All about a toy

There’s been some recent news around the rebranding of the Mr. Potato Head line to drop the “Mr.” as a part of the overall branding strategy. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would still exist, and be sold, but the overall branding is being changed to be more inclusive. All in all, a pretty innocuous change, I think, but not to the world of social media.

I hesitated to post this, I'll be very honest, but I cannot begin to change my corner of the world without making some, who are closer to me, a little uncomfortable. So, yes, some who read this may well read themselves into the post, but before you get defensive, please ask yourself why you are feeling that way.

The reason it’s on my mind at all, despite being well past the age of actually caring about a toy potato, is the casual transphobia that arose as a result of the news. Whether it was meme jokes showing a confused Mr. Potato Head unable to pee at a urinal or a collection of posts and comments along the line of “Hey, I’m all for mental health and trans people should be themselves, but enough of this, it’s making me tired!” The implicit and explicit transphobia was difficult to witness.

All of these left me feeling othered, that my very existence was a burden, and yet I cannot recall anyone in the trans or non-binary community talking about a need here. Of all the things that scare and concern me with respect to trans rights in society today, the perceived gender of a toy potato is not one of them and yet we in the trans and non-binary community shouldered the ire of a society that feels entitled to an unchanging memory. We're the evil "they" at work here, as though creating a more tolerant and inclusive society is a malovent act.

Inevitably whenever there is a change to a long standing product or brand, in an attempt to be more inclusive or to drop a past connection with racism or bigotry, there is always a cry of outrage about it. The part of me that wants to put people in their best light also wants me to believe that the reaction is stemming from innocent and fond childhood memories not specifically connected to the context around the brand. That is naive. These reactions often bring out the buried prejudices of many and the damage from that is done all over again, showing how much work still has to happen.

This past week, a toy potato and set of kid’s books, showed me yet again that there is real value in investing deeply in the foundational aspects of teaching inclusion and raising awareness of the levels of exclusion that can arise from simple things. The outrage from the change often comes from people decades removed from the product that they are expressing concern for and it shows how deeply seated the lessons of bias really are.

As for me? More personally, it deeply saddens me that my own friends and family didn’t pause for that brief moment to remember the journey I had shared and the reasons I was so deeply nestled in my shell for so long. In the moment, it makes me feel that I wasn’t heard by the very people that I most wanted to reach.