Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to visit London, and
while on my way to view a relative’s tryptych painting in the BP Portrait
Awards at the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square, a group of us
happened upon London’s version of the Pride parade, promoting LGBT issues. As a native to Atlanta and a reality tv
junkie (real world, etc…), I am familiar with the concept behind Pride—call it
my social construct of reality—but at the same time, I was not expecting the
level of cultural acceptance that the parade met; this is probably, due in
part, to cultural barriers and personal upbringing in the bible belt.
However, the real shock to me was the corporate involvement
and open willingness to discuss certain avant garde topics, including those of
the LGBT community. As can be
viewed in the picture (courtesy of Brittany Beisner, a student on the Terry
program), one of the major convenient stores, Tesco, used this event as a means
of advertisement and promotion, in an effort to reach out to this audience and
market. Coming from America, it’s
refreshing to see what we know as a taboo subject supported so openly by
corporations, which are, generally, known to be conservative.
This is a far step from the American tradition of prejudice,
including the Westboro Baptist Church and the atrocities against Matthew
Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming.
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