MTV Video Music Awards. Since MTV launched in 1981, the silver trophy – originally named the “Moonman” – has depicted an astronaut planting a flag with the MTV logo on the moon’s surface.
While the iconic statue has received few makeovers over the years, it was recently given a more gender neutral name. Ahead of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, network president Chris McCarthy announced that the Moonman trophy would henceforth be known as Moon Person.
In an interview with New York Times, McCarthy explained the decision behind the gender neutral name change – which came around the same time that the MTV Movie and TV awards stopped separating acting categories by gender. “Why should it be a man?” McCarthy said. “It could be a man, it could be a woman, it could be transgender, it could be nonconformist. ”Last August, MTV marked its 40th anniversary with a relaunch of the Moon Person trophy.
The new design, which was inspired by the original trophy image, was reimagined by Kehinde Wiley – the artist who painted the portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
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