, and she doesn't know if people see her as who she sees as herself. It was really fun to play that and kind of play with those emotions."

V. S. Wells clarifies that:

"Macdonald mentions a couple of times in our interview the notion of 'passing' or 'being passable'—the idea of trans people being accurately read by strangers as their correct gender, or sometimes 'passing' as cisgender. While passing has fallen out of activist vernacular, Macdonald is a teen using language that she feels comfortable with—and she's also quick to point out that trans people deserve respect regardless of how much they conform to society's expectations of gender. 'Whether you're passable or not, that shouldn't be a factor in who you are as a person,' she says."

MacDonald has over 200,000 followers and 5 million likes on TikTok. Her father has helped her manage internet hate. Her account started with her posting skits, and then she and her friend expanded their accounts and taught each other tricks after realize they were doing the same thing. Her content is partially lifestyle and partially advocacy. After a photo of her in a bikini at the beach was deleted for nudity, she said that:

"I saw a lot of popular creators posting videos and photos of themselves in, you know, their underwear or their bathers [swimsuits]. So I was like, 'Why are they targeting people that are trans?' Because I saw a few other trans people stepping up going, 'Why can't we post photos like that?'"^[10]