Laverne Cox is getting her own Barbie doll!
To celebrate her 50th birthday on May 29, the Emmy-award winning actor and LGBTQ+ activist is being honored with a Tribute Collection Barbie. Her doll is dressed in a red ball gown, a silver bodysuit and comes with accessories like high-heeled boots and silver earrings. “It’s been a dream for years to work with Barbie to create my own doll,” Cox said in a statement shared with TODAY Parents. “I can’t wait for fans to find my doll on shelves and have the opportunity to add a Barbie doll modeled after a transgender person to their collection.”
Cox added, “I hope that people can look at this Barbie and dream big like I have in my career. The space of dreaming and manifesting is such a powerful source and leads you to achieve more than what you originally thought was possible.”
Cox shared on TODAY that a conversation with her therapist led to a whole new relationship with Barbie dolls as an adult.
“I was telling my therapist how I was really shamed by my mother when I was a kid when I wanted to play with a Barbie doll but I was denied. And I had a lot of shame and trauma about that,” Cox said. “And my therapist said to me, ‘It is never too late to have a happy childhood.’ She said, ‘Go out and buy yourself a Barbie and play with her. There’s a little kid that lives inside of you. Give her space to play.’ And I did.”
Cox added that when she told her mother about it, the next Christmas she received a gift. “My mother bought me a Barbie doll. And on my birthday, my mother bought me another Barbie doll. For the next several years, she would always give me Barbies,” Cox said.
“Barbie has been a really healing experience for me as an adult and I hope Barbie fans of all ages can find healing and inspiration in this doll,” Cox said.
Starting on May 25, the Laverne Cox Tribute Barbie can be purchased for $39 on Amazon, Walmart, Target and MattelCreations.
Laverne Cox’s Tribute Collection Barbie will be released on May 25, 2022.
Mattel
The actor, who starred as Sophia Burset in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” (which aired from 2013 to 2019), is kicking off her 50th year with a beautiful bang — in February, she starred in the Netflix hit “Inventing Anna” and her weekly podcast “The Laverne Cox Show” is in its second year.
“In some ways, I feel like I’m in the prime of my life,” Cox recently told Health. “I think I look better than I’ve ever looked, and I’ve evolved so much.”
Actress and LGBTQ activist Laverne Cox is being honored in the Barbie Tribute Collection.
Mattel
Other icons included the Barbie Tribute Collection are bridal dress designer Vera Wang wearing a black one-piece outfit modeled after her Spring 2017 collection, comedic legend Lucille Ball and star of the 1950s television show “I Love Lucy” and Queen Elizabeth II, the first British monarch to reign for 70 years.
To mark Cox’s Barbie doll, the company will make a donation in her name to the nonprofit TransFamilySOS.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
