Setting has always driven the narrative for Dexter Phuong, who credits his queerness to the fact that he was born, unexpectedly, in a pink-tiled bathroom.
“I really think this is why I’m the only gay one out of all of my siblings,” says Phuong, the second-youngest of four.
That was back in Bryson City, the western North Carolina town of 1,500 where Phuong grew up as the son of first-generation immigrants—his mother from the Philippines, his father from China by way of Vietnam. These days, the 25-year-old is living in Durham, where he recently quit his marketing director job to pursue content creation full-time. His TikTok and Instagram videos chronicle the struggle of being fashion-forward in a mid-sized Southern city, mixing ironic despair and exaggerated confidence with a real longing for community and self-expression.
“Being Durham North Carolina’s Carrie Bradshaw is a heavy burden to bear,” Phuong declares in one video, posing in oversized sunglasses at the base of a concrete stairwell. In another, he poses in a camo shirt with the caption “Wearing Americana yee yee culture as my costume. Think of it as a reparation.” Another video shows him slow-motion walking down sidewalks in various outfits, lamenting, “Me tirelessly searching the empty streets of Durham NC everyday for DIVAS to serve with me.”
With nearly 80,000 TikTok followers, Phuong has built his platform on a geographic tension that resonates beyond the Triangle. He positions himself as exceptional within spaces not designed for his particular brand of self-expression while simultaneously making viewers feel seen in their own experiences of isolation. His videos transform the feeling of being overdressed at Food Lion into high art.
“I feel like whenever I was younger, I never saw representation for myself outside of my family,” Phuong says during an interview in his tastefully decorated apartment, where designer lamps—remnants of his brief attempt at home decor influencing—cast warm light on a collection of Bratz dolls arranged beneath a lime-green Charli XCX “Brat” album cover.
“Being gay was hard, but being a person of color was harder,” Phuong says, of growing up in Bryson City. His parents ran the town’s only Asian restaurant. “I remember walking home as a kid and getting yelled slurs from the bus. I was like, 8, and I didn’t even know what they meant.”
These early experiences of otherness, he says, “helped me build this armor, this confidence that everyone sees.” That armor carried him through high school, where he was valedictorian, to Western Carolina University, chosen for its affordability. After graduating with a communications degree, an internship brought him to Durham, which represented “the New York City of North Carolina” in his mind.
During the pandemic, while working his way up from intern to marketing director at a Raleigh startup, Phuong started posting “silly little random trend” videos on TikTok. One video—in which he superimposed his features onto Kendall Jenner’s face—garnered 12 million views.
“I was, for lack of a better word, shitposting,” Phuong says.
As his corporate responsibilities grew, Phuong found himself craving the creative freedom that his casual videos had unlocked. In January of this year, he quit his job without a plan, initially attempting to rebrand as a home decor influencer before realizing that limiting himself to any single niche felt false.
“Humans are multifaceted,” he says. “Anytime I tried to focus on one thing, it felt inauthentic.”
Instead, he leaned into documenting his daily outfits and observations with a mix of bravado and vulnerability. The approach has started attracting the very community he’s searching for. At Durham’s Strawberry Festival last month, two people approached him.
“They were like, ‘Are you the guy who talks about serving in Durham?’” Phuong says. “And I was like, ‘Yes, divas!’”
Now represented by a talent agency and supplementing content creation with social media consulting, Phuong is finding his rhythm.
“Content creation is like working out—you have to keep doing it to stay consistent,” he says. “But I try not to take it too seriously. Whenever I do, that’s when I get into a creative rut.”
Character Studies is an INDY series about familiar faces around the Triangle—and the stories you may not know about them.
Follow Staff Writer Lena Geller on Bluesky or email [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected]