Laverne Cox finally has a Barbie doll designed after her.
The Emmy award-winning transgender actress and advocate appeared on the Today Show on Wednesday to announce that Mattel will be selling the Laverne-inspired Barbie dolls, and to share what the doll will look like to viewers.
The doll includes a mix-and-match-style outfit designed by Carlyle Nuera, and is part of Mattel’s Barbie Tribute Collection, which honors and celebrates visionary women whose contributions have helped shape and impact culture.
On Mattel’s website, the company explains why Cox was a perfect icon to be honored with a Tribute doll.
“As a four-time Emmy-nominated actress, Emmy-winning producer, and the first transgender woman of color to have a leading role on a scripted TV show,” the description reads. “Laverne Cox uses her voice to amplify the message of moving beyond societal expectations to live more authentically.”
Cox is one of 16 figures to be honored with a Tribute doll.
Cox first rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category for her work on the show.
In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as the executive producer of Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. She has most recently guest-starred in several TV shows, and plays the role of Kacy Duke in the American drama miniseries Inventing Anna.
She has been able to use her celebrity and the platform she has as a prominent actress to bring the issue of transgender rights to the forefront of the national conversation.
During her appearance on the Today Show, Cox also spoke out against the wave of anti-trans legislation that has been passed in various state legislatures in recent years, ranging from bans on transgender athletes to restroom bans to the criminalization of gender-affirming medical care for minors to laws barring classroom discussions of LGBTQ issues.
Within the past year alone, the number of anti-trans bills being introduced — usually by Republican lawmakers — has skyrocketed, jumping from 41 in 2021 to nearly 240 in 2022.
“I hope all the kids who are feeling stigmatized when their health care is being jeopardized, whose ability to play sports [is curtailed], I hope they can see this Barbie and feel a sense of hope and possibility,” Cox said.
Since the doll’s release on Wednesday, it has consistently taken up the top slots on Amazon’s Top Toy sellers list. The dolls currently sells for $40 and can be found on Mattel’s website.
Poised to juggle her past and present, her fears and joys, in the one-woman autobiographical show Circus of the Self, Lucy Eden will also be juggling her two favorite props.
"I'm using balls and knives," Eden says, grinning. "And there's also some unicycling, some balance elements. I like to balance things on my face. It's one of my favorite elements of juggling."
So is comedy, which the performer blends with poetry and first-person narrative to relate her own origin story -- someone who is trans and grew up in rural south Georgia, before relocating to the Bay Area.
When J. Ahmir "Ricky" Vines was in elementary school, growing up with a single mom, he would get in trouble with his teachers for scribbling lyrics during class. Eventually, realizing that his lyrical prowess could earn him some extra money, he began selling lyrics to local rappers in his town and stashing the extra cash in a shoebox.
"There's a big underground music culture in North Carolina," says the Winston-Salem native. "I would sell these lyrics to these older kids and these young rapper guys around the city."
A New York City man will spend the next two decades in prison for selling fentanyl-laced heroin that caused the fatal overdose of prominent transgender activist Cecilia Gentili, found dead in her home on February 6, 2024.
The 52-year-old was killed from a mixture of fentanyl, heroin, xylazine (also known as "tranq," a veterinary sedative that is often mixed with other drugs related to overdoses), and cocaine, according to the New York City Medical Examiner's Office.
Police used text messages, along with cell site data, to link two men to Gentili's death, with 53-year-old Antonio Venti of Babylon, N.Y., selling the fentanyl-laced mixture to the veteran LGBTQ activist and 44-year-old Michael Kuilan supplying the drugs to Venti.
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