WASHINGTON — Mattel is celebrating Emmy-winner Laverne Cox with her own Barbie doll.
The actress and LGBTQ activist is the first transgender person to have a Barbie doll designed in her likeness.
The Laverne Cox doll is part of Barbie's "Tribute Collection," which has also honored Lucille Ball and designer Vera Wang. Queen Elizabeth II also recently got her own Barbie, to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.
"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, Laverne Cox uses her voice to amplify the message of moving beyond societal expectations to live more authentically," the product description on Mattel's website explains.
Cox's acting breakthrough came on the hit Netflix series "Orange is the New Black."
In an interview released by Mattel, Cox described how she wasn't allowed to have a Barbie when she was a child so to have one designed in her likeness now is "incredibly meaningful."
"I hope that kids of all gender identities can look at this Barbie and dream, because I think that, like, the space of dreaming and manifesting is - when you lose that, it is so deeply painful, she said. "What I've been so grateful for throughout my life is that I still dream. There's a kid that is still living inside me who's very alive and well who still dreams and who dreams big, who imagines a world that is different and better."
She told PEOPLE that in a time where hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S., that this honor can be "a celebration of transness" and a reminder for transgender kids that "there's hope and possibility for them to be themselves."
The doll was released on Wednesday, ahead of Cox's 50th birthday on Sunday, May 29.
