The Afol community
Lego is making…lesbian and gay and bi and trans dolls? But how do you do that with Lego dolls? Or any dolls? That’s like saying Lego is making liberal dolls and conservative dolls, or Jewish dolls and Christian dolls, or vegan dolls and keto dolls.
Everyone Is Awesome: Lego to launch first LGBTQ+ set
Can’t you just see little Sophie and Aidan staging a war between the fabulous trans dolls and the monstrous gender critical dolls?
Can you pick out which ones are lesbian and which are gay and which are trans? Are there any non-binary dolls? How about queer? Can you tell?
In the “spraying room” at Lego HQ, tiny figurines are layered with bright, glossy paint before being placed on a rainbow-esque arch. The result, a waterfall of colour with 11 brand new minifigures striding purposefully towards an imagined brighter future, is the Danish toymaker’s inaugural LGBTQIA+ set, titled Everyone Is Awesome.
The colours of the stripes were chosen to reflect the original rainbow flag, along with pale blue, white and pink representing the trans community, and black and brown to acknowledge the diversity of skin tones and backgrounds within the LGBTQIA+ community.
What about class? Why aren’t there colors to acknowledge the diversity of money and power? What about religion, politics, occupation, nationality?
In all but one case no specific gender has been assigned to the figures…
How do you “assign” a “gender” to a tiny plastic figure?
The exception is the one with the weird cone on its head, which is supposed to be a tribute to drag queens. So drag queens are grey? I predict ructions.
“Growing up as an LGBTQ+ kid – being told what I should play with, how I should walk, how I should talk, what I should wear – the message I always got was that somehow I was ‘wrong’,” he said.
That’s sad and bad and needs to change, but in the meantime, he didn’t “grow up as an LGBTQ+ kid” – he grew up as a gay kid.
The set goes on sale on 1 June, the start of Pride month, but a few Afols (adult fans of Lego) and Gayfols have been given a preview.
“This set means a lot,” said Flynn DeMarco, a member of the LGBTQIA+ Afol community and a contestant on the television show Lego Masters US.
Oh that community. That’s a lot of membering for one person.
Updating to add: Sorry, they’re not dolls but Minifigures. I’m not Lego-literate. I was going to strikethrough “dolls” and swap in “Minifigures” but there are way too many, it would make the post look like measles, so just correct it in your head.
Maybe being an AFOL is one of those “dozens of genders we cannot even recognize yet”?
AFOL and, uh, “Gayfol”? Does this imply that gay people, even if they are of age, aren’t adults?
What about:
“Growing up as a girl – being told what I should play with, how I should walk, how I should talk, what I should wear – the message I always got was that somehow I was ‘wrong’,” I said.
Why do trans people – and gay people – think they are the only ones this happens to?
American Girls makes Jewish dolls and Christian dolls and dolls of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Each doll has a name and a backstory, as well as accessories, clothing, and books related to that backstory. That of course doesn’t prevent kids from playing with the dolls however they like, including mixing accessories and clothing. I might expect a company like American Girls might create a trans doll or a lesbian doll; that is, a doll with a backstory and accessories consistent with that description.
These Legos, on the other hand, just have a rainbow and a colors. No backstory, no name, no accessories. Might as well say the pink-colored bricks are girls.
Because cis people — especially cis women, duh — have cis privilege, and thus don’t have to experience being told that they’re wrong.
Of course they are! Isn’t that the definition of “girl”?
ikn: I would argue that cis males (not that I would know, LOL) ALSO experience such periods of confusion and not belonging. It’s part of the human condition. Especially given that children and adolescents are not innocent bay-beez but often evil shitz.
Brian M., I would agree with that. It’s the norm for children to go through that. I just used girls because, well, erasure of women and all that, and because it was my own experience.
But that just adds to the question: why do trans people believe they are the only ones this happens to? They are such special damn snowflakes, aren’t they?
Very few people are “awesome.” Certainly not “everyone.” In fact, people who think everyone is awesome are not awesome, they’re idiots.
This really is pedantry and I apologize for it but Minifigures are not dolls, particularly because Mini-dolls (from the Friends line exist).
Also, Legos covered in paint? Good thing these are intended only for display; everyone knows that you don’t paint toys on parts that are likely to be handled.
I don’t care if someone has decided that they’re going to have special names for subsets of dolls. Go ahead, call them ‘minifigures’ or ‘action figures’ or anything else. They are three-dimensional representations of the (sometimes only vaguely) human figure, destined to be played with. Therefore, they are dolls.
#7 Victimhood Olympics is FUN-and Profitable. There are CAREERS to be had in serving as a spokesperson for “Blue Furred Venusian Dragons” as a community.
#8: I had that thought, too. This claim that we are all special and all awesome is just nauseating and ultimately not very healthy. It leads to a sense of entitlement which, when adopted by the far right, can create organizations like The Proud Boys. Note their name. They have bought into the “We are all awesome” tied it to the group identity/group victimization ideology ALSO promoted by elements of “the left” and…the results are not very pretty, are they?
It’s pretty rich from a company that:
1) pink-codes their “girls'” toys
2) has maybe 2 sets that have a solo female figure
3) has a sex ratio of 3:2 at best in most of their main lines
4) couldn’t be arsed to produce Women’s Science Institute II
But hey, capitalism says a bunch of schmucks will buy this lazy “set”.
The thing with these minifigures is … they’re all naked.
Most minifigures have their head/hands the same color and the torso and legs different colors to represent the clothes they are wearing. These? Totally nude.
Did they really cheap out and just spray regular yellow minifigures different colors … or was this just for their prototypes?
Hmm … maybe that’s why the set’s age rated “18+“ … I mean, aside from the gratuitous nudity.
Do LGBTQXYZ people, sorry – folx – not have faces?
One of the fun things about Lego is that the figures are take-apart-able. Kids have always “changed outfits” by swapping arms and legs around, and kids have always put “girl hair” on the head with the big painted-on moustache, or the beard-and-hair combo on a head with big red lips and long eyelashes. Hilarious! This does absolutely nothing to make kids feel better or more included or whatever – the gay kids could always match up any combination of figures into two-mum families or have a knight go on a quest to rescue the prince. But who cares when there’s woke points to be scored.
What the set seems to say is that there is no detail about these people that is important other than their position on this letter spectrum. So no faces, clothes, etc.
I’m sure this has all been researched and isn’t just a marketing gimmick but…
The message I’m getting here is “you know when your uncle told you that all them gays and bi-sexuards were a God-forsaken abnormal freakshow – he was dead right”.