This is Part 2 of two part blog about the SGLMG Festival.
If you haven't read it yet, you can start with Part 1.
2 March 2025 was the final day of the Mardi Gras Festival (though many would still be partying in the early hours of the next morning).
2 March was the most anticipated day of the Festival, Parade Day.
It might be referred as Parade Day but it's actually at night, unlike most Parades of this nature.
The theme for 2025 is 'Free To Be' and every entry had to incorporate that theme.
For PHANTOM's entry, it was incorporated in a manner to best advocate for the vast number of identities that we represent.
On the main signage, our messaging was short and simple, reading:
However you identify, you're Free To Be YOU!
It promotes freedom in every individual to identify how they feel, whether in Orientation, Gender Identity or both.
This freedom theme was carried through to other aspects of the Parade entry.
This is where PHANTOM's mascot came into play.
First, it was through costume, initially used in 2021 and revamped for 2025.
The foundation Pansexual Flag dress formed the underlying base.
The wings were amended slightly and the claw gaiters lengthened.
The headpiece in 2021 was replaced with a bigger two-piece headpiece mask, which incorporated the original beak.
The tail was extended by a metre in length.
The PHANTOM Phoenix didn't only appear through costuming but also in more of a mascot form, perched upon the signpost atop a tray with further signage.
The mascot itself was a plush Phoenix that I designed and crafted myself.
I built the tray from paulownia, a lightweight wood.
At the front and rear was the PHANTOM logo.
On both sides, further messaging read:
Free as a bird flies the PHANTOM Phoenix.
To better explain why the PHANTOM Phoenix was used as the official mascot, reference is made to the Parade application.
PHANTOM continues to represent and advocate for the global Pansexual+ cohort.
Even with the progress made to date in Australia and other jurisdictions, the Pansexual+ cohort remains in an invisible and unacknowledged state.
Most of society are only aware of or acknowledge lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities but seldom or never any of the other infinite number of other orientations and gender identities that PHANTOM represents.
Why should someone identify as Non-Binary because a rigid job application wouldn't allow them to identify as Genderfaer?
Why should a demiromantic individual be refused service by a devoutly religious employee because it is automatically assumed they are 'gay' and therefore 'filth'?
If it takes such a fight to even get some broad inclusion in the Australian Census, you can then imagine the fight that still lays ahead for the cohort that PHANTOM advocates for.
Everyone deserves to be able to identify as the orientation and gender identity that they authentically are, rather than only from a small selection determined by social constructs or legislators.
In this Creative Concept, that freedom of identity is represented by the PHANTOM Phoenix, a mascot used in 2021 and now used again because of its relevance.
Just as a phoenix flies free as a bird, all humans are also free to be whoever they are, which is reflected in the messaging.
and
In this instance, it is taken to mean that any person is free to be whatever or however they may identify.
In addition to that, it's also taken to mean that there's an ongoing fight and struggle to secure and maintain the freedoms that allow people to freely identify as they are and to be accepted as such. It's a fight that has endured for many decades and will for many more.
The costuming and main prop is themed around the PHANTOM Phoenix.
In representation of freedom, the theme of being 'free as a bird' comes to mind and the phoenix is a bird.
The phoenix is known in mythology to continually rise again from the ashes; that symbolises PHANTOM's advocacy in that whatever barriers may be encountered, we'll rise to the challenge again in the struggle for people to be Free To Be however they identify, which is their Human Right.
The actual journey on the Parade route wasn't necessarily pleasant.
The entire way, there were loud cheers and shouting. Not a good sensory experience.
The winds were particularly strong and while they usually settle somewhat once you get well into Oxford Street, they unleashed invisible fury the entire thirty or so minutes from start to end.
The first image shows how the prop tray was to appear but due to wind and other factors, it broke and I ended up having to hold the compulsory float sign in one hand and the prop tray in the other.
When you have physical disability, that's a painful experience but on the Parade route, participants are not allowed to stop.
I have to continue on, as gruelling as it was, in the true nature of hidden disability.
As the representative of PHANTOM, which is the representative of all of YOU, I continued on to the very end, as this was advocacy for freedom of identity and a protest aimed at those who want to deny our freedom or have the power to change it for the better.
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