A woman has gone viral for creating a gender-neutral deck of playing cards featuring no kings or queens.
According to BoredPanda, the project is the brainchild of 23-year-old designer Indy Mellink. Indy, who hails from the Netherlands, has always been something of a fan of card games.
But last June, when she was stuck indoors while her country was in the midst of lockdown, she had something of an epiphany about the traditional decks she typically used.
Indy noticed that queen and king cards are ranked in terms of gender, with the female cards existing in a lower status than the male kings.
Intrigued by her newfound realization about this particular gender imbalance, Indy brought the matter up in a discussion with her parents, who suggested that she create a more inclusive alternative herself.
Thinking about the subject more, she realized that all the playing cards depict white people, with no people of color to be seen, which was another inequality she aimed to address.
Indy's novel solution was to simply replace the standard king/queen/jack hierarchy with a gold/silver/bronze one instead, thus solving two problems in one fell swoop.
Indy designed the new cards at home on her computer and initially ordered four packs to play with herself.
But her friends and family loved them enough for her to order another shipment of 50, and then a batch of 500 when she uploaded pictures of her deck to social media, and requests started flooding in.
Capitalizing on her project, Indy set up an official YouTube channel, Instagram account, and launched a website in October to promote her so-called "GSB Playcards."
The response has been overwhelming, and so far Indy has shipped around 1.5k card packs to customers in Belgium, Germany, France, as well as the United States. However, reactions to the project on social media have been mixed.
Some people are applauding Indy's venture for aiding in breaking down harmful hegemonies.
For instance, on the product's Facebook page, one person commented:
"I think it's cute. Do I think it will change card playing, um no. It's just another specialty deck. They have brail for blind people, and you can get Civil War cards that have the generals on them or I think I saw some French Revolution cards.
"I'm sure if you look hard enough you can get a set with pictures on it and set up who you want to represent the different cards. Chill out it's playing cards. [sic]"
Meanwhile, others have criticized the cards for seemingly conflating a very minor social justice issue. For instance, one disgruntled Facebook user quipped: "Who on Earth is getting offended by playing cards?!"
Someone else chimed in: "It continues to get more ridiculous every day! Even when you think it can't!"
But for her part, Indy has been undeterred by the criticism of her product. In a statement posted on her website, Indy says:
Take a look at Indy's promo for the gender-neutral playing cards in the video below:"Why should the King have a higher position than the Queen? Why should the King, Queen, and Jack be white?
"However, rather than complicating the sex and race inequality debate even more, we decided to remove the gender and race factor as a whole and to introduce a common, universally-known ranking system.
"All the other cards in the deck are the same as usual. This card pack was designed with the passion to fight for equality in gender as well as race. Our goal is for everyone to feel comfortable while playing cards."
All the profits generated by purchases of Indy's playing cards will be used to fund new projects to tackle more inequalities in the future. So if you like the look of them, why not shoot over to her store and buy yourself a pack while stocks last?