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Featured Public Idea in Honor of NY’s New Marriage Policy

“Be the change you want to see,” said Gandhi, who was recently outed in a biography. The people of New York City have finally become the change that we want to see. Many worked hard to pass the bill that gives gay people the right to legally marry in New York. The LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community and its supporters celebrated by singing in the streets and wiggling in lit-up hula hoops after the announcement was made on Friday night, on the cusp of Gay Pride Weekend, which in NYC can feel like Christmas in June. The holiday commemorates the uprisings at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, and includes a Gay Pride March, an unauthorized Drag March, and an unauthorized Dyke March. All a great cure for depression, by the way.

In honor of the weekend’s celebrations and the great new triumph of legal same-sex marriages in NYC, I propose that gender-variant models should be used in mainstream cosmetics advertising. Not long ago, I added a Public idea to the OpenInvo database that imagines print ad campaigns based around attractive transgender and gender-variant personalities, such as OBIE award winner Justin Bond, or actor Jeremy Gender.

Sure, we have seen some similar things in the past. For instance, the recent J.Crew advertisement featuring a boy getting his nails painted, and a MAC Cosmetics campaign for their Viva Glam product line, which featured RuPaul and benefited AIDS research. In this case, the change in public policy is the instigator. In giving the LGBT community due respect and attention, wouldn’t it also make sense to expand the buyer base for mainstream cosmetics to people who are usually left out of the advertising target market? Perhaps through advertising, we can get closer to an inclusive roundtable where compassion is valued, and voices that once were marginalized and ignored are seen and heard.

Shelley Marlow is one of the OpenInvo Idea Providers and Instructor for the OpenInvo Studio.
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