The Danish toymaker Lego has released a new LGBTQIA+ set, ‘Everyone is Awesome’, to celebrate Pride Month.
Lego’s new LGTQIA+ set, ‘Everyone is Awesome,’ was designed by Matthew Ashton, who initially started the project purely for himself.
‘I’d moved offices,’ Ashton explains, and wanted to ‘make the space feel like home with something that reflected me and the LGBTQIA+ community I’m so proud to be a part of.’
‘Representation is so important. I grew up in the 80s and was obviously a gay kid. There was a lot of negativity back then around being gay.’
‘I knew I needed to step up and make a real statement about love and inclusivity.’
The set features 11 minifigures, six of which are in the colours of the original rainbow pride flag.
Ashton also included three in the pastel blue white and pink of the trans pride flag, as well as black and brown to acknowledge the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community.
These were meant to highlight the trans and POC individuals who have often been left out of representation.
10 of the figures have no specific gender, and have been left deliberately ambiguous to allow users to ‘express individuality’.
The only exception is the purple Lego character who has a distinct beehive hairdo, as a ‘nod to all the fabulous drag queens out there,’ who have also faced exclusion and invisibility in mainstream media.
It has already been reviewed by the groups Adult Fans of Lego (Afol) and Gayfols, such as Flynn DeMarco who commended LEGO for actually representing the LGBTQ community, saying ‘there’s a lot of lip service and not a lot of action.’
DeMarco alluded to the phenomenon of ‘pink-washing’, in which organisations and companies use LGBTQ symbols, such as the rainbow, as an advertising ploy without actually trying to aid the community itself.
The Everyone is Awesome set goes further than this, DeMarco believes.
‘For Lego to do something so inclusive, so full of joy- it made me smile, then cry, then smile a little more.’
LEGO has made previous efforts to improve their representation.
A rainbow flag is included in its Trafalgar Square set, for example, and its bride and groom ‘BrickHeadz’ figures are sold individually to allow users to pair two brides or two grooms together.
The set went on sale last week to celebrate the start of Pride month, and is intended as a display model rather than a play set.
This article was originally written by Georgie Morley. ‘I’m Georgie and I’m currently studying History at the University of Oxford. I am passionate about social change, particularly intersectional feminism and climate justice, and I enjoy engaging in these issues through volunteering, campaigning and writing.’ Visit her LinkedIn and view her Twitter.
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