Recently, Ikea debuted their Pride collection, which was a series of artistically decorated couches decorated to represent various queer identities! That is… nice, I guess? Why has this year’s pride felt even more corporate and straight than every other year when it’s extremely corporate and straight?
Anyway, we had a lot to unpack here. I do want to note that our jokes are centered around the couches themselves and not anyone’s identities, and that as a goth older sister I legally reserve the right to make jokes about the siblings of goth sisters.
Stef: Has everyone, uh, seen these?
terrifying bisexual couch aside, I appreciate that the lesbian one looks inspired by flamingos and urine
Nicole: I was gonna say
I don’t think i can deal with a couch covered in hands telling me “nobody believes you”
Shelli: What is going on with the asexual couch my god
Rachel: I loved the progress couch’s work in Annihilation
Stef: I think the asexual couch is kinda cute? like a geode? but hideous?
Tracy: The progress one creeps me out. Like that couch would have to be in a really damp environment to start to grow plants.
Shelli: I feel like it’s gonna eat me and not in a good way.
Stef: Rachel and I have talked about how the odds are stacked against bisexual graphic design, this couch is not helping
Heather: oh wow Étoile has that trans couch in her house in Animal Crossing!
Nicole: @stef nobODy bELieVes yOu
Rachel: I love that ours (the bisexual couch) is the only one w text bc someone in design was like “they’re gonna want it to talk about erasure, trust me”
Nicole: Is the non-binary couch like, wearing a couch harness?
Stef: yes, yes it is
Christina: apparently they are ~^~^art^~^~^~ installations and not like, for sale?
Valerie: the bisexual couch looks like a threat
Stef: I know they’re Ikea loveseats so like the bar isn’t high, but none of them look pleasant to sit on. Which one would you say is the scariest one?
Christina: something about the ace one feels like it is going to swallow you into another dimension?
Which… could rock?
Meg: the fact that the bisexual couch has erasure written on it and also creepy hands covering the armrests is deeply terrifying
Heather: oh my god is this why all caps NOBODY BELIEVES YOU is trending on twitter?!
Stef: it is, yes
that is unfortunately how I found it
Heather: 😬
Meg: I hate it
THE COUCHES ARE HOMOPHOBIC, BOB FROM IKEA
Rachel: I like seats as a verb here
love wins? love SEATS
Meg: love needs to sit down
Rachel: the most homophobic part is that we all have to work today when i could instead be doing bits about these couches for a solid 8 hours
Stef: yeah probably someone was like “you all need to take several seats” and someone in a boardroom was like WAIT I HAVE AN IDEA
Christina: i keep seeing all these QRTs of what I can only imagine are 16 year olds like “EXCUSE ME THESE CREATORS ARE QUEER, THIS ART MATTERS”
Stef: I do appreciate the video of like an actual asexual person sitting on the asexual couch talking about how much community they feel
Christina: I will say, that couch is the most I have liked the lesbian flag colors, maybe ever?
Stef: the asexual geode is made of some kind of like, tulle?
in my last apartment in bushwick the mold in the bathroom ceiling was so bad we had mushrooms growing in there, i imagine that is the origin of the progress couch
Valerie: the genderfluid couch looks like the map at the beginning of a fantasy novel. which isn’t a necessarily a bad thing but seems unrelated.
Stef: honestly kind of offended by the obvious difference in effort that went into the bisexual couch vs pansexual couch
like the pansexual couch was already in someone’s dorm room
Rachel: we also really haven’t devoted enough attention to what’s happening w the nonbinary flag,
nonbinary people i am so sorry
Stef: those two have very strong “i forgot to do my homework and half assed it during homeroom” energy
Rachel: it is… fur? but also plaid?
Valerie: the lesbian couch looks like it’s from a DIY tiktok for how to modernize your hand-me-down couch with kool-aid and paint rollers
Drew: Why do trans people get two?
What did we do to deserve that??
Stef: the one with clouds is kinda like a baby mobile? like it’s for a nursery
oh i zoomed in on the art in the other
tag yourself i’m the three flowers surrounding a boot???
Ro: Is it just me or is there a weird amount of explicit binary imagery depicted on that couch??
Drew: When I haven’t shaved my hands for a couple weeks
Valerie: I thought they were child drawings before you zoomed in! I assumed it was trans kids and trans adults! alas!
WHAT IS THAT HAND
Stef: bedbugs
Drew: Hairy trans girl hand 😔
Valerie: Does that one person have rabbit ears?
Meg: why do the sun and moon have legs and arms
this is so distressing
Drew: Common side effect of T
Stef: this does feel like, ok if you asked a cis person who doesn’t know any trans people to come up with some relatable art
“what are they into? butterflies? disco balls?”
Meg: just put some keys and plants on there, it’ll make sense
Stef: “eyeshadow, they definitely like eyeshadow”
Nicole: the trans couch is giving me country store gift shop energy, do you know?
like a designer just putting everything they can think of onto a textile pattern
Stef: yes like if nobody told you this couch was to represent trans people
and you saw this couch
Meg: oh totally, I could see it in the Vermont country store in front of a window with frilly lace curtains
Stef: your aunt would buy it
I googled one of the artists and found this interview
[Q]: Who or what has been a strong influence on you throughout your life?
[A]: One of the more life-altering influences has been my sister; being Goth, she has always been the most genuine person.
Drew: WHERE IS THE GOTH COUCH
Stef: where is MY representation
Christina: My sister being goth
opened my EYES
Stef: I hope my brother tells people the same thing all the time
Ro: Goth is actually the “G” in LGBTQ and WE HAVE BEEN ERASED.
Meg: my rage, it is boundless
give us the goth love seat
Stef: I’m on my goth couch right now
I am a little sad it doesn’t have a harness like the nonbinary couch, seems like it should right?
my couch went to bound on friday
Meg: yeah I think I need my goth couch needs a harness, or at least a harnessed pillow
Stef: oh there it is
maybe the black feathered cushion like the two spirit couch
Meg: ooh yes
throw a harness on it and you’ve got yourself a goth couch
these couches have such community college art exhibition energy (with big apologies to all of the *good* art i’ve seen at community college art shows), like the confidence is there, but what would jodi lerner say?
Also the 2spirit sofa looks like it’s got a case of the creeping Pride Babadooks
QG STAHP omg
All of you were absolutely on your game for this, I laughed so many times, but it’s midnight and my kiddo is asleep so I was stifling it. “A case of the creeping Pride Babadooks” is where I finally completely lost it. Apparently my guard was down once I was done with the official article.
Give yourself a “Case of the Creeping Pride Cackles” comment award, you got me.
lol! <3 <3 <3
also “when you change your OR to AND and nobody believes you” is a very confusing and sinister way to describe bisexuality?
I think the second trans one is really pretty tho, great for a Pinterest nursery
OH NO I CAN’T STOP COMMENTING ON THESE
Meg’s “love needs to sit down” had me laugh out loud so violently and suddenly I scared all my cats. Thanks, Meg.
BRB, just off to sew up some under cushion restraints for the terrifying bisexual arms before they strangle me in my nightmares
To match the non binary couch harness, of course.
Come visit my Etsy shop, Bisexual Depressive Sofa-masochism, for everything you might need to keep your love seated
Um, this is the only bisexual couch that I recognize.
https://www.leisurebyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/loki-episode3-memes-1024×576.jpg
Can I know what they were taking when they did some of these couches?
“I want what they’re having”
Come to think of it that non-binary one reminds me of a black Porsche 911 GT2 with yellow stripes.
Also saw this somewhere else. It seems like that bi one is a quote from a poem & the author of it had a hand in the couch. https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/campaigns/loveseats-pub6f2e1660
Lol a hand in the couch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkISKJwW9fI
do you know how angry i was when i realized i could not buy these!! i desperately need that gaslighty horror movie bi couch!
i have been Going Through It in re: pride couches all day thank god i have autostraddle here with the hardhitting content i deserve
Honestly, besides the rainbow flag and trans flag, 100% of pride flags are hideous af and clearly designed by teenagers with no sense of color theory, which is reflected in these couches.
The only one I’d want is the flower one.
The bisexual couch just reminds me of that scene from Labyrinth when the “helping hands” are holding up Sarah.
“She chose DOWN!”
“WAIT! Was that the wrong choice?”
I’ve been stressing about the side effects of T lately, so Drew’s comment literally had me falling off my seat laughing. I’ll have to add anthropomorphic astral bodies to my list of things to worry about.
Sofa so bad
The trans couches and the 2spirit one are genuinely cute though. I would absolutely buy the one with the clouds and rainbow on it even though that’d be awkward to lounge on.
The genderfluid flag is just a standard IKEA couch that would be the go-to statement piece of every 19-year-old “lifestyle influencer”.
Yes, I could see IKEA legitimately selling the genderfluid one, but it still looks like amoebas meets Lisa Frank.
I do have to say that these couches look amazingly better with their designers sitting on them, in the photos on the Ikea page. Especially the asexual one!
I can’t take credit for this one, but the lesbian one isn’t a couch, it’s a soppha.
These remind me a bit too much of “A curious sofa” by Gorey.
As a bi poly person with a glove fetish, I just think the bi couch should be delivered directly to my home
I’m I alone in seeing something really different from a geode in the asexual sofa?
And I’m kind of jealous at the bi flag, because I like those colours and I do not like the lesbian flag at all :( I’ll just stick to rainbow’s everywhere.
Right? Why did they choose the asexual couch to be a vagina couch that looks like it’s going to swallow you whole? I feel like some wires got crossed.
Right. Big human eating vagina just screams asexuals I guess. *shrugs*
You’re not alone. My first thought was that the ace sofa looked like a sideways vagina geode.
I now realise that I really want a geode that looks like a vagina.
The first trans one looks uncomfortably similar the godawful couch that for some inexplicable reason was in the backyard of the apartment I shared with my worst ex and that our upstairs neighbors kept saying they’d get rid of and never did
Okay, but what are they called? Like, is the lesbian couch called a Kunskapombäver?
The non-binary couch seems ill thought out. Clearly delineated sections separated by distinct lines? When I think non-binary, I think five narrow boxes to sit in!